Perry: Yasiel Puig takes fastball to face; Diamondbacks, Dodgers brawl

Puig remained on the ground for a few minutes and the cameras showed that his nose was bleeding, but he wiped away the blood and stayed in the game. Pretty sure I would have stayed in the fetal position for good 36 hours had I taken a 92 mph fastballs to the face.

As an added bonus, Zack Greinke hit Miguel Montero with a pitch to leadoff the next half-inning, presumably in retaliation. Both the benches cleared and there was a lot of yelling, but nothing more. It was over within a minute and ...

Murray Chass: PLAYING THE SERVICE-TIME GAME

In 1985 the players, in a rare major concession to the owners, agreed to change the arbitration eligibility from two years of major league service to three. After the union’s younger members expressed their outrage at the change, the union, in the 1990 negotiations, got the time needed changed.

The 17 percent of the players who had the most service between two and three years would be eligible for arbitration. They became known as the Super 2’s. In the last negotiations, in 2011, that ...

OMNICHATTER for 6-12-2013

Maybe the benches won’t clear anywhere today.

Silva: Did Pettitte’s 250 Lock Him for Hall of Fame?

I accept responsibility for those two uhh three uhhh four uhhhh five days.

Andy Pettitte locked up his 250th career win this past weekend against the Mariners. It now could be said the win also locked up his Hall of Fame candidacy, something that many thought was dead and buried after his retirement in 2010.

The naysayers will point out how Pettitte is the anti-Hall of Famer. He is good, not great. He is more a model of consistency than dominance. You could even point out the advantages ...

Grantland: Keri: Ranking the Best Ballpark Experiences, Part 2

Jonah’s top 20.

Ian Stewart Faces Fine, Suspension For Twitter Rant

Boogie with Stupid.

We’ve been discussing Ian Stewart and his complaints about still being in the Cubs organization in this FanPost, but there’s new information Tuesday afternoon that I believed warranted a front-page post.

In the Tribune, Paul Sullivan summarizes the issue and quotes general manager Jed Hoyer:

  Triple-A Iowa third baseman Ian Stewart faces a fine and possible suspension by the Chicago Cubs for his Twitter rant about his status in the organization.

  But he will not be ...

How the Red Sox set themselves up to win the scouting war | The Providence Journal

Part one of a three-part examination of the Red Sox advance scouting system.The Red Sox are smart. What makes them smart isn’t a sabermetric slant. It’s a willingness to find and use any information they can find which can give their players an edge. 

Here’s part two: Information overload has transformed the nature of advance scouting.

Pirates Welcome Gerrit Cole to the Bigs

This isn’t exactly how Gerrit Cole wanted it, but the 2011 No.1 overall draft pick finally gets what he thought he deserved a couple of months ago — his first major league start today for the Pittsburgh Pirates.

....

Cole will face the visiting San Francisco Giants, plugging a hole in what has been a solid Pirates rotation but has been hit by injuries to Wandy Rodriguez and Jeanmar Gomez.

The former #1 draft pick throws in the high 90s, but he hasn’t been missing bats this season: 47 Ks ...

RetroSimba: How Lonnie Smith came clean with the Cardinals

Skates punk: Tales of terror.

Smith was hitting better than .300 in early June 1983, but his drug use was intensifying.

“I did cocaine and pot mostly and I was even starting to drink,” Smith told the Associated Press in March 1984. “That was a bad sign because my father was an alcoholic and still is. I saw what it did to him and I had stayed away from that. But avoiding alcohol left me wide open to drugs.

“I started in high school in Los Angeles … It progressively got worse. The ...

Primer Dugout (and link of the day) 6-11-2013

Washington Times, June 11, 1913:

Rossiter [Pennsylvania] claims to have staged a world’s record baseball game in number of runs, hits, errors, and umpires in the contest here yesterday between Upper and Lower Rossiter for the championship of the town.
...
At any rate, the Lower Rossiter team was victorious in the sixteenth inning, the score being 112 to 98. The game consumed five hours, and fifty-seven players were used by both sides.

During the game 42 home runs, 53 triples, 73 doubles, and 74 ...

Baer: Ryan Howard Is A Shadow of His Former Self

In The Beginning Was The End…

It is June 10 and Ryan Howard has seven home runs in 231 trips to the plate. Seven home runs used to constitute a good week for the slugger. Among full seasons, his previous low for home runs on June 10 was ten in 2010. His .185 isolated power this year is 90 points below his career average and his .306 weighted on-base average nearly matches his output last year when he was hobbled by his Achilles.

The biggest and most obvious change is that Howard struggles ...

Wolfley: Bud Selig seen as fair in trying to serve Ryan Braun justice

“Buck Buck”, “Johnny on the Pony”...we used to just call it “####### Pile-On”.

Chris Russo of SiriusXM Radio tweeted: “The truth is Ryan Braun is a cheat, we already knew he was a cheat, and he threw that tester under the bus to save his own rear end. Truth.”

Anthony Witrado of The Sporting News, a former Brewers beat reporter, was asked on Fox Sports Radio if Braun was guilty of using PEDs.

“Yes, and I’ve thought so since the news first came out,” Witrado said. “I thought that this denial ...

Maddon has harsh words for Lackey

Oathbreaker!

After the game, Maddon came out swinging against Lackey.

“So he intentionally hit him when he did, there’s no question in my mind that he did, and the sad part is that I’ve always considered Lackey a good teammate, but right there he can get one of his own players hurt,” Maddon said.

“I really did sense among the group of Red Sox that they were totally not into that moment because they knew it was inappropriate to hit Matt on purpose, and furthermore because one of them can ...

OMNICHATTER FOR JUNE 11, 2013

It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane, it’s OMNICHATTER!

Javier Baez hits 4 homers in a game at High-A

This’ll help grease his path to the Friendly Confines, I reckon.

Angels designate Chris Nelson for assignment

Chris is on an eight-team pace for 2013.

Nelson, 27, appeared in seven games for the Halos but received just nine plate appearances, collecting three singles. The Angels were the third team for which the former No. 9 overall draft pick has played this season, as he also saw time with the Rockies and Yankees before being designated for assignment by each of those clubs as well.

Ruben Amaro: ‘There’s no blowing up’ the Phillies

Blow-Up: At the dazzle and madness of oldsters today!

CSNPhilly.com’s Jim Salisbury has a very wide-ranging interview today with Philadelphia Phillies GM Ruben Amaro Jr. which touches on pretty much every issue with his baseball 64 games into the season. Amaro admits that they simply haven’t gotten the production they expected to get out of their veterans, citing Ryan Howard’s very poor output (related) as well as injuries to Chase Utley and Carlos Ruiz.

RAJ admits that Ben Revere has ...

Japanese Team Expressed Interest In A-Rod During Offseason

A-Rodzilla?

Apparently there was a team interested in acquiring Alex Rodriguez during the offseason, prior to the Yankees disclosing his hip injury and long before the Biogenesis scandal.

Japan’s Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks contacted the Yankees “through an intermediary” in November to express an “interest in obtaining” A-Rod, according to the New York Times.

New York chose not to return serve due to Rodriguez’s injury, which likely would have ended talks right then and there, the ...

Braves face tough decision when Brandon Beachy returns

As David O’Brien notes in a column posted earlier today, the Braves could use the 26th-man rule that allows teams to temporarily add an extra player for double-headers. However, that would only temporarily address the issue of finding room for Beachy in the rotation. It’s a decision that has Fredi Gonzalez pacing.

The obvious solution is to nurse Beachy back along via the pen, though the dearth of lefties out there might indicate Paul Maholm as the better pen arm (Alex Wood ...

Rangers TV man Tom Grieve calls Blue Jays’ Jose Bautista a ‘crybaby’

Well, at least he didn’t call him Hatchet-Face.

Bautista looked at strike one, tried to check his swing but couldn’t on strike two then swung at strike 3 in the dirt. After he swung at strike three he had a few choice words for the home plate umpire. He then tossed his bat, helmet and elbow pad on the field in protest before leaving.

Once Bautista was thrown out, Grieve had this to say…

“You turn into a cry baby when you act like that. Go sit down and look at the pitch and then apologize to ...

Primer Dugout (and link of the day) 6-10-2013

Washington Times, June 10, 1913:

[Ty Cobb] stole third yesterday with [Donie] Bush already there ahead of him.
...
[Washington catcher] John Henry was so frightened at the deed that he stood transfixed. He simply couldn’t understand it, at all.

So Henry started on the hot foot for third. He was going to get either Bush or Cobb and didn’t care much which. Cobb scooted back toward second [and was safe]. Yes, Henry didn’t get either of those Tigers.

Unfortunately, it seems like this sort of thing ...

LeBreton: Fair play for baseball is at the root of the Tony Bosch case

In the summer of 1976, when I was a mere pup, covering the first of what would become 16 Olympic Games — nine summer, seven winter — I had my first brush with the effects of performance-enhancing substances.

I was shopping for souvenirs in the Olympic Village’s Adidas store, and I suddenly found myself surrounded by ... dudes. German dudes.

Only they weren’t really dudes at all, but rather, judging from their ID credentials and warmup suits, female swimmers from the GDR, East Germany. ...

WSJ: A Blast From Baseball’s Statistical Past

That would be GWRBI…which we always assumed stood for RBI’s given up by Gary Wheelock.

When most people think of the 1980s, they think of Smurfs and Members Only jackets. But of course, as baseball fans, we think of the game-winning RBI. Right?

OK, maybe not.

...On Friday night, when A’s third baseman Josh Donaldson practically beat the White Sox all by himself with a sixth-inning grand slam in a game that ended 4-3, he jumped into a tie with Reds second baseman Brandon Phillips for the 2013 ...

OMNICHATTER for 6-10-2013

I must have forgotten to submit one yesterday. My bad.

Yahoo: Johnny Vander Meer was Cincinnati Reds’ Can’t-Miss Prospect Who Nearly Failed

June 11th marks the 75th anniversary of the first no-hitter legendary Cincinnati Reds pitcher Johnny Vander Meer threw in 1938. His second no-hitter just four days later marked the only time that a major league pitcher has dealt back-to-back no-hitters in consecutive starts. The feat will likely never be matched and is virtually impossible to top, but as a can’t-miss prospect during his era, Vander Meer almost failed to realize his potential and make history.

Boston Globe: Cafardo: SUNDAY BASEBALL NOTES Four of MLB’s preseason favorites are duds

One of the great aberrations this year is that the Tigers have 15 losses in quality starts. Think about that. This is a team with one of the best offenses in baseball. As of Friday, they held a 2½-game lead over the Indians. If they had won, say, five of those games, they’d have a 7½-game lead. [...]

Gregg Clifton, a sports law attorney and longtime player agent, thinks that while Tony Bosch may have a credibility issue that will certainly be challenged in appeals by players who may ...

EyeOn Baseball (Dayn Perry): The top 25 most awesome names of the MLB draft, 2013

22. Harrison Musgrave (Phillies, 991st overall)
Sounds like: presidential historian, tenured Dartmouth professor, MSNBC contributor. Unfulfilled in his marriage, but there’s value in keeping up appearances.

This BaseballThinkFactory link is about baseball. And John Hughes films. And stuff.

Forbes: Are More Old Timers Days in Baseball’s Future?

For the first time since 1999, two baseball teams will be celebrating an Old-Timers Day (OTD). For the last 14 years, the Yankees alone have spent the time and money to the honor their elders.  This year, the Dodgers will be joining them, with a game to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Dodgers beating the Yankees in the 1963 World Series.  Their opponent will be a select group of old-timer Yankee vets.  [...]

Since then, Old-Timer games have withered away, with the last non-Yankee OTD ...

Boston Globe: Why do baseball games take so long?  Game times are up more than 30 minutes over 40 years ago, but little change seems to be coming

“I partly blame it on Velcro,” said Scully, now in his 63d year in the booth, referring to the advent of batting gloves and players’ tendency to adjust them unceasingly during at-bats. (While it’s unclear who was first to use them, Ken Harrelson is widely credited with popularizing them in the 1960s.)

“In the old days,” Scully said, “there was no nonsense, no fussing.” [...]

There is one thing that seems to have been effective, and could be effective again. Rewind to 2007, to ...

Piecoro: Arizona Diamondbacks pitcher Brandon McCarthy recovering from seizure

Right-hander Brandon McCarthy, who needed emergency surgery after being struck on the head by a line drive last season, suffered a seizure last week.

The Diamondbacks pitcher said Saturday he’s fine now and is hopeful it won’t push back his recovery from shoulder inflammation.

McCarthy was at a restaurant in north Phoenix with his wife, Amanda, on Monday night when the incident occurred.After he slumped over in a booth, Amanda climbed across, pushed the table away and called for help.