Also in the linked article:

Shortstop Maranville, of the New Bedford club of the New England league, has been purchased by the Boston Nationals. He will report at the end of the New England league season.

A sneaky-good Birthday Team today. No Hall of Famers, but seven good position players. The pitching staff has a nice "Ball Four" flavor, too.

C: Orlando McFarlane
1B: Mark Grace
2B: Brandon Phillips
3B: Corey Koskie
SS: Chris Speier
LF: The Good Ken Williams
CF: Richard Hidalgo
RF/Manager: Don Baylor

SP: Al Downing
SP: Fred Talbot
SP: Mike Lynch
SP: Joe Cascarella
SP: Greg Keagle
RP: Joe Sambito
RP: Fred Gladding

Umpire: Ron Luciano
Extra OF/RP: Ron Mahay

A Cincinnati story about a player who somersaulted almost exactly 100 years to the day before Aroldis Chapman...

And that clever infielder grew up to become... Julio Franco.

There wasn't a lot of hoopla about it, but Chase Utley played his first game of the season last night. Home run, some really hard running ... not bad. I was actually surprised to see him on the field, since the team's cone of silence around his physical condition had led me to think an Albert Belle-esque scenario was a strong possibility.

Also Casey McGehee and Ty Wigginton look like two peas in a pod out there. Two slugs in a pea pod, I should say.

Also the ESPN GameDay thing has become insufferable since they added Twitter.

There wasn't a lot of hoopla about it, but Chase Utley played his first game of the season last night. Home run, some really hard running ... not bad. I was actually surprised to see him on the field, since the team's cone of silence around his physical condition had led me to think an Albert Belle-esque scenario was a strong possibility.

And Ryan Howard appears to be coming along nicely. A healthy Phillies team could make the last two months of the season very interesting in the NL East.

In case anyone hasn't seen it, here's a link to Mike Trout's Ridonculous Catch from yesterday.

Dodgers gave Puig 7/$42m? Um, wow.

#7 - Just watched that catch and came here to post it. If there's a better player in baseball than Trout, I don't know who it is.

If there's a better player in baseball than Trout, I don't know who it is.

There isn't in the AL, that's for sure. Cano has a .1 fWAR lead on Trout, and Cano played an extra month (21 games) this season. For BBRefWAR, he only trails Brett Lawrie, which is stupid. Maybe Votto in the NL, but I'm inclined to still pick Trout. And he is also the most exciting guy to watch IMO, with apologies to McCutchen and Harper.

For BBRefWAR, he only trails Brett Lawrie, which is stupid.

I just looked. 31 fielding runs!? In 71 games? According to PI, the record for a full season is 39. Lawrie is currently tied for 19th all time, in less than half a season!

I just looked. 31 fielding runs!? In 71 games? According to PI, the record for a full season is 39. Lawrie is currently tied for 19th all time, in less than half a season!

He shifts to the second base position in the shift which breaks the system.

This weird Brett Lawrie thing has been figured out. BB-ref uses this DRS statistic which doesn't take into account shifts. And Lawrie is a third baseman who keeps making plays in right field, because they keep shifting their infielders around. So DRS basically concludes that Lawrie and a couple other players (and Ben Zobrist) are ten times as fast as Usain Bolt.

Game of the day (yesterday): Royals 5, Rays 4. Kansas City's Everett Teaford worked a spotless first inning. Tampa's Matt Moore retired the first two Royals before serving up a first-pitch homer to Mike Moustakas in a matchup that will probably happen a decent number of times over the next 10 years or so. Billy Butler followed up with a double, but was stranded at second. Ben Zobrist got to Teaford for a one-out double in the second inning and moved to third on a balk, but Sean Rodriguez grounded back to the mound and Zobrist appears to have been caught too far off the base, getting thrown out 1-5-2 to defuse the rally.

Moore worked a perfect second, and Teaford allowed a leadoff hit in the third but no further damage. The bottom of the third featured a leadoff home by Alcides Escobar, doubling the Royals' lead. Teaford shut down the Rays again in the fourth; Moore allowed a pair of one-out singles to Jeff Francoeur and Eric Hosmer before inducing a double play to end the inning. Teaford decided to give Moore the sincerest form of flattery, putting two runners on with a walk and a single in the fifth before a double play and a groundout retired the side.

Kansas City extended its lead once more in the fifth. Jason Bourgeois led off with a walk, and Escobar doubled, putting two runners in scoring position with nobody out. One out later, both runners scored on Yuniesky Betancourt's single. Now with a four-run lead, Teaford walked BJ Upton and gave up a single to Carlos Pena to start the sixth, and was quickly pulled in favor of Kelvin Herrera. Keppinger greeted the new pitcher with an RBI single, and after Brooks Conrad hit into a double play, Ben Zobrist singled Pena home with Tampa's second run of the inning.

Moore worked around a double in the sixth, and Greg Holland entered to work the seventh for the Royals. A double and steal by Desmond Jennings and a walk to Jose Molina put the tying runs on the corners with one out, but Holland fanned Elliot Johnson and Upton to end the threat. A double play ball helped keep Kansas City off the board in the seventh, and Tim Collins stepped to the mound in the eighth. Pena grounded to first to start the inning, but Hosmer didn't field the ball cleanly, allowing his counterpart to reach base, and Keppinger walked to put a second runner on. After Conrad struck out, Zobrist lined the ball up the right field line. Both runners came around to score, and Zobrist motored to third with a game-tying two-run triple. Will Rhymes grounded to second, and Zobrist broke for home and was thrown out; Jennings followed that with a single that would have driven in a runner had one been at third, and Hideki Matsui struck out to end the inning.

Moore retired Moustakas to start the eighth, and was then removed in favor of Burke Badenhop. Billy Butler promptly took Badenhop's fourth pitch over the left center field wall to break the short-lived tie. Badenhop and Jake McGee shut the Royals down for the rest of the inning, but Jonathan Broxton did the same to the Rays in the ninth.

The game centered very much around one player, and in an odd way. Ben Zobrist drove in three of the four Tampa runs in the game, but he was also thrown out twice between third and home in a game the Rays lost by one run. Zobrist giveth, and Zobrist taketh away.

Game of the day (last year): Angels 4, Nats 3 (10). Ervin Santana worked a scoreless first for the Angels, allowing only a two-out hit by Ryan Zimmerman. Washington's John Lannan, meanwhile, allowed a pair of singles to start the bottom of the inning, but retired the next three hitters without either runner advancing. Mike Morse started the scoring, leading off the top of the second with a home run; after that, the next 12 hitters managed one hit, and Mark Trumbo's single in the bottom of the second was immediately erased on a double play ball.

Zimmerman added a leadoff homer of his own in the fourth, and Morse doubled with one out but was left at second. The bottom of the fourth had everything coming in pairs: Bobby Abreu and Vernon Wells started it with singles, then Howie Kendrick and Trumbo flied out, and then Alberto Callaspo and Peter Bourjos both singled in runs to tie the game, with Callaspo ending the inning by being thrown out at third on Bourjos's hit.

Santana allowed only a single to Ian Desmond in the fifth. In the bottom of the inning, Lannan was about as eventful as possible without giving up a fair ball for most of the frame: he walked Bobby Wilson, who was thrown out trying to steal second, and then struck out Maicer Izturis. Erick Aybar was then hit by a pitch and stole second, and Abreu walked behind him. Vernon Wells ended both the fun and the inning by grounding out to second. Santana pitched a 1-2-3 sixth, and Lannan did nothing of the sort. A leadoff hit by Kendrick was erased on a Trumbo double play ball, but then consecutive hits from Callaspo, Bourjos, and Wilson scored the go-ahead run for the Angels, and Lannan was lifted in favor of Ryan Mattheus. Mattheus walked Izturis to load the bases, then got Aybar to line out on a full count to leave them loaded.

Santana continued to shut down the Nats in the seventh, despite hitting one batter and walking another. Mattheus allowed a single, a steal, and a walk before being replaced with two outs by Henry Rodriguez, who induced an inning-ending groundout. Santana was perfect in the eighth, and Rodriguez allowed a leadoff hit before retiring three consecutive Angels in the bottom of the inning.

That brought up the ninth inning, and since it was the ninth inning and the team was up by one, Santana was pulled for closer Jordan Walden, despite the fact that he had only 93 pitches and hadn't allowed a hit since the fifth. Walden recorded the inning's first two outs in routine fashion, which brought Danny Espinosa to the plate. And one pitch later, the ball had been launched over the right field fence and the game was tied. Rodriguez pitched another inning, working around a leadoff walk to bring his total for the day to 2.1 on 28 pitches and send the game into extras.

Scott Downs pitched the tenth for the Angels, and despite a leadoff ROE from Brian Bixler, kept the Washington off the scoreboard. Sean Burnett pitched the bottom, and after a foulout to start off, allowed a single to Callaspo and a ground-rule double to Bourjos. Wilson was intentionally walked to load the bases, and Izturis made that look appropriately stupid by singling up the middle to bring home the winning run.

Washington scored 3 runs on 3 solo homers; they had only 6 hits on the day, but totalled 16 total bases. The Angels, meanwhile, had 16 hits on the day, good for all of 17 total bases. The disparity in hits combined with the similarity in total bases has to be at least unusual, right?

In case anyone hasn't seen it, here's a link to Mike Trout's Ridonculous Catch from yesterday.

My favorite part is how impressed Trout is with his own catch. And I am not criticizing him for it! He seems delighted that he's able to do things like that.