Nice try Devils.

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Via CBS -

Major League Baseball management has fired Shyam Das, the arbitrator who overturned Ryan Braun’s drug suspension in February.

MLB informed Das and the players’ association of its decision last week. Das had been baseball’s permanent arbitrator since 1999, part of what technically is a three-man panel that also includes a representative of management and labor.

“Shyam is the longest-tenured panel chair in our bargaining relationship,” union head Michael Weiner said. “For 13 years, from the beginning to the end of his tenure, he served the parties with professionalism and distinction.”

Baseball’s collective bargaining agreement says the arbitrator can be removed by the players’ association or management at any time with written notice.

“I had the distinct privilege to serve as chair of the MLB-MLBPA arbitration panel for almost 13 years,” Das wrote in an email to The Associated Press. “I have the greatest respect for the representatives of both parties I worked with during that period, and I wish the parties well in their ongoing relationship.”

MLB executive vice president Rob Manfred declined comment, spokesman Pat Courtney said.

The sides will now try to select a successor. If they cannot agree, baseball’s collective bargaining agreement calls for them to ask the American Arbitration Association for a list of “prominent, professional arbitrators.” The sides would then alternate striking names from the list until one remains.

A classic case of MLB taking its toys and going home?

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The vanilla Milton Bradley?

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He has not pitched in the major leagues since 2006.  But, he’s still kicking around in an Indy League at the age of 40 this season:

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How’s that for love of the game?

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The list -

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It must be tough to be a Pirates fan…

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The story here, via the AP/WFAN -

David Wright was ready to take one for the team. Terry Collins was not going to let that happen.

So the Mets manager pulled his star third baseman.

“In this game there are unwritten rules and one of the unwritten rules is you hit my guy, I’m hitting your guy. They’re not hitting my guy tonight,” Collins said following the Mets’ 8-0 loss to the Milwaukee Brewers on Tuesday night. “He said, ‘If somebody should be hit, I want it to be me.’ I said it’s not going to be you.”

Wright was set to lead off the bottom of the seventh. One problem: Reliever D.J. Carrasco had just hit NL MVP Ryan Braun a pitch after Rickie Weeks homered.

Carrasco was immediately ejected by plate umpire Gary Darling.

“I didn’t like it. I don’t understand it,” Brewers manager Ron Roenicke said.

Collins knew what might happen next and he pinch hit for Wright. The star slugger had two of the Mets’ five hits off Zack Greinke (4-1), a double and a broken-bat single in the fourth inning — a shard of wood whirling past the pitcher.

Wright and Collins had a heated discussion in the dugout over whether he would bat.

“Terry is the manager, and I’ve got all the respect in the world for Terry,” Wright said. “Whether I agree with it or disagree with it, I respect him. I love playing for him. I’ve got all the respect in the world for Terry specifically. You get caught up in the moment.”

Wright didn’t intend to become so animated, where others could see.

“I probably should have picked a better spot for it, but in the heat of the moment I got my stuff on and Terry kind of got me at a moment where I was upset with the situation and got me at a moment that I was pretty hot,” Wright said. “It wasn’t directed at Terry at all.”

Braun, who had a pink welt on his left triceps, understood both sides of the argument.

“I respect the fact that he wanted to stay in the game,” Braun said. “I don’t fault them for making that decision at all.”

Wright had an interesting response when asked about Carrasco’s beanball, and added he wasn’t surprised when the pitcher was ejected.

“I’m not sure why (Braun) got hit,” Wright said. “I don’t know. I’m not sure if you talked to D.J. yet, but I’m not sure what the purpose was behind that.”

I guess your opinion on this depends on what  you think of the player? 

I’m a Yankees fan.  If Joe Girardi did this with A-Rod, then I would probably say that he was babying Rodriguez.  But, if he did it with someone like Brett Gardner, with it being late in a blowout loss, then I would probably say that I was OK with it – him protecting the player.  Is that inconsistent?  Hey, I’m just being honest here.  Call it what you want…

In any event, it does send a message to the team, in a way.  Suppose, later in the season, the same thing happens – and, then, coming up to bat for the Mets is someone other than Wright…and Collins decides to let him bat and then he gets wacked with a pitch.  How do you think that Mets player is going to feel then…as loved and respected in Metsville as Wright?  I don’t think so…

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This was in the Chicago Sun Times about a month ago -

The roster of professional baseball players who either suffered or are still sidelined by oblique or core muscle strains suffered in spring training or early in the regular season could fill two starting lineups.

And the obliques, a broad, flat band of muscle that connects to the pelvis and helps to rotate the hips, have claimed some high-profile players including Tampa Bay Rays third baseman Evan Longoria, Milwaukee Brewers outfielder Corey Hart and San Francisco Giants closer Brian Wilson.

According to research by Stan Conte, head trainer for the Los Angeles Dodgers who had three players affected by the injury this spring, 14 players have gone on the disabled list with core or oblique injuries this season.

“One theory I have is that players are transferring more quickly from the offseason to spring training games and to more competitive regular-season games, and the muscles aren’t holding up to the increased strain and force the players are putting on them in competition,” Conte told The New York Times.

The oblique problems are not isolated to players swinging a bat. After all, Hart injured his oblique in a throwing drill.

Washington Nationals team physician Dr. Bruce Thomas of Melbourne, Fla., who also has worked with Olympic and collegiate athletes, attributes the injuries to several factors.

“You’re sure to see it early in the year quite a bit,” said Thomas . “You see it a lot too with guys coming off other injuries, they’re just resuming play. Cooler weather, a lot of times when guys go north we’ll see sort of a rash of obliques when they go from spring training … it’s quite a bit cooler.

“You’ve got a violent acceleration rotational force and the obliques on the one side will sort of help get that motion going. On the other side, you’re the brakes. What winds up happening almost universally the brakes get a little tear, or a little a strain, a pull, whatever you want to call it, a stretch.

“It happens with throwing and batting.”

What makes the injuries so vital in baseball is they involve the one area of the body a player must have in working order to function.

“Virtually everything you do on a baseball field involves trunk rotation,” Thomas said. “What’s happening is that’s where it initiates and where it stops. They (obliques) are sort of like the pulley system. They move the whole torso. I tell the guys right away: ‘No. 1 is it’s going to be a long time. No. 2, you’re not going to get much sympathy. It’s not like you have a cast on your arm. You’re walking around, you can do 90 percent of things just fine but the things you can’t do without pain are the things you need to do which is high-speed acceleration and de-acceleration of the rotation of your trunk.’ “

And while today’s baseball players arrive for spring training fit and believing they are ready to play, just the fact that they are in shape might be betraying them in the end.

“Guys are, in general, bigger and stronger and it’s just more force against the same old bony structure,” Thomas said. “So those muscles are going to peel off or pull in the mid portion of the muscle.”

Rehabilitating an oblique injury through rest, various forms of therapy such as ultrasound, ice and stimulation, and later strengthening, takes time and care since the consequences of coming back too soon can be costly.

“They’re generally pretty frustrating,” Thomas said. “I can think of some pitchers in the past with these early in the season and they didn’t really get them back for six, eight, 10 weeks. Sometimes it’s one of the things where more is not better and if you try to come back fast you wind up missing a lot more time.”

Jeff Tam, who appeared in 251 Major League games over six seasons as a right-handed pitcher, knows that first hand.

“If it’s not 100 percent healed, you’re going to do it again for sure,” said Tam, who suffered three oblique injuries while pitching for the New York Mets, Toronto Blue Jays and Oakland A’s.

Throw another rib on the barbie today.

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Looks like it’s more than just a game to Gibby. Via mlb –

The Dodgers are honoring legend Orel Hershiser on Tuesday night.

The team will be giving away bobbleheads in the likeness of the former Dodgers right-hander, and he will throw out the ceremonial first pitch.

Hershiser apparently asked D-backs manager Kirk Gibson, who was a teammate of Hershiser’s on the 1988 World Series-winning Dodgers, to catch the pitch.

Gibson, who hit the game-winning homer in Game 1 of the World Series, said he politely declined.

“I’m a Diamondback,” Gibson said. “I’m the manager of the team. I respect Orel tremendously. He knows that. It’s not disrespect towards him. If I was out of baseball I would have done it, but I’m in baseball and I’ve got different colors on tonight and tomorrow.”

The Dodgers will honor Gibson on July 31 with a Gibson bobblehead giveaway. The D-backs are scheduled to be in Los Angeles to play the Dodgers that night.

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Happy Mother’s Day!” to all the Moms out there today. (Holy cow! Where would we be without Mom?)

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Check out the attendance totals for the Yankees first 16 home games of 2011 and 2012.

Last season, they had zero games (out of 16) with under 40,000 attending. And, this season, they have seven games (out of 16) with under 40,000 attending – and six under 39,000.

Just the weather?

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A nice first date story:

Hey, it could have been worse…

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The New York Yankees are 17-14, so far, this season.

They are 11-2 in games started by CC Sabathia or Ivan Nova – and 6-12 in games started by anyone else.

Think they are happy that Andy Pettitte came back to pitch this year and makes his first appearance this Sunday?

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An interest take on the Phillies via MetsToday -

This Phillies team is very different from the one I remember from 2007-2011. If you are a loyal MetsToday reader you know I pay attention to body language. In the past, I saw Phillies players who had intensity from the first pitch of a game through the 27th out. On this evening, I saw faces that expressed resignation after falling behind — and indifference when they were ahead by three. It’s not something that can be measured; it can only be seen with the eyes and interpreted via years of experience watching athletes in competition. I’m not sure if it has something to do with the absences of Chase Utley and Ryan Howard, or if it’s a change in team culture, but I had no fear of these Phils coming back once the Mets went on top. Even the fiery Shane Victorino appeared to be going through the motions in his last at-bat, and Jimmy Rollins half-assed it down the line on his grounder to first base. Disappointing, as I do remember the days of Rollins tearing down the line as if it was the last time he ever would.

Overall, the Phillies look kind of like an aging AAA club, don’t they? Have to wonder how long they’re going to “tread water” waiting around for Utley and Howard to save them; it reminds me of the Mets in 2009, when they waited — and waited — for Jose Reyes and Carlos Beltran (among others) to get healthy.

Bottom line, the Phillies miss having Werth, Utley and Howard – the versions of them from a few years back. Throw in Rollins too. And, the bad news is, those guys are not coming back…again, the versions that they were three years ago.

The Phillies starting rotation is still solid. But, they need some bats. And, I don’t know how they’re going to get them at this point.

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Via the AP –

Major League Baseball is poised to pick off the much-maligned move, the fake-to-third, throw-to-first ploy that often succeeds only in getting the whole ballpark to shout “Balk!”

“I think they should get rid of it,” Yankees reliever Boone Logan said. “Us lefties can’t do that. If we do, they call a balk.”

“Besides, how often does it work? Maybe once in never,” he said.

The Playing Rules Committee has approved a proposal to make it a balk, too, with MLB executives and umpires in agreement. The players’ union vetoed the plan for this season to discuss it further. MLB is allowed to implement the change after a one-year wait — no telling whether that would happen if players strongly object.

Under the new wording, a pitcher could not fake to third unless he first stepped off the rubber.

I would do the opposite. In fact, if I were in charge of baseball, my first two moves would be:

1. Make all “checked” swings count as strikes. “Checked swing” is an oxymoron. It’s either a swing or a take. You start to swing, and it’s a swing, in my book.

2. Eliminate the balk call. Pitchers have to throw to first on a pick-off. If not, it’s a balk. But, they don’t have to throw to another base on a pick-off and it’s allowed by the rules. The whole thing with the balk is that they don’t want to allow the pitcher to deceive the runner. I ask: Why not? Why not allow the pitcher to do this? Pitchers are allowed to try and deceive the batter with varying the speed and break on their pitchers. Why are runners treated differently than batters?

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Not smoking the objective pipe on the stand.

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Here’s the list of batters to do this since 1973 -

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Welcome to the club, Derek.

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An instant classic.

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No, it has nothing to do with the infamous Brian Cashman “Objective Pipe.” Via the Post –

After an offseason in which Mark Teixeira talked about getting into better shape to become a more productive player, he has been off to an unproductive start.

Perhaps now he’s figured out why.

The Yankees first baseman visited a chest specialist at Columbia Presbyterian yesterday and was diagnosed with “severely inflamed bronchial airways” that have impacted his breathing.

“I was getting no air,” Teixeira said before the Yankees’ 4-1 loss to the Rays last night in The Bronx in which he went 0-for-4 with a strikeout to drop his average to .217. “I’ve never gotten over the cough I’ve had all year.”

Teixeira has begun taken prednisone, a non-anabolic steroid that is supposed to open his airways.

“The doctor said I was 100 percent healthy except for the airways,” Teixeira said. “But anything could irritate it.”

Teixeira said he isn’t sure what kind of impact it has made on his season, but figures it has had some effect.

“It hasn’t helped,” Teixeira said. “But everyone is fighting through something.”

I guess they don’t have a juice to fix this problem?

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When Josh Hamilton became the 16th major league player to hit four home runs in one game on May 8th against the Baltimore Orioles, he was wearing custom-designed Carbon Fiber® II Digital® Pro Franklin batting gloves – specially designed to protect the hamate bone in his wrist. They look like this (click on the image to enlarge it):

Batting gloves have come a long way. I remember when I used to play back in the late 70′s and early 80′s, I had to go to a golf pro shop to buy gloves to use for batting. That was the only place where you could get them. And, yes, I did the Thurman Munson thing of adjusting the glove on my left wrist when batting. Hey, I was young…

Today, as a Little League manager, I have to confess that the kids drive me nuts with their batting gloves. It seems like we’re always waiting for a kid to get his gloves on to hit, or for him to take them off when he reaches base, or for him to put them away before he heads to his position on the field. (We’re talking 8-year olds here.) More than once this season, I have yelled out to a kid “Com’on, stop fussing with the gloves. You don’t need batting gloves to hit. Hustle up!” And, they look at me like I am nuts.

I suppose, just like I had to do the Munson thing with my batting gloves back in the day, kids today see big leaguers today and feel like they need the gloves? And, when guys like Hamilton do what he did on Tuesday, wearing batting gloves, it’s easy to understand why they would feel that way.

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Justin Antweil shares the story on this milestone for Jeff Nettles.

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Via Boston.com -

Move over chicken and beer. Golf has been entered into the Red Sox mix.

According to a report by 98.5 The Sports Hub’s Hardy, Red Sox righthander Josh Beckett played golf in the area last Thursday afternoon, two days before he was scheduled to miss a start against the Orioles because of stiffness in his latissimus muscle.

The Sports Hub’s Michael Felger said the report had been confirmed when he opened the Felger and Mazz show today, but that Hardy did not reveal the name of the golf course to protect his sources. Clay Buchholz was reportedly golfing with Beckett on the off day for the Red Sox.

After Beckett’s 126-pitch effort last Sunday in Chicago, the Red Sox announced that Beckett’s next start would be skipped because the righthander admitted he had soreness in his lat muscle. He also admitted that the situation existed before his last start.

“I don’t know that I’m aware of it,” Red Sox manager Bobby Valentine said of the golf report during his weekly appearance on WEEI’s Big Show today. “I’m aware of the story being out there… No, I haven’t gotten to Josh about that yet and I’m trying to sort out my feelings. Golf is as much a part of the pitching culture as a curve ball, I know that for sure.

Valentine stressed that Beckett wasn’t shut down with an injury after his last start.

“When we decided for Josh not to make his start, it wasn’t because he was injured,” Valentine said. “It was a precautionary situation because his his lat was a little tight,”

Valentine said he needed to get specifics before he could comment on the situation.

I’m starting to wonder if this was the last day in the Red Sox 21st century revival?

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Before the start of the season, most people expected the Mets to be something like 10-20 right now.  But, they’re sitting at 17-13 and they have the 5th best record in the National League. Are Sandy Alderson and Terry Collins working some magic in Queens?

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Here’s Teixeira’s BA/OBA/SLG line from June 16, 2011 through May 8, 2012: .237/.308/.434 (in 459 AB).

Call me crazy, but, I suspect the Yankees were looking for a little more production from him than that…

Maybe he should just give up switch-hitting and only bat right-handed?  Could it be any worse than what he’s doing now?

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Some in Boston are really down on Kevin Youkilis.

Wasn’t it just three years ago that he was a fav in Fenway?

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The Boston Red Sox’ Will Middlebrooks has joined Enos Slaughter as the only players in the live-ball era with an extra-base hit in each of his first five career games.

They’ve seen this before in RSN.

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Here, “stressful save” means getting a save where you pitch no more than one inning and allow at least 3 baserunners during the outing.   The leaders in this, since 1918 -

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What, no Don Stanhouse?

Of course, this does not take into account the ratio of total saves versus the stressful ones…

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Since 1918 -

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Welcome to the club, Josh.

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Interesting stuff. 

Ignore the passion and emotion and just look at the WAR?

Then again, you can drive 80 MPH in a Lamborghini Reventón or you can drive 80 MPH in a Dodge Omni. It’s the same rate of speed in both. But, one is so much more fun than the other.

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On May 7th 1973, Ralph Miller, the last living 19th century ballplayer, died in Cincinnati at 100 years of age. He was the first former major leaguer to become a Centenarian.

We have no idea on whether or not he had a painting of himself, as a Centenarian, hanging in his bedroom.

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