Detroit Tigers Links buys the Farm

Buck Farmer to the rescue

Daniel Norris and Jordan Zimmerman both landed on the DL this week meaning the starting rotation is now held together by duct tape and toothpicks. The Tigers recalled Buck Farmer for some patch work only to send him back down and will probably consider starting Shane Greene as well.

I'm not for giving away the little that remains in the farm system, but the Tigers have been rumored to be investigating some additional pitching help as well.

Cleveland Counter:

0 and 11.

Murica's pastime

Great touch by the league to host a game at Fort Bragg on Fourth of July. SB Nation has a great write up on the event:

The idea to host a game at Fort Bragg cropped up some time last summer as MLB officials were discussing non-traditional locations to host a game. They had gone outside the United States several times in recent years. Someone suggested doing something associated with the military, and Fort Bragg was quickly brought up.

Fort Bragg is enormous. It's the largest military base in the United States and perhaps the world, with a population of nearly 250,000 of which more than 53,000 are active military. It also hosts some of the United States military's most prestigious rapid response teams, from the storied 82nd Airborne Division, to Special Forces and Delta Force.

I'm all for exploring venues in other countries to grow the game but if this doesn't become an annual tradition I will be pretty disappointed.

The Dark Fright

Matt Harvey is having a nightmare of a year and after another poor start Monday, the Mets seem are out of answers. Harvey is sporting a 5 ERA, the lowest K/9 of his career and has hard hit balls all over the park. Harvey casually stated, "It's mostly a mechanical thing." I'm not sure if that is supposed to be a comforting response but Amazin Avenue delivers a number of gifs of the altered pitch motion:

While Harvey's velocity has remained static, he has developed a cupped wrist when delivering his pitches that has betrayed his location ability.

Go big and then go home

The winners of the winter are often the losers in July. The Arizona Diamondbacks followed in the San Diego Padres footsteps by making big free agent splashes during the winter meetings only to flame out half way through the season. Other prime examples are the Jeff Loria bate and switch with the Marlins and the Blue Jays failed attempt in 2013.

Those sneaky Sox

Boston was banned from signing any international players and instantly lost 5 signings to free agency after it was discovered that they were circumventing the signing bonus rules.

Boston was limited last year to spending a maximum of $300,000 on international prospects after exceeding its spending limit the year before by spending $62 million on Cuban prospect Yoan Moncada. The Red Sox skirted the $300,000 threshold by packaging highly regarded prospects with lesser ones, paying both similarly and allowing the players' agent to give the lion's share of the money to the better prospect, according to the source.

That's ... that's pretty blatant cheating. How is that only a year suspension? Also why wasn't Dombrowski doing any of that with the Tigers?

I was all set to make fun of this

Someone actually wrote an article called "An ode to the intentional walk." Needless to say I was teeing up on it when I came across this.

Long-time MLB manager Jim Leyland, now a special assistant with the Detroit Tigers, agrees.

"I'm all for it,'' Leyland said. "Put up four [fingers] and tell the guy to go to first. Every blue moon one gets by the catcher, but I'd like to see us put this through. Keep the pace of the game going. To me, it's a no-brainer.''

Intentional walks forever.

Baseball is awesome.