Kuzul

The kid was something special, all right. But the story of how Clayton Kershaw, a skinny stick-figured high schooler, landed with the Los Angeles Dodgers 10 years ago as the seventh overall pick in the draft?

The astounding true fact that five pitchers—count ’em—were drafted ahead of him?

Oh, that story is every bit as dramatic as Kershaw’s current, majestic strikeout-to-walk ratio of 109:6.

That story involves (deep breath) Luke Hochevar, the Las Vegas school system, Jordan Walden, Kershaw’s mediocre performance in a state playoff game, subterfuge, Tommy Lasorda, a grand slam in the Seattle Mariners farm system years before and, even, a likely case of racial profiling. (Exhale.)

“I remember it like it was yesterday,” says Logan White, then the Dodgers’ scouting director, now the San Diego Padres’ director of player personnel.

“I remember in the draft room that day, there being some uneasiness in not knowing who was going to be picked ahead of you,” says Ned Colletti, then the Dodgers’ general manager, now a senior adviser to that club’s president and CEO.

“I just tried to throw as hard as I could and let them see it,” says Kershaw of the days leading up to the 2006 draft.

Calvin Jones was Los Angeles-born and, at the professional level, Seattle-bred. The Seattle Mariners had made Jones the first overall pick in the January phase of the amateur draft in 1984, back when the major leagues conducted two drafts a year, in January and June.

Jones played at Double-A Vermont with Ken Griffey Jr. in 1988 and then rejoined him in Seattle in 1991 and 1992. Jones’ major league career was brief: After 65 games with the Mariners over those two seasons, he bounced around the minors for the next four summers and then wound up pitching in Mexico and the independent Atlantic League before his playing days finished in 2002, at 38.

But the reason he was in position to become Los Angeles’ first man in on Kershaw went back more than a decade earlier.

“I was a closer, and he was a starter in the Mariners’ organization,” White says. “I came in in relief one night for him with the bases loaded, and I gave up a grand slam. Three of the earned runs went to him.

“I kid him to this day: The only good thing about that outing is that I hired you.”

The Dodgers hired Jones in 2003 to scout both professionals and amateurs. He was living in Las Vegas at the time.

“Logan asked me, would I be willing to move to Texas?” Jones says. “At the time, I didn’t like the Las Vegas schools. I did some research and got back to him and said, ‘Oh, I’ll take Texas.’ It was the best thing for me. Today, my daughter runs track at [the University of] Oklahoma. I have a son at the University of Arkansas…”

When Jones moved to Dallas, Kershaw’s hometown, the young pitcher wasn’t exactly a household name. Not yet.

“The funny thing was, going into that year, the guy in that area who was the most hyped-up guy was Jordan Walden,” White says of the longtime reliever now on the disabled list in St. Louis. “Nowadays, you have blogs and the internet [so word about others spreads quickly]. But at the time, Walden was the guy.

“Kershaw came out throwing well that spring. I saw him early with Calvin. Tim Hallgren (then the Dodgers’ national crosschecker—the point man responsible for comparing and contrasting reports from the organization’s area scouts) saw him. We were going in to see Walden, and of course Clayton was in the mix, so we go in and then you think the lefty is pretty special.”

Special enough that the Dodgers identified him early as a premium player. White made sure his team had someone there scouting every one of Kershaw’s outings that spring. The lefty was coming on strong. Texas A&M offered a full scholarship but, as the Dodgers got to know Kershaw, their read was he was solely focused on pro ball.

Especially as he lit up both radar guns and opposing lineups.

“Funny thing going into [his senior] year, I think Clayton would tell you he probably wasn’t expecting to go in the first round,” White says.

Says Kershaw: “I don’t remember what I was thinking in the fall. But if you had told me I’d have been drafted in the first round, I’d probably have been a little surprised, for sure.”

Part of it was that Kershaw didn’t become dominant until his senior season of high school, as both his fastball and curveball developed at warp-speed rates. When the season started, Baseball America ranked him as only the 34th high school player in the nation.

Part of it was that, come draft time, major league clubs generally favor college pitchers over high school pitchers because the college kids are viewed as being closer to major league ready.

That is largely why the five pitchers taken before Kershaw in the ’06 draft were all college-aged: Hochevar (No. 1 overall by Kansas City, from the University of Tennessee), Greg Reynolds (No. 2, Colorado, from Stanford), Brad Lincoln (No. 4, Pittsburgh, from University of Houston), Brandon Morrow (No. 5, Seattle, from Cal) and Andrew Miller (No. 6, Detroit, University of North Carolina).

At the time, the Dodgers still owned the rights to Hochevar. They had drafted him in the supplemental round of the 2005 draft, No. 40 overall, but could not agree to terms. Unsigned, the Dodgers would lose their rights to Hochevar with the ’06 draft, which, at one time, was viewed as a Los Angeles fumble.

Not today.

“Hochevar re-entering the draft turned out to be a blessing for us because it increased the number of high-quality arms that might have been drafted ahead of Clayton,” Colletti says.

Privately that spring, the Dodgers were becoming more excited each time they watched him pitch.

Publicly, they kept a low profile and a poker face.

“I can honestly tell you there was never a thought process in which he wasn’t our guy, since early in the spring,” White says. “The first time I saw him, that’s the guy. He honestly was the best guy I saw all spring. We liked other guys—Lincoln, those guys, too. But our main focus that whole year was on Kershaw.

“And I knew, having done this for a while, that high school pitchers fall in the draft. The sentiment is that everybody likes a high school pitcher during the spring, but when they get into the room with the GM and everyone, the thinking starts going that the high school pitcher might not make it or that he might be too far away.

“The reality is that a high school pitcher can look great, but not go one or two or three. He might fall. That’s what happened with Clayton.”

The Dodgers’ strategy was to stay quiet and lurk in the shadows.

“Some guys contacted him early and stayed on him,” Jones says. “I didn’t contact him until closer to the draft. I didn’t call him and stay on him because I didn’t want to alert other teams that we were on him high.”

That is why, in the final days and hours leading up to the draft, the Dodgers’ interest took Kershaw by surprise.

“Wow, I didn’t talk to you much,” Kershaw told Jones. “I hadn’t heard from you guys.”

“Yeah,” Jones told him. “I didn’t want to alert the other teams I was high on you.”

Kershaw appreciated the less aggressive approach.

“He came to our house and talked to my mom and I and just said, ‘We’re interested,'” Kershaw tells Bleacher Report. “It was kind of the least formal of all the teams we talked to, which I thought was great.

“All the other teams have all their tests and all their stuff, which I think is pretty stupid. He just got to know us and hang out. Trying to get to know you as a person instead of trying to figure it all out on a piece of paper.”

The day Jones visited, Kershaw’s mother told him she had something she thought he would get a kick out of. She disappeared into another room and returned with a large photo of Kershaw playing youth baseball for a team called, yes, the Dodgers, in full uniform.

Already smitten, Jones swooned even more. This is meant to be, he thought.

Because of the pointedly subtle strategy, the Dodgers had to find other ways to get to know Kershaw. That wasn’t easy for Jones, being that he had just moved to the area and was living in an extended-stay hotel with his wife, three kids and dog at the time while waiting for construction to finish on his house.

A one-car family then, just getting his kids to and from school while bird-dogging Kershaw alone probably would make for a riveting HBO series.

“I said, ‘I’ve got to know something about this kid,'” Jones says. “So one night about 5 or 6, twilight, I started walking through his neighborhood in Highland Park.

“I ended up talking with one of his neighbors up the street.”

“Oh, yeah, the kid who plays baseball?” the neighbor told Jones. “Great kid. His mom is a really good person. He’s a ‘Yes sir,’ ‘No sir’ type of guy. He was a Cub Scout. Really good kid. I’ve never heard anything bad about him.”

Another guy was standing with the neighbor, and after they chatted, Jones continued his walk in the neighborhood…until a police car pulled up, asked for his identification and wanted to know what he was doing.

“I called my buddy later that night, another black guy, and asked him about it,” Jones says, now chuckling at the memory. “He said, ‘Really? You went walking through Highland Park? Where President George W. Bush lives? Really?’ I didn’t know that. He goes, ‘Yeah, Bush lives there.’ It was crazy. It was funny at the time.

“A black guy walking through the neighborhood with a Dodgers hat on? I didn’t know nothing about Highland Park. I just figured it was [Kershaw’s] neighborhood.”

Jones explained to the policeman that he was a Dodgers scout, produced a California ID (at least it matched his cap) and went on his way.

Meanwhile, some of the clubs picking ahead of the Dodgers were doing less outside legwork and spending more time in Kershaw’s home.

Not that Clayton and his mother were impressed.

“I remember the Pirates and even the Rangers [who picked 12th overall], they had a bunch of tests I had to take that I think I even failed at times,” Kershaw says. “It was like personality. It was a bunch of tests that, honestly, were pretty stupid.

“I don’t know. They were trying to figure it out, but the best way to do it is just to talk to you. The Dodgers did well; they just tried to figure it out. Which I thought was great.”

Says Jones: “You gotta know the human side of him rather than what a piece of paper could tell you about.”

With the draft now looming and Kershaw’s curveball crackling, every one of his Highland Park High School starts was a big draw. Jones estimates there were at least 25 major league scouts and executives at each one.

“They were like, ‘Man, this is the best high school arm we’ve ever seen,'” Jones says. “We were all in agreement.”

From the mound, as he stared in to each hitter, the 18-year-old kid clearly could see the cluster of men behind the screen who would decide his future.

“I don’t know if you really think about all that,” Kershaw says today. “I put a lot of pressure on myself to pitch well. I obviously wanted to get drafted, so I just tried to pitch well for the guys who showed up.”

One day, Highland Park mercy-ruled an opponent, and Kershaw struck out every single hitter in the five-inning game.

“He had pulled an oblique muscle before the playoffs,” Jones says. “I was like, ‘Oh man, he’s not going to be able to snap off curveballs.’ So he struck out every batter throwing all fastballs.

“Logan turned to me and said, ‘C.J., you ever done that?’ ‘No, never. I’ve never seen it.’ Then the next at-bat he hits a home run. And I’m saying, ‘Aw man, I’m not going to get him now!'”

But Kershaw was not invincible. In what the Dodgers thought was a pivotal moment for them that spring, Kershaw served up a first-inning home run in a state playoff game in Frisco, Texas, and, for one day, as his rivals chanted “overrated!” from their dugout, he looked mortal.

“Myself and Travis McCourt, Frank’s son, went in to see him,” White says of the Dodgers’ owner’s son at the time. “Travis wasn’t evaluating, but Frank wanted him to learn the business. Everything that everyone does.

“So we go in and the first kid of the game actually hit a home run off of Clayton, and he was just a little wild that day. He was scattered with his command. His breaking ball was just OK. But he battled, ended up winning 8-2 or 8-3, and I was probably one of the happiest guys in the ballpark that Clayton struggled.

“Because at the time I was thinking we might not get a chance to get the guy. But with him having an outing that was good, but subpar for him, I think it helped seal some of the teams’ decisions in front of us.”

Jones recalls being dejected that day, if fleetingly.

“Logan said, ‘You can’t be worried about yourself, Calvin! Don’t be mad. This might knock some people off of him,” Jones says. “I laughed and told him, ‘I’m not worried about myself.'”

Kershaw? Competitive as he is, even today he looks back on that game and will not admit being off.

“I didn’t think I pitched that bad,” he says. “We won and got to go on.”

As decision day approached, the Dodgers had a few other thoughts, even if none of them were as serious as Kershaw.

They liked pitcher Bryan Morris but ascertained he probably would still be around for their 26th pick in the first round (he was, and he is still pitching today for the Miami Marlins, though he’s currently on the disabled list with a sore back).

They liked Clemson University outfielder Tyler Colvin, who eventually fell to the Cubs, who picked 13th.

“Tim Lincecum was a thought,” says White of the University of Washington right-hander whom San Francisco picked three slots after Kershaw (and right before Arizona selected right-hander Max Scherzer with the 11th pick in a draft memorable for aces). “I don’t know if that was a reality.

“I’d love to tell you if we didn’t take Kershaw we would have taken Lincecum. I would love to tell you that. But it was more Kershaw, Morris, Colvin.”

More and more as draft day approached, with that seventh overall pick, it was Kershaw, Kershaw, Kershaw.

“I put a lot of value in conversations,” says Colletti, who had been named Dodgers GM less than a year earlier, on Nov. 16, 2005. “And [in] my conversations with Logan and Calvin, they were so strong on him. Especially Calvin.

“I didn’t know Calvin as well as I would know him in later years—or Logan for that matter—but I could tell the conviction they had for Clayton Kershaw was about as strong as I’d heard on anybody. That helped push me to think that this certainly was the right player for us to pick.”

Colletti saw Kershaw two or three times in person that spring as well and emerged thinking the young lefty would not be a long-term minor league project.

“Best player on the field,” Colletti says. “Same delivery really. There were different parts to the delivery, and I was curious about that—how that would play long term. But he was as dominating then as he is now.”

In Los Angeles for meetings the week of the draft, Jones made his pitch to all who would listen, including a certain Dodgers Hall of Famer.

“What makes you think we should take your guy over the others?” Tommy Lasorda (then a special adviser with the team) demanded. “This is one of the highest draft picks the Dodgers have ever had.”

“Well, Tommy,” Jones said. “I’ve played with and seen the best. I played with Randy Johnson. I’ve seen Nolan Ryan. I’ve seen Roger Clemens. I’ve seen Greg Maddux. I’ve played with or against all of these guys. And Tommy, this is the best arm I’ve ever seen.'”

“You really think so?”

“Yeah. He has a major league curveball right now.”

On draft day, the Dodgers knew the Detroit Tigers, picking immediately before them, were a threat to take Kershaw. But once the Royals picked Hochevar No. 1 overall, that caused Andrew Miller to tumble down a bit. The Tigers took him at No. 6.

“Logan called right before the draft started,” says Kershaw, who watched on his computer that day (the draft was not yet on television). “He said, ‘If you’re around at the seventh pick, we’re going to take you. It’s not a sure thing, but we think we’re going to take you.’

“It was a cool feeling.”

Says Jones: “I just kept thinking about that picture of him as a boy in a Dodgers uniform. It was giant-sized. I left the house that day and said this sounds like a storybook ending. No way this is going to happen.

“I stuck with him—went to see his last game. He played first base that day, and they lost. I’m watching him walk back toward the bus with his head down; he was by himself. I said, ‘You know what, this is probably the last chance I’ll ever get to talk with him.’

“So I ran up and said, ‘Clayton, I’ve seen a lot of guys play, I’ve scouted a lot of guys, but you’re the best I’ve ever seen. The best stuff I’ve ever seen.’ He said, ‘You think so, Mr. Jones?’ I said, ‘Oh yeah, you’re the best I’ve ever seen. The draft is Tuesday. I probably won’t get you, but if I do, it’ll be the best thing I ever get out of scouting.’ He said, ‘You think so? I read up on the Dodgers, and it seems like you have a really good organization.'”

All that was left was the sweating. The first five picks went down. Then came Detroit, in the midst of a surprising ’06 season that would end with the Tigers storming all the way to the World Series.

“It’s getting close, and I’m going, ‘C’mon, Detroit, draft Andrew Miller! I will root for you in the playoffs!'” Jones says.

The Tigers picked Miller.

That night, his first official night as a Dodger, Kershaw celebrated.

“We went over to my girlfriend’s house—my wife now,” he says of Ellen. “We had a lot of people over there and hung out. Had a party.”

Within a week, Jones was flying to Los Angeles with Kershaw and his mother, Marianne, so Clayton could sign his first major league contract: A $2.3 million signing bonus.

“We get to stadium, and they had life-size pictures of Orel Hershiser and others,” Jones says. “And Clayton says, ‘Wow! Look at that!’

“I go, ‘What are you marveling at? Your picture is going to be up there one day.’ ‘You think so? I hope so, this is great.’

“I said, ‘Get used to L.A., because you’re going to be here for a while.’ I was so happy. His mom is such a great lady, and he was such a great kid.

“It couldn’t happen to better people.”

Colletti vividly remembers meeting Kershaw and his mother in a suite on the first base side of Dodger Stadium that day.

“He was like a young colt,” Colletti says. “We were thrilled to have him. He was quiet, observant, and he had this young colt look to him that he was gonna be a thoroughbred at some point in time.”

A decade later, a thoroughbred for the ages has emerged. Kershaw has won three Cy Young Awards, been to five All-Star Games and is on track to do both again this summer. He remains the Dodgers’ best hope to win their first World Series since 1988 as he’s regularly compared with Hall of Famer Sandy Koufax. The two have become good friends.

Jones left scouting for a construction venture a couple of years ago—a career that is more family-friendly and financially puts him in better position to pay for his kids’ college tuition. But he misses the baseball life and figures he will return to scouting one day soon. Memories of the spring of 2006 only whet his appetite.

“That was one of my best years in scouting,” he says. “You know how you have a Christmas list as a kid and you want a Big Wheel, Rock ’em Sock ’em Robots, an electric football set? My thing back then was I wanted the Big Wheel, and I wanted it bad.

“Clayton was my Big Wheel. I didn’t care about any Rock ’em Sock ’em Robots.”

Scott Miller covers Major League Baseball as a national columnist for Bleacher Report.

Follow Scott on Twitter and talk baseball.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

Floating like a butterfly and stinging like a bee, not a bad way to go through life….

1. Mariners Paddle Along with Healthy Cano

Robinson Cano, or, as Derek Jeter always teased him, Robinson Canoe, always did have two things: a great smile and a beautiful swing.

Except, uh, last year, when both disappeared. And Canoe, er, Cano, was left up a creek without a paddle.

And so, too, were the Seattle Mariners.

“He makes a difference,” says Seattle slugger Nelson Cruz, who knows.

Though the Mariners were swept in Texas over the weekend to drop three games back in the AL West and are going through a tough time right now with ace Felix Hernandez on the disabled list, Seattle nevertheless looks like it has staying power in the division this year.

And that’s because Cano again is able to turn on inside fastballs, which helps the Mariners to turn on their division rivals. Before going 0-for-4 Monday, he had reached base in 34 consecutive games. He also ranked second in the majors (behind Boston’s David Ortiz) with 48 RBI.

“Man, it feels good,” Cano says. “It feels really, really good.”

This time last summer, Cano had just been diagnosed with strained abdominal muscles. He kept it quiet, even though the injury stripped him of much of his power because he was all upper body in the batter’s box. He had to cheat on pitches: start his swing early when he guessed fastball, because no way was his bat quick enough to get around on even mediocre fastballs.

As it turned out, he had a double hernia. He headed straight for surgery when the season ended.

He doesn’t remember it happening on one play in particular.

He just woke up one morning and there was pain.

“It’s a big difference now,” says Cano, who is back to elite form with 16 homers, 48 RBI and a slash line of .284/.343/.560. “Last year, I had to figure out how to play with it.

“Now, I can look at each pitch” and, if it is a fat one, he can let it rip with the bat.

So much for the whispers that his skills had deteriorated, that he no longer was close to the same player he was with the Yankees.

“People always talk,” Cano says. “People are always going to talk. You have to not pay attention. I’m human, I’m not going to be perfect all the time.

“Coming from New York, I definitely heard all kinds of stuff there, and it was like, whatever. I see it happen with a lot of players. I see A-Rod getting booed.”

Mariners hitting coach, and legendary designated hitter Edgar Martinez, says Cano’s health is the biggest difference this summer.

“It’s tough to play like that,” Martinez says. “He played through it for a long time last year. That can be pretty hard.

“This game demands that you move and run.”

Martinez continues to work extensively with Cano early in the afternoons, before batting practice, particularly with a batting tee. Cano’s go-to drill is swinging through the ball on the tee with one hand, primarily his bottom (right) hand, and drilling the baseball to the middle of the field.

That Cano now can push off of his back leg, using it to help power his swing, is no small thing, either. Last year, the abdominal strain/double hernia did not allow him to use his legs—especially his back leg.

As a result, he was forced to rely too much on his front hip, which kept him off balance too frequently.

The biggest difference this year?

“I’m having fun, not just because I’m healthy, but because we’re winning,” he says. “That’s why it’s a different story. The way we’re playing as a team makes it fun.”

And the biggest difference between last year and this for the Mariners?

“Oooh, I’d say everything,” Cano says. “We’ve got a lot of new players. The coaches have been real good, guys like Manny Acta (third-base coach), Casey Candaele (first-base coach), Stot (Mel Stottlemyre Jr., pitching coach) and Mike Hampton (bullpen coach).

“It started in spring training, everyone getting to know each other. We had 60 guys, and 40 new ones.”

Indeed, new general manager Jerry Dipoto kept the turnstiles spinning over the winter, taking a wrecking ball to Seattle’s roster. Most important, he rebuilt a bullpen that now ranks third among American League relief corps with a 2.89 ERA. Last year, the Mariners ranked 12th among AL bullpens with a 4.15 ERA.

Put all of that together with Cano, and the seas are wide open for the Mariners.

2. Padres Owner Channels His Inner Ray Kroc

With only Minnesota, Cincinnati and Atlanta producing worse records than his San Diego Padres in the season’s first two months, owner Ron Fowler had seen enough last week.

So in an appearance on the team’s flagship radio station, Mighty 1090, Fowler called his team “miserable failures,” noted that the club’s performance in 2016 has been “embarrassing” and even name-checked the late, former owner of the Padres, Ray Kroc.

“The performance by our team [in last Tuesday’s 16-4 loss at Seattle], I can understand how Kroc would have grabbed the microphone,” Fowler said. “It’s that frustrating.”

Kroc famously stormed into the press box in the middle of the eighth inning on Opening Day 1974, seized the public-address microphone and announced to a stunned crowd in old San Diego Stadium, “Ladies and gentleman, I suffer with you.”

He continued, eventually sputtering: “I have never seen such stupid ballplaying in my life.”

As he spoke, a streaker ran onto the field (hey, it was 1974).

The day after Fowler’s diatribe, the Padres blew a 12-2 lead over Seattle and lost, 16-13, the largest blown-lead loss in club history.

Two days later, the Padres shipped disappointing starter James Shields to the Chicago White Sox, with the Sox agreeing to pay $27 million. San Diego is responsible for roughly $31 million (Shields is owed roughly $58 million through 2018, unless he uses his opt-out clause after this season).

The Padres also, according to Bleacher Report sources, have indicated to rival teams that they would like to move Matt Kemp (owed roughly $100 million through 2019), Melvin Upton Jr. (owed roughly $27 million through 2017) and Derek Norris (arbitration-eligible again this winter), among others.

Recent events have left the Padres players shell-shocked. When B/R asked Kemp point-blank whether he wants to stay in San Diego or move on, he said he wants to play for a winner and does not want to go through a rebuilding process.

“It would be tough,” Kemp said of going through a rebuilding process. “I want to win. I’m used to winning.”

Of course, despite his 14 home runs, there is little interest in him, B/R sources say. The Padres are hoping an American League team with a need for a DH eventually turns up. Lord knows, watching Kemp’s defense deteriorate at an alarming rate over the past two seasons, the club is going to be hard-pressed to find an NL taker for him.

The good news for San Diego baseball fans is that, after the end of the John Moores era as owner and following the brief term of Jeff Moorad, both of whom left the franchise broken and battered, the new ownership group cares passionately about putting a winner on the field.

The bad news is the shortcut it tried last year backfired, and now the Friars appear to have miles to go (and many prayers to say) before fielding a winner.

Lourdes, anyone?

3. Chicago’s South-Side Addition

It’s easy to see why the White Sox moved so quickly to acquire James Shields.

Robin Ventura’s team started 23-10 this season, but then lost 18 of its next 24 games through the weekend, when the Sox acquired Shields.

To that point, the Sox had spent 47 days in first place. But now, into this week, they were tied for third, 3.5 games behind Cleveland in the AL Central.

Chris Sale is a Cy Young candidate, Jose Quintana is solid and Carlos Rodon has star potential, but Mat Latos quickly went south (that wasn’t hard to predict) and Chicago needed a boost.

How much Shields has left is the question: He has thrown 200 or more innings for nine consecutive seasons, and his ERA before getting blasted in Seattle last week was 3.06. He actually was not among San Diego’s chief problems.

One thing to watch: Shields led the NL in home runs allowed last season. And Chicago’s U.S. Cellular Field is a launching pad in the summer.

4. A Byrd in Hand Is the Finger to Some

So Marlon Byrd gets popped for performance-enhancing drugs for a second time, receiving a 162-game suspension and his own personal flaming place in steroids infamy.

Good riddance to another cheater. A couple of thoughts…

No, the fact that Byrd, Dee Gordon and a couple of others have been caught this spring does not indicate a raging steroid problem in baseball. Quite the opposite: MLB‘s drug-testing program is widely recognized as the toughest testing program among any of the major four North American professional sports. The fact that guys are getting caught shows that the system is working as intended.

Now, however, does that mean that the game is 100 percent clean? Absolutely not. Not with the millions of dollars these guys are making. Because of the money, there is so much incentive to cheat, and you will always have guys looking to take shortcuts.

The best news now is how players such as Justin Verlander, Jeremy Guthrie and others continue to blast peers who cheat. You cannot overstate the importance of the cooperation of the players union as it relates to how stringent testing is. The old, obstructionist days of a union led by Donald Fehr and Gene Orza are long gone. The late (and great) Michael Weiner led the union into the light, and now union boss Tony Clark is continuing that cause (along with many enlightened players).

Kudos to Guthrie for his reaction on Twitter in the aftermath of Byrd getting busted (the first one emotional, the second thoughtful, both necessary):

5. A Gentle Reminder

As talk about the new slide rule at second base continues this season, remember, this is how they used to play (the baserunner is Kansas City’s Hal McRae, the infielder is the Yankees’ Willie Randolph and the situation is the 1977 American League Championship Series):

6. Weekly Power Rankings

1. Muhammad Ali: The Greatest, and if you think that means just in the boxing ring, you’re wrong. He was far ahead of his time as a humanitarian and Civil Rights leader, too. “Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth,” he once said. We’ll miss you, Champ.

2. Corey Seager: Five homers against Atlanta over the weekend, and the Braves say, “Uncle.” Which, in Atlanta, translates to: “How the heck do we get good young players like that?!?!”

3. MLB Draft: Commences Thursday, and don’t the Philadelphia Phillies wish there was a clear Bryce Harper or Stephen Strasburg.

4. Cleveland Indians: In sweeping Kansas City to seize first place in the AL Central, the Indians are doing their part to try to divert attention in town from the poor Cavaliers, who so far are just so much pulled pork to the Golden State Warriors.

5. Carl Crawford: Onetime All-Star designated for assignment by the Dodgers. Hey, they don’t have time to nursemaid him along; they’re too busy spending all their time doing that with Yasiel Puig.

7. Power at Short:

8. The Red Sox Mean Business

Inconsistent starter Joe Kelly was optioned to Triple-A Pawtucket.

Inconsistent starter Clay Buchholz was dispatched to the bullpen.

The Red Sox are sending out an SOS in every direction imaginable where their rotation is concerned. It’s all hands on deck.

The way David Ortiz, Jackie Bradley Jr., Mookie Betts and others are hitting and reaching base, the Sox have the offense to win.

But outside of David Price and Steven Wright, the rotation remains a work in progress. Now in a friendly part of their schedule with a handful of off days, the Sox are going with a four-man rotation as manager John Farrell and pitching coach Carl Willis work overtime to find a solution.

As Nick Cafardo, national columnist at the Boston Globe, points out, the Sox tied the Cubs at 18-10 for the second-best record in the majors in the month of May (San Francisco was first at 21-8).

The Cubs hit .259 with 30 homers and 139 runs scored. The Red Sox hit .305 with 46 homers and 182 runs scored.

The Cubs’ team ERA in the month was 2.81. The Red Sox: 4.11.

Gives you some idea of what Boston could do with even marginally better starting pitching.

9. Clayton Kershaw Paints His Masterpiece

Yeah, just tell these guys about it, too:

9a. Rock ‘n’ Roll Lyric of the Week

Farewell, Muhammad Ali. You rocked our world….

“I was shadowboxing earlier in the day

“I figured I was ready for Cassius Clay”

— Bob Dylan, “I Shall Be Free No. 10”

Scott Miller covers Major League Baseball as a national columnist for Bleacher Report. Follow Scott on Twitter and talk baseball.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

Got your graduation gifts all purchased? That time of year again….

1. Big Apples, Monuments and The Millennial Men

They are both 23, and each will play an enormous role as the summer heats up and the Washington Nationals and New York Mets duel in the National League East.

One is as flamboyant as a pink flamingo in the front yard, as ostentatious as a Porsche in the driveway. Yeah, you know all about Bryce Harper, who came in as one of the hottest prospects in the history of Major League Baseball and put his stamp on the NL MVP award last summer.

The other? As nondescript as a welcome mat at the front door, as plain Jane as a sprinkler watering the lawn. But know this: Despite the fact that his batting average dipped during the month of May, the Mets have gone 22-12 in 34 games in which Michael Conforto has batted either third or fourth in the lineup.

Yeah, Conforto. Oregon State kid. First-round pick in 2014. The Mets got him 10th overall. Spotted Harper a huge head start into the majors: Bryce debuted at 19, of course, in 2012. Conforto didn’t land in New York until last summer, though he zoomed all the way up from Class A St. Lucie in just four months.

Then, Conforto did something Harper still hasn’t done: stepped to the plate in a World Series game.

In fact, Conforto started all five games of the Mets’ Fall Classic loss to Kansas City last October.

Yes, they both are 23, and though the natural comparison/rival for Harper has always been the Los Angeles Angels’ Mike Trout, Conforto is Harper’s intradivisional peer, and won’t it be a blast watching these guys jockey for position in what might become the most thrilling race in baseball this summer?

The three hole is where Mets manager Terry Collins and his staff envisioned Conforto would end up all along in the Mets lineup, though when they moved him there for good on April 15 at Cleveland, with Yoenis Cespedes hitting behind him, nobody knew then how it would solidify things.

“We talked about it in spring training,” Collins tells B/R. “We thought down the road, this guy’s going to be a three-hole hitter. Then when we looked at it early in the year we thought, ‘You know what? This guy is swinging the bat good right now, let’s put him in that spot and see how it goes.’

“And it’s paid off.”

Funny how “down the road” during spring training can suddenly translate into two or three weeks.

“It might have even been next year,” Collins says. “We just thought, this kid’s a good hitter and he’s going to produce runs. And we just said one of these days he’s going to be a three-hole hitter.

“We didn’t know if it was going to be this year, next year or two years from now. I just thought he’s going to be a guy with a high ceiling offensively, so we just took a shot.”

Despite hitting .169/.242/.349 in the month of May, Conforto, who swings lefty, is still hitting .261/.339/.503 overall with eight homers and 24 RBI.

Of Conforto’s 17 career home runs, 10 have either given the Mets the lead or tied the game (eight go-ahead, two game-tying). And for those of you who are Sabermetrically inclined, through Monday, Conforto had a well-hit average of .275 against right-handers, fourth-highest in the majors.

“He has the ability to drive the ball to all fields; he has power. And the good thing with this team is…it wasn’t like, ‘Isn’t so-and-so supposed to hit there?'” Mets outfielder Curtis Granderson says.

As Granderson notes, that’s the “cool thing” about the Mets: They have the ability to move guys around, which helps lessen the pressure on any one individual.

Tell Harper about it. Nobody in the game is under more pressure than him each night, given who he is and what he’s capable of. When he went 11 consecutive games in May without homering, let’s just say it was the loudest silent streak anybody has had in the majors this season.   

During that streak, from May 14-26, Harper was 4-for-33 with 11 walks. Overall this season, he’s still not exactly tearing it up, hitting .242/.415/.535 with 13 homers and 34 RBI.

Conforto is no Harper. Though he is capable of carrying the Mets on his back for a couple of games, he’s certainly not going to do so all summer. Nor is he expected to. But with Cespedes hitting behind him, he is one of New York’s keys, especially with David Wright facing another trip to the disabled list (herniated disk in his neck) and Matt Harvey’s struggles (through Monday, at least). Cespedes and Neil Walker can’t do it all themselves.

Conforto hit third in the lineup throughout high school, college and the minor leagues.

“It’s been my spot,” he says. “It’s where I want to be. But I felt it was something I needed to earn. I wasn’t going to have it right away.

“I still have to earn it.”

Part of that is hitting left-handers better: Against them in 2016, through Tuesday, he was hitting .118/.143/.118. As such, it was no coincidence that Collins gave him a day off Sunday, when the Mets faced Los Angeles Dodgers ace Clayton Kershaw.

After Conforto hit .365/.442/.676 overall in April, rival pitchers spent much of May searching for holes in his swing. What he noticed was a steady diet of breaking balls and sliders, with a few changeups thrown in.

“When I first got there, it was clear I was getting an extra fastball a game, or a pitch that they would have buried in the dirt before, they weren’t,” Conforto says of the move to third from lower in the order.

No small part of that, of course, was that pitchers wanted to take their chances with him rather than with the big bopper hitting next, Cespedes.

So now, for both his sake and that of the Mets, it’s time for Conforto to again start turning some of those sliders and breaking balls around, a lot more frequently than he has of late.

“You’ve always got to be cognizant of what they’re trying to do,” he says.

And if he happens to chat with Harper behind the cage during batting practice one of these days when the Mets and Nationals next meet later this month, the Washington megastar undoubtedly will tell him, “Yes, you do.”

2. Messing With the Strike Zone

Look out, the MLB Competition Committee is at it again, and the resulting changes could mean a remapped strike zone and the extinction of the good old-fashioned four-pitch intentional walk.

The first idea is questionable at best.

The second idea stinks.

Where the strike zone is concerned, the competition committee agreed on a motion to raise the bottom part of the strike zone from below the knees to above the knees. Given that almost 30 percent of at-bats are ending in a strikeout or walk this season (and that’s not even when Kershaw is pitching; see next item), it is worth discussing ways to lessen the dead time in games and put more balls in play.

The problem is beware the laws of unintended consequences: If the strike zone is raised, many players and managers think all it will do is turn some of the strikeouts into walks, not help hitters put more balls in play.

Why? Because it is far easier for a hitter to drop the bat head down on a 95 mph fastball than it is for him to get around on a higher fastball. So, in theory, this change could cause hitters to stop attempting to swing at the low fastball, figuring it will be called a ball.

So now you may not be doing anything but ladling more walks into games.

Nothing will change until approved by the playing rules committee. So while we continue to mull the strike zone, here’s hoping that committee quickly shoots down the idea of abolishing the four-pitch intentional walk.

Look, pace of game is an issue, no question, with games this season averaging just over three hours, per Baseball Prospectus. But a manager holding up four fingers instead of a pitcher lobbing four balls? Saves maybe 20 seconds, tops.

And it completely eliminates a part of the game that requires execution. There are times when a pitcher tosses a wild pitch…or leaves an intentional ball too close to the plate and the hitter reaches out and swats it.

Eliminate the four-pitch intentional walk, and you’ll deprive people of entertaining (and potentially game-changing) moments like this:

3. Clayton Kershaw’s Dead Time

That 30 percent of at-bats in today’s game ending without the hitter putting the ball in play?

That’s low when Dodgers ace Clayton Kershaw pitches.

When he’s on the mound, a whopping 36 percent of at-bats end without the ball being put into play.

Following his last start, Sunday night against the Mets, Kershaw entered this week with the astounding strikeout-to-walk ratio of 21-1. He had 105 whiffs against just five walks. He also had hit one of his 309 batters faced.

4. The Life and Times of Yankees Pitching

The New York Yankees optioned young prospect Luis Severino to Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre on Monday, another significant move for a club stuck carefully juggling starting pitchers as if they were knives.

Severino was viewed as a potential savior this spring after going 5-3 with a 2.89 ERA in 11 stretch-run starts last summer. This year, he is 0-6 with a 7.46 ERA.

With him gone, all eyes turn to the enigmatic Michael Pineda, who next starts Thursday in Detroit. Into that start in the Motor City, among qualifiers, Pineda ranks last (52nd) in the AL in ERA (6.92) and second-to-last (51st) in opponents’ batting average (.322).

But just when things look bleak for the Bronx Bombers, check this out from Sunday’s game against Tampa Bay, started by Nathan Eovaldi and then turned over to bullpen stars Dellin Betances, Andrew Miller and Aroldis Chapman, as Inside Edge noted:

That’s some serious cheese right there. Wow.

5. Cheating With the Dodgers Outfielders

More than once this season, alert fans have posted brief videos or photos on Twitter showing a Los Angeles Dodgers outfielder dipping into his pocket and checking what looks like a cell phone:

What gives? Have we finally reached the point where even players cannot go half an inning without checking for messages?

Are there pressing dinner reservations? Social arrangements for tonight that cannot wait until after the game? What?

Well, none of the above, it turns out. Rather, Dodgers outfielders now take their positions with cheat sheets for their intricate shifting patterns. There is so much information to remember for each hitter that sometimes a guy like Howie Kendrick needs to fish some of that information out of his pocket to see where to station himself because he can’t remember it.

In fact, according to Ken Rosenthal of Fox Sports, the Mets complained to MLB officials last Friday after learning that Los Angeles intended to mark prearranged defensive positions on the CitiField grass. The Dodgers now use a laser rangefinder before games to determine certain fielding positions. Were they to use it in-game, it would be a violation of rules.

Stay tuned.

6. Weekly Power Rankings

1. Memorial Day: Finally, summer (unofficially) begins. Put those cheeseburgers on the grill and cue up some Jimmy Buffett.

2. Matt Harvey: Not only did he fire seven shutout innings against the Chicago White Sox on Monday, he even spoke with reporters afterward. Maybe he’s not washed up, after all.

3. Indianapolis 500: Other than a hand-scooped milkshake, the best reason to drink milk.

4. Golden State Warriors: Did you see those pregame aerial shots of the Oakland Athletics’ home field? You couldn’t even see any leaking sewage. That’s how impressive Stephen Curry is.

5. Julio Urias: Dodgers wunderkind debuts at age 19 on Friday but is dispatched back to Triple-A Oklahoma City in time for Saturday’s Thunder-Warriors Game 6. I know they say teenagers have short attention spans, but, man, that was quick.

7. Bat Flip This

Et tu, Mickey Mantle? Wonder how Goose Gossage would frame this!

8. Chatter

• The Miami Marlins are thrilled with some of the things Barry Bonds is doing as hitting coach, most notably in reaching outfielder Marcell Ozuna. Things between the Marlins and Ozuna haven’t always been copacetic, but that’s changed this summer. Ozuna’s on-base streak reached 36 consecutive games, longest in the majors this season, before finally ending Monday. “It meant a lot because it meant that I maintained my swing and showed a lot of patience at the plate,” Ozuna, 25, told Miami reporters (via MLB.com). “Now it’s a matter of maintaining that and moving forward.”

• Look out for the Pittsburgh Pirates: They’ve won 11 of 16 to shave the deficit between them and the first-place Chicago Cubs from a season-high nine games on May 14 to 6.5 through Tuesday’s games. We knew Pittsburgh had one of the game’s best outfields in Andrew McCutchen, Starling Marte and Gregory Polanco, and the trio is hot: Pittsburgh outfielders lead the majors in batting average (.301) and extra-base hits (72) and rank second in on-base percentage (.371), slugging percentage (.500) and OPS (.871).

• Good move by the New York Mets to acquire James Loney, who was languishing in El Paso, San Diego’s Triple-A affiliate. He’s a perfect place-holder for the injured Lucas Duda. Loney, 32, was hitting .342 with a .373 on-base percentage. A scout who saw him last week praised his offensive work and noted that his defense was Gold Glove-caliber.

• No question, sources tell Bleacher Report, the San Diego Padres absolutely would love to trade right-hander James Shields and unload a contract that pays him $21 million this year, $21 million in 2017 and another $21 million in 2018 with a $16 million club option or a $2 million buyout in 2019. Shields has an opt-out option after this season, which could discourage potential trade partners.

• The Chicago White Sox are among the teams talking Shields with San Diego, sources say. The Sox could use an upgrade in their rotation over Mat Latos, who started 4-0 with a 0.74 ERA but is 2-1 with a 7.21 ERA since, and Miguel Gonzalez.

• Of course, after their weekend series with Kansas City, the White Sox look like they could use some bullpen reinforcements, too. They blew a 7-1 ninth-inning lead on Saturday, one of three staggering bullpen losses, and their relievers combined to surrender 17 runs, 15 hits and eight walks over 6.1 innings to Kansas City in the three days. Ouch. And that was only the start of a 10-game trip to KC, New York (Mets) and Detroit.

• One of the issues with Tim Lincecum, says a scout who was at his showcase in Scottsdale, Arizona, a couple of weeks ago, is that his stride toward the plate has shortened significantly. That is likely a result of his hip procedure, which is a contributing factor as to why his fastball no longer sizzles. There was little interest in Lincecum after the showcase, except from the injury-depleted Los Angeles Angels of Our Rotation Is Broken. Lincecum is next scheduled to start for Triple-A Salt Lake at Tacoma on Thursday and, if all goes well, is expected to join the Angels in 10 or so days.

• Great news, Hall of Fame broadcaster Marty Brennaman confirming that he will return to Cincinnati’s booth in 2017.

• Here’s why it is imperative the Cleveland Indians get their pitching sorted out. Through Tuesday, Cleveland had played 50 games—tied for fewest in the majors with the Baltimore Orioles, Cubs and Rays—yet scored 238 runs, fourth-most in the American League. There’s an opportunity here…if manager Terry Francona can get all the pieces moving in the same direction.

• Speaking of the Indians, it still could not be more fitting that a slugging designated hitter named Carlos Santana plays in the city that houses the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame museum.

• Thursday’s Arizona-Houston match features two of the most disappointing starting pitchers in the land: the Diamondbacks’ Zack Greinke, whose 4.71 ERA ranks 78th in the majors (you sure couldn’t tell by that $206 million contract) against the Astros’ Dallas Keuchel, whose 5.58 ERA ranks 97th (nowhere near last season’s Cy Young form).

9. Andrew Miller IS Going to Throw the Slider

The New York Yankees’ ace setup man, into last weekend, per Inside Edge:

9a. Rock ‘n’ Roll Lyric of the Week

Paul Simon’s new record, Stranger to Stranger, drops June 3, and the man who gave us the immortal line “Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio? A nation turns its lonely eyes to you” goes back to baseball again with a song called “Cool Papa Bell.” Hall of Famer Satchel Paige once said, in one of the greatest quips in the history of baseball, that Bell was so fast that he could click off the light and jump in bed and be under the covers before the room got dark.

“Have you all heard the news?

“‘Heaven finally found!’

“OK, it’s six trillion light-years away

“But we’re all gonna get there someday

“Yes, we’re all gonna get there one day

“But, but not you!

“You stay and explain the suffering

“And the pain you caused

“The thrill you feel when evil dreams come true

“Check out my tattoo!

“It says ‘wall-to-wall fun’

“Does everyone know everyone

“Mr. wall-to-wall fun

“We got the well, well, well

“And Cool Papa Bell

“The fastest man on Earth did dwell as

“Cool Papa Bell”

— Paul Simon, “Cool Papa Bell”

Scott Miller covers Major League Baseball as a national columnist for Bleacher Report.

Follow Scott on Twitter and talk baseball.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

Psst, may I have your Delta frequent flier number before we begin, please?…

1. Of Emails, One-Way Flights and Fredi Gonzalez & Friends

Knives are never sharp enough when the suits decide to ax the manager, but what the Atlanta Braves did with a painfully dull piece of cutlery last week was major league awkward.

John Hart, the Braves’ president of baseball operations, and John Coppolella, general manager, summoned Fredi Gonzalez last Tuesday morning to sack him.

Except, late Monday night, a Delta airline ticket popped up in the soon-to-be-former manager’s email account notifying him that his flight from Pittsburgh back home to Atlanta the next day was all set.

Being that the Braves were playing a four-game series in Pittsburgh that didn’t end until Thursday, Gonzalez didn’t need a private detective to piece together the clues.

Some firings are handled better than others, but let’s be clear: rarely are they bloodless.

Take Ned Yost’s. Wait, make that World Series Champion Ned Yost.

His dismissal by Milwaukee with just 12 games left in the 2008 season was classic. The Brewers, fighting to qualify for the postseason for the first time since 1982, were fading fast. Milwaukee had lost seven of eight games to sink into a tie with Philadelphia for the NL wild-card spot when it landed in Chicago to play the Cubs. No manager of a contending team had ever been fired so late in the season.

“We had an off day in Chicago,” Yost told B/R. “I’d gotten up early and gone down to Starbucks, it was about 8:30, the phone rang and it was Doug [Melvin, then-GM]. Doug said, ‘Hey, I’m at the hotel. Can you come up and see me?’

“I said ‘Sure, I’m at Starbucks, give me 15 minutes.’ So I walked back to the hotel and went up to his room, knocked on the door, and when he opened the door, he was standing there with [Milwaukee owner] Mark Attanasio.

“I’m thinking, ‘What’s going on here?’ And the first thing Doug says is, ‘We’re going to make a change.’ And I’m like, ‘What?’

“So I was in shock at that point.”

He wasn’t alone. When the deed was done, Yost phoned his wife, who immediately thought he was joking. The conversation, as he recounted, went something like this:

“Hey, I just got fired.”

“Come on. What are you going to do today?”

“Seriously, I just got fired.”

“You did not.”

“Yeah, I did.”

“So I packed all of my stuff up and I was probably out of there two hours after the meeting with Doug,” Yost said.

He drove north to Milwaukee, packed his stuff there, and then was on the road for his Georgia home the next day.

So as the Brewers were battling through the final 12 games under interim-manager Dale Sveum, Yost and his wife spent three days at the beach near Panama City and Destin, Florida.

“One day she came in and had tears in her eyes,” Yost said. “I said, ‘What’s wrong with you?’ And she said the Brewers just made the playoffs.

“And I said, ‘That’s good.’ She was still upset about the whole ordeal.”

In 1996, the Houston Astros finished 82-80, six games behind St. Louis in the NL Central, but it wasn’t enough to save Terry Collins’ job.

“The last day of the season, the owner of the team told me I was going to be the manager,” said Collins, who managed the New York Mets against Yost’s Royals in last year’s World Series. “We were going to have a meeting four days later. He said, ‘When you get in this meeting, be ready. We want to know what you got, how we can get to the next level because we’ve finished second [three] years in a row.’

“So the day of the meeting I called to find out what time the meeting was. I called the GM, and he was busy. I called the president and he was busy. I called the owner and he was busy.

“I turned to my wife and said, ‘They’re having a meeting and I’m not in it. I’ll be fired tomorrow.’ And I got fired the next day.”

Clint Hurdle’s experience in Colorado was like Yost’s in Milwaukee: Beware of the off day.

“My firing came at about 9 o’clock the next morning after an off day,” Hurdle, who now manages the Pittsburgh Pirates, said. “I got a call at 8 o’clock in the morning from my general manager. He asked if I could come over and meet him at his house.

“I knew I was getting fired, because I’d been invited over to his house many other times, but it was never at 8 o’clock in the morning without my family. We talked. We had a conversation. He told me reasons why. He asked me my thoughts. I shared my thoughts. He asked me how I wanted to handle the exit. I said I’d love the opportunity to go in this afternoon, address the coaching staff first, address the team, and then we’ll have a news conference and I’ll take the walk and we’ll be done.”

Always, it is an odd, odd night, that first evening at home when the club a guy has poured his guts into plays its next game and the now-former manager is sitting at home.

“A little surreal because you’re at home during a time you’re normally not at home,” Hurdle said. “It wasn’t that bad. Fortunately for me, personally, I’ve been through enough life experiences. I’ve been released. I’ve been traded. I’ve been fired before.   

“I look at failure as an event and not a person. I felt the organization was in a better place when I left than when I had the opportunity to enter. It was a quiet night, but it was an OK night. It wasn’t a bad night by any means. There wasn’t mourning and gnashing of teeth.”

Hurdle’s firing came on Friday, May 29, 2009. The Rockies were 18-28 and had played in their first World Series less than two years earlier. Jim Tracy took over for Hurdle, who challenged the players in that final meeting with them to play well for Tracy. Then Hurdle went home, spent the summer in Denver and rooted for the Rockies.

“The best experience I’ve probably had was about the third to fourth day into it,” Hurdle said. “I’m at home, about 1 o’clock in the afternoon, and my wife catches me, she goes, ‘What are you looking at?” I’m like, ‘What, what?’

“She said, ‘You’ve looked at your watch every day, 15 times a day; you have nowhere to go. Clint, you can’t go down there. Your swipe card doesn’t work anymore, honey. You’re kicked out. You’ve got nowhere to go.’

“She goes, ‘Find a way, baby, to unplug. You’ve got a summer off. It’s your first summer vacation in 35 years. Let’s have a blast with it. Let’s have fun with it.’ And it was almost like a light switch went off. You’re right.

“I worked my backside off for the summer vacation. And we took advantage of four months of not having to go to work. Doing family things. It helped me to re-program, re-plug, and the next year I caught a coaching job with the Rangers, which gave me a whole different perspective, and then I caught a manager’s job again.

“It really put me in a good place for this next opportunity. The firing part of it? It wasn’t a ton of bricks. It was almost like I knew in my mind. I had this saying: As long as God wanted me in the manager’s chair, I would be in it, and when he didn’t, no man could keep me in it. And that was my day. I was out.”

2. Fowl Ball: Chicken Bone a Tough Out

So, last week with the Atlanta Braves:

Monday night, a premature email from Delta Air Lines lands in manager Fredi Gonzalez’s inbox all but revealing he would not be long for the job.

Tuesday morning, the Braves fire him and name Brian Snitker, their manager at Triple-A Gwinnett, the interim manager.

Thursday, Snitker has to rewrite his lineup for that night’s game in Pittsburgh because shortstop Erick Aybar got a chicken bone lodged in his throat and had to have Braves medical personnel sedate him to remove it.

Yeah, you might say it’s been a rough go for the Braves and, especially, Aybar, this season. As of Wednesday, Aybar ranked dead last (182nd) in the majors among qualifiers in OPS (.423) and in on-base percentage (.217).

One Braves player told Dave O’Brien, longtime beat man for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, that he saw blood coming out of Aybar’s mouth and that the bone was so deep that the shortstop couldn’t lift his shoulder because of the discomfort.

“That poor guy had to be scared to death,” Snitker told reporters.

Aybar returned to the lineup the next night. Presumably, boneless chicken breasts will be on his menu for the near future.

3. White Sox Are Chicago’s Other Hot Team

In one-on-one exit meetings last season with the Chicago White Sox brass, player after player lobbied to keep last year’s team together as much as possible. We’re better than that 76-86 fourth-place finish, they said. We can bounce back, they said.

Rick Hahn, White Sox general manager, did some serious listening.

And then he blew off what the players wanted.

“Obviously, we weren’t comfortable going that route,” Hahn said during a conversation this spring.

Hahn’s preference for 2016 was twofold: Upgrade the talent where he could. And, within that, acquire players who played on winning teams and had winning character.

The White Sox of the past couple of years, Hahn and his staff had concluded, were too passive. The clubhouse lacked energy. And that had to change.

In importing third baseman Todd Frazier (trade with Cincinnati), shortstop Jimmy Rollins (free agent), catcher Alex Avila (free agent) and center fielder Austin Jackson (free agent), it has been mission accomplished for Chicago’s “other” team, as the Sox play in the shadows of the Cubs’ fast start.

Even after losing six of eight heading into this week’s big series with AL Central-rival Cleveland, the White Sox, at 27-20, were off to their best 47-game start since 2006. The White Sox have led the division since April 23. And they’re the first team to record two triple plays in its first 40 games since the 1978 Houston Astros of Bob Watson, Art Howe and Enos Cabell.

With ace Chris Sale pitching like a Cy Young winner, Jose Quintana hot and Carlos Rodon dominating in spots, the Sox’s staff ranks second in the AL with a 3.31 ERA, improved from 3.98 last year.

The addition of Jackson, a true center fielder, has helped improve Chicago’s defense tremendously. Bumped over to right field, Adam Eaton, who at times struggled in center last summer, leads the majors with 14 defensive runs saved, per FanGraphs.

The last time the White Sox and Cubs met in a World Series, it was 1906, and the Sox won it all in six games. Clearly, it’s way too early to know how 2016 is going to play out, but a dream is beginning to take root in Chicago.

4. Dodgers Have The Blues (When Kershaw Isn’t Pitching)

Whatever the Los Angeles Dodgers envisioned under new manager Dave Roberts, losing five out of seven games to the Angels and San Diego last week wasn’t it. Yet here the Dodgers are, long on depth and short, so far, on game-changers.

No small part of Roberts’ problem as the Dodgers have slipped to 4.5 games behind San Francisco in the NL West is that whichever reliever he turns to in the eighth inning, things have turned ugly. The Dodgers rank 13th in the NL—and 27th in the majors—in eighth-inning ERA at 4.79. Only Texas (5.48), San Diego (5.55) and Cincinnati (7.43) have been worse.

Chris Hatcher, Pedro Baez, J.P. Howell, Yimi Garcia…the Dodgers are still searching. And they likely will be through the Aug. 1 non-waivers trade deadline, unless 19-year-old phenom Julio Urias comes to the rescue. Stay tuned.

After Monday’s win over Cincinnati, the Dodgers were 9-1 in games started by Clayton Kershaw this year and 15-22 in games others start.

5. Baltimore and the Beltway

One answer to the Dodgers’ eighth-inning relief woes could have been veteran Darren O’Day, who instead signed a four-year, $31 million deal with Baltimore. In large part, that was because O’Day’s wife, Elizabeth Prann, is a reporter for Fox News and is based in Washington.

Over the weekend, Bill Shaikin, the national baseball writer for the Los Angeles Times, asked O’Day whether his wife has ever interviewed presidential candidate Donald Trump.

“No,” O’Day told Shaikin. “But he called her an idiot on Twitter.”

6. Should the Angels Trade Mike Trout?

No. That’s stupid. Stop it, all you sports talk hosts and newspaper columnists.

Next.

7. Weekly Power Rankings

1. Budweiser: Changes name to “America” through November election. Maybe poor Minnesota should change from “Twins” to “White Sox.” If it’s that easy, we’re talking instant contenders.

2. Clayton Kershaw: Modern-day Sandy Koufax.

3. Jerry Dipoto: Following a winter’s worth of rearranging, Dipoto’s Seattle Mariners have charged to the top of the AL West. Meanwhile, Arte Moreno’s Angels are still paying Josh Hamilton.

4. Jackie Bradley Jr.: How cool would it be for someone to make a serious run at Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak? You go, Jackie (28 consecutive games through Tuesday night versus Colorado).

5. Kentucky Fried Chicken edible nail polish: Seriously, it’s a thing. But shhh, don’t tell Erick Aybar.

8. Chatter

• Atlanta’s next full-time manager? The Braves could do far worse than Terry Pendleton, Bud Black or Mark DeRosa. Pendleton currently is Atlanta’s first-base coach and is smart and personable. DeRosa, currently an analyst for MLB Network, would fit the latest trend of hiring a recently retired player who commands respect in the clubhouse. Black also is well-respected and has ties to Atlanta’s current front-office: John Hart, Atlanta’s president of baseball operations, hired Black as a special assistant after Black retired and Hart was GM in Cleveland. And John Schuerholz, Atlanta’s president, was Kansas City’s GM when Black started pitching for the Royals in the 1980s.

• If Detroit does reach a point where it replaces manager Brad Ausmus, Lloyd McClendon, managing the Triple-A Toledo Mud Hens, is a near-slam dunk to replace him.

• The Braves are 12-32, and Matt Wisler and Williams Perez are their only starting pitchers with more than one victory. They have two each.

• Kershaw-esque: Even after Chris Sale suffered his first loss Tuesday, the Chicago White Sox are 9-1 in games in which their ace starts versus 18-19 when others start.

• Horrible Idea of the Week: Tim Lincecum signing with an American League team, the Angels. At 31, following a hip procedure and working to recapture past glory, Lincecum would be far better served pitching in the NL, where lineups are weaker, there is no DH and a handful of bad teams are rebuilding (Braves, Brewers, Padres).

• The Red Sox have a whopping 21 more doubles than anybody else in the majors. Through Tuesday, Boston had 117; St. Louis was next with 96.

• Losing Alex Gordon, who is expected to be out three to four weeks with a broken bone in his hand, per Rustin Dodd of the Kansas City Star, is an enormous blow to the Kansas City Royals.

• Carlos Beltran became just the fourth switch-hitter ever to produce 400 or more homers, following Mickey Mantle, Eddie Murray and Chipper Jones. Hall of Fame bound? The guess here is yes.

9. And, Still, the Yankees Have Won 5 In a Row

9a. Rock ‘n’ Roll Lyric of the Week

To the managers who have been fired, or will be fired, here’s wishing you continue to get what you want, though the chorus sure fits a lot of us, doesn’t it?

“You always get what you want

“And you don’t even try

“Your friends hate it when it’s always going your way

“But I’m glad that you’ve got luck on your side

“You’re saying definitely maybe

“I’m saying probably no

“You say ‘You sleep when you’re dead,’ I’m scared I’ll die in my sleep

“I guess that’s not a bad way to go

“I wanna go out but I wanna stay home

“I wanna go out but I wanna stay home”

—Courtney Barnett, “Nobody Cares If You Don’t Go to the Party”

Scott Miller covers Major League Baseball as a national columnist for Bleacher Report.

Follow Scott on Twitter and talk baseball.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

April flowers bring May showers, or something like that…

1. Yankees Feeling the Burn

Is this the summer the New York Yankees devolve into also-rans?

Everyone knew their current nine-game trip to Texas, Boston and Baltimore would be a Rawlings buster, but it’s turned coyote ugly quick. They’re like the varmint in that Whac-A-Mole game. Every time they pop their heads up, Travis Shaw or David Ortiz or Rougned Odor bludgeons their little pinstriped heads back into the ground.

Elvis (Andrus) has left the building, but after the Yanks dropped two of three in Texas, Boston swept them. Now come three games in Baltimore, beginning Tuesday. Only Minnesota (8-18, .308) and Houston (8-18, .308) own worse records in the American League than the Yanks (8-15, .348).

The Yankees have lost five in a row and nine of their past 12.

The problems are widespread. At April’s end, the Yankees couldn’t score and couldn’t pitch. Bad combo. They ranked dead last in the majors with 74 runs scored.

Into Tuesday’s series opener at Baltimore, the Yankees rotation ranked last in the AL and 27th in the majors with a 5.16 ERA.

They are seven games below .500 for the first time in the nine seasons Joe Girardi has managed. Fact is they haven’t been seven games under .500 since they were 24-31 on June 4, 2007, back when Joe Torre was managing. Whoever the Joe, this isn’t good.

Of course, writing off any Yankees team this early in the season, ever, can be a fool’s errand. In 2007, they wound up going 94-68, good for second in the AL East.

While it is easy to see this team’s not being as bad as its start, given the AARP status of many of the key players (Alex Rodriguez, Mark Teixeira, Carlos Beltran and CC Sabathia) and the mid-to-low ceilings of others (Chase Headley, Didi Gregorius, Brett Gardner), it is difficult to see how Girardi milks 90 wins out of this bunch either.

Also, consider this: The Yankees have suffered zero key injuries so far. They’re healthy (at least in body, if not in record).

Headley in particular is off to a wretched start at third, ranking 197th in the majors out of 198 qualifiers in both batting average (.156) and OPS (.423). Currently, he has more steals (three) than RBI (two).

Brian McCann is in a 3-for-19 slide, amid concerns he is being affected by a sore big toe he fouled a pitch off of April 12 in Toronto. And Jacoby Ellsbury is proving he is a complementary player—as he was in Boston—not a breakout star.

Rodriguez, while hitting just .203, does at least have three homers on the current road trip.

On the mound, Michael Pineda (6.33 ERA, 1.59 WHIP in five starts) has been awful, and rookie Luis Severino (0-3, 6.86 ERA, 1.78 WHIP), who next starts Tuesday night in Baltimore, may be pitching himself back to Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre. Tough to shame Severino too much because, at 22, he’s the second-youngest pitcher to start in the majors this season. Only Minnesota’s Jose Berrios (21) is younger.

Pineda currently ranks 95th in the majors in ERA of 100 qualifiers and 91st in WHIP. Nathan Eovaldi ranks 71st (1.38) in WHIP.

If things don’t improve, the intriguing thing, of course, will be whether the Yankees become sellers at the July trade deadline. Can you imagine a season in which the haughty Yankees would actually wave the white flag halfway through?

Teixeira and Beltran, in the right circumstances, would be attractive to contenders. So, too, would the most valuable part of this club: the bullpen pieces of Andrew Miller, Dellin Betances and Aroldis Chapman.

After Baltimore, the Yankees have a nice, lengthy, 10-game homestand—a perfect time to turn things around and get well.

Problem is Boston, defending world champion Kansas City and the red-hot White Sox come in. The heavy lifting continues in the Bronx.

2. P-E-DEE

Two weeks ago, because he specializes in overblown reactions with a flair, Miami Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria gifted Dee Gordon with a blinged-out piece of jewelry more befitting of a rapper than a second baseman.

Days later, Gordon was iced for 80 games by MLB for failing a test for performance-enhancing drugs.

Just like that, the one-time inspirational story of Gordon went splat. He tested positive for two things: exogenous Testosterone and Clostebol.

A couple of thoughts here: Yes, it is disheartening that players continue to cheat. But with the financial incentives being what they are, this always is going to be the case. Gordon parlayed National League batting and stolen base titles last season into a five-year, $50 million deal over the winter. While out on suspension, he will be docked roughly $1.6 million in pay.

The rest of the dough is guaranteed, whether Gordon tested positive for exogenous Testosterone or peanut M&Ms.

That said, those knee-jerk reactions that the game is still dirty are just lazy and uninformed. The fact that MLB busted Gordon (and Toronto’s Chris Colabello a week earlier), as well as players like Alex Rodriguez and Ryan Braun a few years ago, is hard proof that the sport is vigilantly policing itself and working hard to keep the game as clean as possible.

No way MLB is happy about suspending Gordon, or anybody else. But the system is no longer looking the other way, or attempting to hide things in the closet.

What I continue to find most heartening is the negative reaction of Gordon’s peers, such as this from Tigers ace Justin Verlander (warning: contains profanity):

When the steroids problem mushroomed out of control in the 1990s, the players’ union was stonewalling any form of testing under then-boss Donald Fehr. I thought then that the clean players were complicit in their silence, that they should have demanded change because the cheaters were taking jobs from the clean players.

Today, by backing recent boss Michael Weiner and now Tony Clark, the players are doing an admirable job of taking control of their own game. And good for them.

Verlander’s response was emotional and isn’t entirely on the mark. You can’t sideline players during their appeal because what if a test is mistakenly read and the player is innocent? By the time that is made public, his reputation already will have been tarnished by a premature suspension.

But the fact that Verlander and many others are willing to speak out today only helps keep their peers in line.

As for Gordon, it’s a shame because he played bigger than his size (5’11”, 170 lbs). One of my all-time favorite descriptions of him came from then-Detroit manager Jim Leyland, who raved about Gordon after seeing him play for the first time, saying, “He’s no bigger than half a minute.”

Sadly, that also describes his reputation and integrity today.

No word on whether Loria has demanded the return of the hideously large necklace.

3. The Vin Scully All-Star Campaign

The voice of baseball is retiring after this season, his 67th summer of broadcasting Dodgers games, and there is growing chatter about what would be a very cool idea.

How about involving Scully in this year’s All-Star Game national television broadcast?

He no longer travels outside of California to work during the season, but the All-Star Game would be a very easy trip down the freeway from his home to San Diego.

Even if he only did an inning or two, how spine-tingling would that be for baseball fans across the country?

As baseball columnist Bill Shaikin pointed out recently in the Los Angeles Times, in recent years the game has served as a sentimental showcase in many instances. Remember Cal Ripken’s final All-Star start in Seattle, when he lined up at third base and shortstop Alex Rodriguez literally nudged him over to shortstop in the first inning? And what about Derek Jeter’s final start at shortstop in the game a couple of summers ago in Minnesota?

Fox broadcaster Joe Buck told Shaikin that he would “send a plane” to get Scully, who now is 88. The point: Buck, whose father Jack was the longtime Hall of Fame voice of the St. Louis Cardinals, knows and appreciates legends and moments when he sees them.

“I don’t want to be part of it,” Scully told Shaikin. “Joe is wonderful. He’s a good guy and a friend. But I’ve done my networks, my games of the week.”

OK, we get it. But there certainly is nothing wrong with applying a little public pressure, and if the fans demand Scully, well, then…

4. Pickles…Kosher Pickles

Several years ago, when he was doing radio in addition to working in the San Diego Padres front office, Andy Strasberg hatched a wacky idea for his show.

It was beautiful in its simplicity: Ask the mellifluous Scully to read a grocery list. Well, to our great fortune, audio still exists. And in this, Scully’s last season, it’s been making the rounds early this season.

I’ll have what Scully’s having:

5. Philly Cream Cheese? Not Quite

Did somebody say the Philadelphia Phillies are rebuilding?

You can’t tell so far.

Just off a weekend sweep over Cleveland, the Phillies entered this week scorching hot, riding a six-game winning streak and bursting with confidence.

“For us to do what we’re doing right now, we’re surprising a lot of people, and I think that’s what we expected coming in from spring training from Day 1,” Phillies catcher Cameron Rupp told reporters, via MLB.com.

Uh, yes, speaking like an old salt, that’s Cameron R-u-p-p. As opposed to first baseman Darin Ruf.

Rupp was the Phillies’ third-round pick in the June 2010 draft. His batterymate on Sunday, Vincent Velasquez, was obtained from Houston along with pitchers Mark Appel, Brett Oberholtzer, Thomas Eshelman and Harold Arauz for closer Ken Giles and Jonathan Arauz in December 2015.

Velasquez, the key piece in the aforementioned trade, is becoming one of the breakout stars of the season. His ERA is 1.44 in five starts, and he has not surrendered a run in three of those starts. Velasquez is 4-1 with 39 strikeouts in 31.1 innings pitched so far this season.

Since April 9, the Phillies are tied with the Washington Nationals for the majors’ second-best winning percentage (.714, 15-6), trailing only the Chicago Cubs (.736, 14-5).

During the stretch from April 9-May 1, Phillies pitchers ranked first in the majors in strikeouts (215) and ranked fourth in WHIP (1.11), opponents’ batting average (.220) and on-base percentage (.279).

The Phillies were five games over .500 (15-10) heading into Monday night’s series opener in St. Louis for the first time since the end of the 2011 season, when they finished 102-60.

It is difficult to believe this will continue for two reasons: A young rotation that includes Velasquez, Jerad Eickhoff, Aaron Nola, Adam Morgan and veteran Jeremy Hellickson eventually will run into innings limits and bumps in the road. Second, entering this week, the Phillies were at a minus-16 in run differential. That figure alone suggests regression.

Still, for a team in dire need of rebuilding over the past couple of years, there suddenly is hope for the future. And good for manager Pete Mackanin, a terrific baseball man who deserved a shot to manage well before this. Instead, all he got were interim gigs in Cincinnati (2007) and Pittsburgh (2005).

In ’07, after then-manager Jerry Narron started the season 31-51 in Cincinnati, Mackanin took over the same group and went 41-39 the rest of the way.

6. Weekly Rankings

1. Chicago baseball: Last time the Cubs and White Sox both participated in the same postseason? In 2008. Before that? The 1906 World Series. Deep dish pizza for everyone!

2. Jake Arrieta: Denies taking steroids but has no problem eating the lunches of his critics. Attaboy.

3. Aledmys Diaz: Joins Albert Pujols as the only rookies to get 30 or more hits in the month of April for the St. Louis Cardinals. Alas, his .423 batting average falls short of the club rookie record for the month, still held by the fabulously named Showboat Fisher (.462, 1930).

4. Yankees offense: Milk industry about to get a boost with pictures of missing Yankees hitters printed on cartons.

5. Pablo Sandoval to undergo left shoulder surgery: No word on whether they’re serving cheeseburgers in the operating room.

7. Noah Syndergaard and Two-Strike Counts

San Francisco got the Mets hurler Sunday, a day in which Syndergaard didn’t have his usual put-away stuff. Of 16 two-strike counts against Syndergaard, the Giants put five balls in play (a rate of 31 percent). As opposed to:

8. Chatter

• Washington’s 18-7 start is the best in franchise history.

• The Nationals swept the Cardinals in St. Louis over the weekend, the franchise’s first three-game sweep there since June 9-11, 1986.

• Big blow to Baltimore in losing shortstop J.J. Hardy for what could be two months with a fracture in his left foot. Manny Machado likely will move over to shortstop with Ryan Flaherty subbing in at third base.

• Interesting start to the NL West, where it looks as crowded as the starting line at the beginning of a marathon. One scout I talked to the other day still likes the Giants. “I love the way they’re put together,” he said. “They all know their roles. Joe Panik is there to get on base. Matt Duffy hits the gaps for doubles. Brandon Belt, Buster Posey in the middle…that is such a well-put-together club.”

• Good free-agent signing (so far): Detroit’s Jordan Zimmermann is the first Tiger to win five starts in April since Frank Tanana in 1988, according to STATS.com.

• The Diamondbacks are ducking (and that’s hard to do so low to the ground): Colorado rookie shortstop Trevor Story has 12 RBI against Arizona so far this year.

• Astros starters, the toast of the AL last year, rank 13th in the league so far this year with a 4.92 ERA and 10th in the AL with 137.1 innings pitched. Houston’s bullpen has been so taxed because the starters haven’t gone deep into games that the Astros last week went to a roster with 13 pitchers. Yikes.

• The struggling Atlanta Braves are 0-13 when scoring three or fewer runs.

• Mr. Cy Young? Though Chris Sale’s streak of working seven or more innings over eight consecutive games went by the wayside Sunday when he lasted just 5.1 innings, he still became the majors’ first six-game winner this year.

• So far, Arizona’s pitching has been disappointing, the D-backs have been disappointing and Shelby Miller (8.49 ERA) has been a bust. “I think it’s more, really, he’s just feeling some pressure: of the trade, of the players that we traded for him, trying to fit in,” Arizona general manager Dave Stewart told MLB Network Radio. “I think the whole ordeal has just been different for him than it was leaving St. Louis going to Atlanta.”

• Highly recommend Jeff Passan’s new book, The Arm: Inside the Billion-Dollar Mystery of the Most Valuable Commodity in Sports. Terrific look at various issues involving the pitching arm, and the way he takes readers through the post-Tommy John comebacks of Todd Coffey and Daniel Hudson reads at times like a mystery novel/thriller. Well reported, well done, and especially if you’ve got a son pitching anywhere from Little League on up, you will find it educational.

9. What People Don’t Realize About Miguel Cabrera

His sense of humor is terrific. Like here, Sunday afternoon, while reporters interview Victor Martinez…

9a. Rock ‘n’ Roll Lyric of the Week

Let’s send this one out to the Yankees, Astros, Twins, Braves, Reds and Padres, the six last-place teams doing what they can to survive as baseball rolls into May…

“I got a brand-new car that drinks a bunch of gas

“I got a house in a neighborhood that’s fading fast

“I got a dog and a cat that don’t fight too much

“I got a few hundred channels to keep me in touch

“I got a beautiful wife and three tow-headed kids

“I got a couple of big secrets I’d kill to keep hid

“I don’t know God but I fear his wrath

“I’m trying to keep focused on the righteous path

“I got a couple of opinions that I hold dear

“A whole lot of debt and a whole lot of fear

“I got an itch that needs scratching but it feels all right

“I got the need to blow it out on Saturday night

“I got a grill in the backyard and a case of beers

“I got a boat that ain’t seen the water in years

“More bills than money, I can do the math

“I’m trying to keep focused on the righteous path”

— Drive-By Truckers, “The Righteous Path”

Scott Miller covers Major League Baseball as a national columnist for Bleacher Report.

Follow Scott on Twitter and talk baseball.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

Ears. You know something? Over seven or eight seasons of bouncing around the country’s bumpy roads on rattletrap minor league buses, a guy’s ears become pretty finely tuned.

And above all else over the past year, Jeremy Hazelbaker, the St. Louis Cardinals’ latest newly discovered gem, has listened and learned one thing.

The sound of 47,000 fans rising to cheer one of his home runs is a whole lot different than the sound his cellphone was making early last May after the Los Angeles Dodgers suddenly and unexpectedly released him from their Double-A Tulsa club.

As he sat at home in Indiana waiting for an organization to call and scoop him up, one day passed. Then two. Then three.

“Toward the end of a week and a half, I was thinking, ‘All right, that’s all she wrote. I’ll have to go back to school and get a job,’” says Hazelbaker, 28, a pleasant and polite young rookie who currently stands as the game’s poster boy for Perseverance, capital P.

He shakes his head. He looks around the Cardinals clubhouse.

Over there, Adam Wainwright is preparing to start tonight’s game. Over here, Matt Holliday, Matt Carpenter and the rest of the gang are about to head out for batting practice.

“Amazing,” Hazelbaker says softly.

Here he is, 19 games into his major league career, with five home runs, 13 RBI, two steals, nine runs scored and a 1.064 OPS.

In St. Louis’ home opener against the Milwaukee Brewers on April 11, Hazelbaker went 4-for-4 with a triple, a double, one RBI and one run scored. He became the first Cardinal to collect four hits in his St. Louis debut in 62 years.

Through his first nine games, he batted .481/.484/1.000 with three homers and seven RBI. Then, after going into an 0-for-16 dip, he slugged a pinch-hit, three-run homer during Saturday’s 11-2 romp in San Diego and then belted a two-run homer off Zack Greinke in St. Louis’ series-opener in Arizona on Monday.

Quite a difference from this time a year ago, when he was back living at his parents’ house in Selma, Indiana, working out at Wapahani High School and willing his cellphone to ring.

“All the guys I’d been friends with for years and years and years, I’d be home at 8 p.m., and all my friends were out playing,” he says. “I’d be thinking, ‘Well, they’re in the third inning now.’”

When the Dodgers released him, he was hitting .245 for Tulsa just three weeks into the season. He was called into the manager’s office after a four-hit game, of all times, and was told the Dodgers were releasing him.

“They released two guys that night, and I was one of them,” Hazelbaker says. “Word came through in a text message to my manager. That’s all he knew, just that they were releasing me.”

Hazelbaker would have liked some sort of explanation, a reason, but never got one.

“It was a weird situation,” he says. “I guess that’s how it goes sometimes.”

Sometimes it’s a numbers game. The Dodgers had plenty of outfielders and clearly did not see Hazelbaker in their plans.

When his cellphone finally did buzz last May, it was the Cardinals. They needed an outfielder at Double-A Springfield. But even then, it wasn’t exactly happily ever after.

He batted .308 with 19 extra-base hits at Springfield and was promoted to Triple-A Memphis, where he hit .333 with 10 homers and 46 RBI in 58 games.

Yet when rosters expanded last September, the Cardinals did not summon him.

So he became a minor league free agent, again, last winter.

This time, a handful of clubs did call. But he was both comfortable and familiar with the Cardinals organization, so he opted to go back.

And this spring, from a spot somewhere off the 40-man roster, he literally played his way onto the team.

“As soon as he got to Springfield last year, we saw he could play,” says Cardinals rookie shortstop Aledmys Diaz—a teammate of Hazelbaker’s in both Springfield and Memphis last year before they both moved on to St. Louis this season.

“Very professional in the way he goes about his business,” All-Star catcher Yadier Molina says. “I’m really happy for him.”

“One of those great stories,” Cardinals manager Mike Matheny says. “He’s a talented player, and he forced our hand this spring. Which, really, is what we ask all of our players.

“The way he takes his at-bats reminds me a lot of what we saw from Carp [Matt Carpenter] early in his career. Fight, fight, fight the pitcher and stick with your game plan.”

Hazelbaker’s plan is to take every at-bat, every fly ball, every everything as if it is the last one he’ll ever get. That is the everlasting lesson learned from the day Tulsa unceremoniously sent him packing.

“That was a nervous time for him and for us,” says his father, Phil, the new tooling manager at Mursix Corporation in Yorktown, Indiana. “We were all upset about it, not knowing for sure what was going to come next. We were hoping for good things.

“A few days passed, but he never got off of his schedule. He kept lifting, he kept hitting, he kept working out so that when someone did call, he’d be ready.”

While Jeremy may have been thinking he was getting closer to finding a new life—he was on track for his business degree at nearby Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana, where he was when the Boston Red Sox picked him in the fourth round of the 2009 draft—it was not something he and his parents talked about.

“We never had that conversation about what if baseball was over, what are you going to do, because I didn’t even want to put that thought in his mind,” Phil says. “He felt he could do it. We felt the same.

“We just felt good things happen to good people, there are reasons why things happen, and we just hoped that things would work out.”

It was on the very last day of spring training, after a Grapefruit League game against the New York Yankees in Tampa, when Hazelbaker learned he had made the club.

It was down to him and one other player, Greg Garcia, and Hazelbaker had one bag packed for the long bus ride back to Jupiter, Florida, if he was to remain in the minor leagues and a suit to wear for traveling to the Cardinals’ opener in Pittsburgh if he made the big club.

After the final exhibition game against the Yankees, Matheny called Hazelbaker into his office.

“He had a little smirk on his face,” Hazelbaker, who swings left-handed, says, smiling. “I was thinking, ‘It’s got to be good news. It would be a weird thing for him to be smiling about if he was telling me I was going to go back to Memphis.’”

What Matheny basically told him: “I know you’ve been in here before, but it’s a little different this time. You’re a big leaguer.”

“We were waiting for the call,” says Phil of he and his wife, Becky, who runs a roller-skating rink that has been in the family for 75 years. “He got me at work, said hold on a minute, got Becky on the phone on a three-way call, and that’s when he told us he made the 25-man roster.

“That conversation was something I’ll never forget. Knowing he was so close, knowing all the work he put in over the years…”

The line score leading up to his big league debut: 751 minor league games played over seven seasons, 2,734 at-bats, three organizations (Red Sox, Dodgers, Cardinals) and too many fast-food meals to count.

His sister, Danielle, a physical therapist in Florida (and a pretty good volleyball player during her school days), and her husband, Keith, joined Phil and Becky in Pittsburgh to witness Jeremy’s first major league game.

“Best experience I’ve ever had, baseball-wise,” Hazelbaker says. “I think that’s the best experience my parents have ever experienced with me.

“They’ve suffered a lot with me in baseball, growing up, all the travel, basketball, baseball, my sister’s volleyball. For them to have preached all the hard work…they raised my sister right, and they raised me right.”

Then, after the Cardinals swung through Atlanta during the season-opening road trip, Phil and Becky were in St. Louis for Jeremy’s historic home debut.

“It’s been a dream come true for us and for him,” Phil says. “It’s been very exciting.”

“Our city is so great,” Hazelbaker says. “Fans know us wherever we go. That’s the thing I’m still getting used to.

“You don’t get that just anywhere.”

During the first homestand of the year in St. Louis, Jeremy, Phil and Becky went to lunch in the Italian neighborhood The Hill, at a place called Adriana’s On The Hill. When Jeremy placed a big order, the owner, who was waiting on their table, teased him: “You sure you can eat all that?” “Sure,” he said. She asked, “You look pretty athletic, do you play sports?”

“Sure do,” Jeremy said. “Baseball.”

“What team?”

“Cardinals.”

“The St. Louis Cardinals?” the owner shrieked. “You’re Jeremy Hazelbaker?!”

So she hugged him, hugged Phil, hugged Becky. Then some of the other staff came over for hellos and welcomes and attaboys.

From sitting at home alone at 8 p.m. thinking of his friends scattered around the country, playing in the third inning, to being the toast of St. Louis 11 months later, wow.

“We all kind of laughed and said how cool it is,” Hazelbaker says.

Same homestand, one of the owners of Pappy’s Smokehouse, Wainwright’s favorite joint, recognized Jeremy and his family in line and whisked them to a table straightaway.

Knowing Wainwright has his very own “Pappy’s Smokehouse” ball cap with his No. 50 embroidered on it, the owner brought out a camouflage Pappy’s ball cap with the No. 41 written on it.

“Go tell Waino he’s not the only one here with his own cap,” the owner ordered Hazelbaker, and they all laughed some more.

“So fun, and the best barbecue we have ever eaten,” Phil says.

There’s been a lot of delicious squeezed into these first few weeks of the season—on the field and off.

“We have chefs in our clubhouse in St. Louis, and I tell you, they make some of the best food I’ve ever had in my life,” Jeremy says. “I never had crab cakes before, but they served them there, and they were phenomenal.”

No telling what the rest of the season will bring, but after what he’s been through during the past year, Jeremy isn’t looking at the rest of the season. He is looking at today. His next at-bat. That’s where his concentration is.

“He knows what he does well,” Cardinals hitting coach John Mabry says. “He has quality at-bats. We’ve told him: Don’t do anything different. Keep doing what you’re doing.”

He also knows this game is designed in such a way that the ups are fleeting, while the downs can drag on. It is how you handle the downs that keeps the next opportunities coming. Yes, he hears that—loud and clear.

“There’s stuff that happens here every day you look at and you think, ‘I’m going to remember this for a long, long time,’” Hazelbaker says.

“Conversations with guys here in the clubhouse, or stuff that happens with them out on the field, I tell you, I’m going to remember it forever.”

Scott Miller covers Major League Baseball as a national columnist for Bleacher Report.

Follow Scott on Twitter and talk baseball.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

True fact: We are living in a world in which Mat Latos is 4-0 with an 0.74 ERA for the Chicago White Sox, and Adam Wainwright is 0-3, 7.25 for the St. Louis Cardinals. Yikes…

1. Best and Worst of First-Month Starts

The Cubs: Into this week, the Chicago Cubs Wrecking Crew Inc. owned a plus-68 run differential. Plus-68! Next-closest were the St. Louis Cardinals at plus-40, followed by the Washington Nationals at plus-44. For perspective, the total combined run differential of the first-place clubs in the AL East, Central and West was plus-25 (Orioles plus-14, White Sox plus-14 and a tie in the West with the Athletics at minus-four and Rangers at plus-one). Not only are the Cubs killing it with Anthony Rizzo, Kris Bryant and Co., Jake Arrieta already has thrown a no-hitter and has been so good he deserves his own category, coming up next.

For Real? The Cubs are real…and they are sensational.

Jake Arrieta: The game’s best pitcher at the moment, bar none (including Clayton Kershaw, David Price and, heck, I’ll even toss in Mat Latos). When the finishing touches were placed on his no-hitter Thursday night in Cincinnati, over his past 24 regular-season starts, Arrieta is 20-1 with an 0.86 ERA and two no-hitters. He’s hung 24 consecutive quality starts, and in 14 of those, he’s allowed zero runs.

For Real? Holy Amish-looking beard, Batman! Mark down the Cubs’ acquisition of Arrieta and Pedro Strop in July 2013 for pitcher Scott Feldman and catcher Steve Clevenger as this club finally making up for that Lou Brock trade all those years ago.

Bryce Harper: Into Tuesday night’s series opener against Philadelphia, Harper is the proud owner of one of the most astounding stats in the game: He’s got nine home runs and nine strikeouts. After becoming the unanimous NL MVP last summer, Harper has spent the first month of this season stoking that old favorite debate point, who’s the best player in the game, him or Mike Trout? Hint: Harper last year and so far this year has done the one thing he couldn’t do early in his career—stay off of the disabled list. As he stays on the field, we’re seeing greatness every night now.

For Real? New Nationals manager Dusty Baker spent the first couple of days this spring accidentally calling him “Royce” Harper. Let’s just say ol’ Dusty knows his name now, and his eyes twinkle when he says it.

Chicago White Sox: Led by the Latos/Chris Sale tandem (and let’s not forget Jose Quintana and Carlos Rodon), the Sox lead the American League in ERA (2.28), WHIP (1.02) and opponents’ batting average (.204). That is far better than leading the league in jokes about kicking kids out of your clubhouse, which the Sox did this spring. Only thing hilarious about these Sox nowadays is how they’re chewing up everything in their path even though the bats have yet to come out of the deep freeze.

For Real? Anybody depending this heavily on the flaky Latos is vulnerable. But look at it this way: The White Sox rank 14th in the AL in runs scored (61), slugging percentage (.356) and OPS (.649), and with Todd Frazier, Melky Cabrera, Jose Abreu and Avisail Garcia swinging it in slugger-friendly U.S. Cellular Field, that will change as soon as the summer weather arrives. Look out, the Cubs are not the only club bringing sexy baseball back to the Windy City.

Baltimore Orioles: The O’s will mash with anybody. One veteran scout who watched them this spring in Florida came away saying Baltimore has the most power in its lineup, top to bottom, that he’s ever seen. Some are predicting Jonathan Schoop as this year’s AL breakout player of the year. With Chris Davis, Manny Machado, Mark Trumbo, Adam Jones, J.J. Hardy and Pedro Alvarez aboard, O’s batting practices are must-see.

For Real? Losing Yovani Gallardo to the disabled list (bicep tendinitis) weakens an already questionable pitching staff. Baltimore gets an enormous boost this week with the return of Kevin Gausman (right shoulder strain). How banged-up is Baltimore’s rotation? On the depth chart it listed for the O’s on Monday, MLB.com went only three deep on the five-man rotation. Good thing nobody is dominant in the AL East this year. So count this as a tentative yes in the “Are the O’s for real?” department.

Washington Nationals: From the desk of the Nationals: Memo to all of those who fell in love with the New York Mets last October: We can still play, man.

For Real: Absolutely, unquestionably, yes. Don’t be surprised if Dusty Baker winds up as NL Manager of the Year. He’s been the calming presence and smart baseball man that this clubhouse needed.

The Yankees: Thud! That was the sound of the Yankees tumbling into the AL East cellar. Now, do they stay there? The tough, three-city, nine-game trip they’re on right now to Texas, Boston and Baltimore is as unforgiving as Alex Rodriguez‘s aching oblique. The Yankees will get better—let’s remember, suspended closer Aroldis Chapman hasn’t shown up yet. But Michael Pineda has to be far better than he was on Sunday against Tampa Bay.

For Real? No. This is not a last-place club…unless age and injuries mug them for much of the summer.

Alex Rodriguez: Ugly slash line (.145/.242/.273), 19 strikeouts in 55 plate appearances and, now, an oblique strain. Suddenly, 40 is not the new 20.

For Real? This is what many of us expected last year. Does A-Rod have one more surprise up his sleeve? Maybe, but it is difficult to see anything like last year’s offensive bonanza on the horizon.

Manny Machado: Leading the AL with a .380 batting average and a .746 slugging percentage and second with six home runs, Machado is the overlooked one when folks focus on the Angels’ Mike Trout, the Blue Jays’ Josh Donaldson and the Astros’ Carlos Correa in the AL MVP discussion. Machado is only 23, has two good knees under him and is playing like a man driven for greatness.

For Real? Look out, this is the summer Machado chases the game‘s pinnacle.

Houston Astros: The nightmare continues in Houston, where the Astros battle to recapture last year’s vibe (and victories). But at 6-13, things are piling up quickly. Colby Rasmus has been terrific; Carlos Gomez, not so much. One thing this club could use is the return of injured starter Lance McCullers Jr.

For Real? The Astros are far better than they’re playing, and they’re young enough to remain resilient. “I think they’re pissed off,” A.J. Hinch told reporters Friday night. “I think they’re frustrated.” We’ll see where that takes them.

Trevor Story: Eight home runs, check. Thirty strikeouts in his first 75 at-bats, check. This kid has been sensational at times, and rookie-like at other times. Look for more of the same. He’s going to homer a lot (especially in Coors Field), and he’s going to strike out a lot. The Colorado Rockies will take what they can get in the post-Troy Tulowitzki era, especially with Jose Reyes expected to be released as soon as he’s finished serving whatever punishment MLB hands out in his domestic violence case.

For Real? Enough to keep the (fill-in-the-blank) Story puns cooking.

Adam Wainwright: The Cardinals need all hands on deck to fend off the Cubs this summer. Good news is they’ve got their ace back after he missed almost all of 2015 with an Achilles tendon injury. Bad news is, Waino is struggling so far.

For Real? “He keeps working,” Cardinals manager Mike Matheny says. “He’ll find the feel for it. And once he does, it’s going to be fun to watch.”

Turner Field infield: It’s been more (Tomahawk) choppy than the Braves this season, and being that the Braves were 4-14 heading into this week, that’s a whole lot of divots and bad hops. ESPN.com reported that the Braves may file a complaint with the Players’ Union, things were so bad.

For Real? Opponents have complained, but given Turner Field’s lame-duck status (the Braves are set to move into a new park next season), those opponents may want to wear batting helmets onto the field to protect themselves against all of those unpredictable bounces.

2. Stephen Strasburg’s Mystery Pitch

Dating back to last Aug. 8, Stephen Strasburg is 9-2 with a 1.98 ERA in his past 14 starts. During that time, he’s fanned 123 batters and walked just 15. He also is authoring one heck of a mystery.

See, he’s added a pitch. Or, rather, he’s utilizing a pitch he’s always had. And it has become quite a weapon, making him even more lethal.

It looks like a slider. New pitching coach Mike Maddux calls it a cutter, and first baseman Ryan Zimmerman described it to Chelsea Janes of the Washington Post as a “cutter/slider thing.”

Strasburg? He’s yet to acknowledge it. Maybe by not talking about it, he figures, it will just add to the mystery and intrigue for hitters.

Regardless, according to FanGraphs, Strasburg has thrown a slider 14.3 percent of the time so far in 2016. Last season, he threw the pitch 0.5 percent of the time, and in 2014, he threw it 1.4 percent of the time.

3. Color Them Purple

When I saw Ken Griffey Jr. this spring and asked how his Hall of Fame speech was coming along, he acknowledged he hadn’t started to write it yet. But he grinned, and said when he is inducted later this summer, maybe he will walk up to the podium and start this way:

“Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to celebrate this thing called life.”

It is the first line of the classic Prince song “Let’s Go Crazy.” And when the legend shockingly and tragically passed at 57 at home outside Minneapolis last Thursday, that moment with Griffey was one of the first things I flashed back to.

The gift of a truly great artist is that he or she touches so many people across so many walks of life in so many different ways. Prince did that in an enormous way, and even just a small glimpse of that was very evident in the baseball world over the past few days.

The Twins lit Target Field up in all purple after Prince’s passing, they showed Purple Rain, and the players wore purple armbands for Friday’s game in Washington.

It also is tradition that the Minnesota veterans made sure the rookies knew all the words to “Little Red Corvette”:

Meanwhile, Texas slugger Prince Fielder? Yep, named after Prince:

And in Cooperstown, this from Hall of Fame president Jeff Idelson:

And, several players used Prince songs for their walk-up music during games, including Alex Rodriguez (“Kiss,” “Alphabet St.,” “Pop Life”); Adam Jones (“Purple Rain,” “1999”); Brandon Phillips (“Purple Rain”); Matt Kemp (“Let’s Go Crazy”); and Melvin Upton Jr. (“When Doves Cry”).

4. This Week in Yasiel Puig

Two tremendous plays that you should see if you haven’t already.

The first, this pea from right field:

The second, also in Colorado over the weekend, this catch:

Also, this while the Dodgers traveled last week. Puig is showing his lighter side this year:

5. Pittsburgh’s New Lumber Company

Clint Hurdle always has been sort of an avant-garde manager, and one of the ways he tracks offensive production is by a very different measure: The Pirates keep track of “productive team plate appearances,” which are measured in one of eight ways per at-bat:

A productive plate appearance can be a hit, a walk, getting hit with a pitch, a sacrifice bunt, moving a runner from second to third, scoring a runner from third, a plate appearance of eight pitches or more and, finally, catcher’s interference.

Hurdle and his staff want a minimum of 15 of these productive plate appearances per game, figuring if that happens, the victories will pile up.

Through Pittsburgh’s first 15 games last week, Pirates hitters reached 15 productive plate appearances in a game 12 times, though they went only 7-8.

Hurdle credits Zack Rosenthal with creating the idea when he was managing in Colorado. Rosenthal is still with the Rockies, now their assistant general manager of baseball operations. Rosenthal, Hurdle said, hatched the idea after being influenced by former NFL coach Dick Vermeil’s philosophy that teams win 70 percent of the time when they produce 50 or more plays per game that net positive yardage.

According to Hurdle and the Pirates’ analytics department, a baseball team with 15 productive plate appearances per game should win 67 percent of the time. Stay tuned.

6. Weekly Power Rankings

1. Prince: Baby, that was much too fast.

2. Bryce Harper: His pinch-hit home run to send Sunday’s game with Minnesota into extra innings was just one more rabbit out of this guy’s magical cap.

3. Jake Arrieta: Next chance to match Johnny Vander Meer’s consecutive no-hitters: Wednesday night at Wrigley Field against the Milwaukee Brewers.

4. Washington Nationals: Hey! Remember us?

5. All-Star Voting: Open now. Start clicking to your heart’s delight, just like Kansas City fans did last year in working hard to stack the American League team. Cubs fans? Your move.

7. Who Needs Matt Harvey and Noah Syndergaard?

When you’ve got Yoenis Cespedes (knee problems aside), David Wright, Neil Walker, Lucas Duda and a modern-day Murderers’ Row like this:

And:

8. Chatter

**Among the bright spots for the Baltimore Orioles so far: left fielder Joey Rickard. “I couldn’t believe Tampa Bay didn’t protect him last winter,” says one scout of the man Baltimore stole in the Rule 5 draft. “There was some mis-evaluation there.”

**Word is former San Francisco ace Tim Lincecum is getting closer to a showcase for scouts, but nothing yet. It was supposed to take place in February, and then in March, leaving many scouts to surmise that he must not be as healthy as he hoped to be by now.

**There is little that Colorado’s outstanding third baseman Nolan Arenado cannot do. A Gold Glover who makes one highlight-reel play after another, he also was hitting .275/.359/.982 into this week with seven homers and 17 RBI. “He’s my favorite player,” one scout says. “I love to watch him.”

**Ron Gardenhire is back to the Minnesota Twins as a special assistant to general manager Terry Ryan. Gardenhire interviewed for manager jobs in Minnesota and Washington during the winter but didn’t find a fit. It speaks to the quality of talent and people in the Twins organization that not only is Gardenhire returning, but Billy Smith, who was fired as general manager in 2011, remained with the organization. The Twins have had only three men serve as GM since 1986: Terry Ryan, Smith and Andy MacPhail. They’ve also had only three managers since 1986: Paul Molitor, Gardenhire and Tom Kelly.

**Great line from St. Louis manager Mike Matheny on Friday regarding San Diego’s late (7:40 p.m.) Friday night starts: “I don’t have anywhere to go. And I don’t have a paper route in the morning.” He once delivered papers, though he never had his own route. He subbed for his brothers, who delivered the Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch.

**Some scouts are wondering whether something is physically wrong with Tampa Bay ace Chris Archer, who was 0-4 with a 7.32 ERA and a 2.085 WHIP entering Monday. A stellar 6.2 IP, 5 H, 0 ER, 10 K, 0 BB outing on Monday night against the aforementioned power-packed Orioles lineup may calm those fears.

**Things are described as being much looser in the Colorado Rockies’ clubhouse this year with Troy Tulowitzki gone. The cumulative pressure of Tulowitzki’s contract, the Rockies’ failure to win and the constant speculation about what his future was last year reached a point where trading him was for the best.

**Nice day at the park last week for former big league catcher Terry Steinbach, who watched his son hit his first home run for St. Thomas University. Except, true story, Jake’s home run smashed dad’s windshield.

9. Big Papi, the National League and Flashing Leather

With Boston touching down in Atlanta for a three-game set with the Braves this week, worth noting is this: Since 2003, into Monday, the Red Sox were 47-23 (.671) at National League ballparks when David Ortiz starts at first base. When he doesn’t? The Sox were 22-28 (.440).

Boston had won 40 of its past 54 interleague games in which Ortiz started at first base (74 percent), and since the start of the 2010 season, Ortiz had committed only one error in 33 starts at first base (231 total chances, a .996 fielding percentage).

Note: All above stats are via the Boston Red Sox game notes prior to Monday night’s game.

9a. Rock ‘n’ Roll Lyric of the Week

We’re going to miss you, Prince. Thanks for the treasure trove of music you leave us with. Nothing will compare to you.

“Springtime was always my favorite time of year

“A time for lovers holding hands in the rain

“Now springtime only reminds me of Tracy’s tears

“Always cry for love, never cry for pain

“He used to say so strong, oh unafraid to die

“Unafraid of the death that left me hypnotized

“No, staring at his picture I realized

“No one could cry the way my Tracy cried

“Sometimes it snows in April 

“Sometimes I feel so bad

“Sometimes, sometimes I wish that life was never ending

“And all good things, they say, never last”

—Prince, “Sometimes it Snows in April”

Scott Miller covers Major League Baseball as a national columnist for Bleacher Report.

Follow Scott on Twitter and talk baseball.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

Maybe it was because he figured he had already done it in October, so what the heck.

So Kris Bryant, the young star of the Chicago Cubs, went swimming with sharks during the winter in Hawaii. For real. And no, their names were not Matt Harvey, Jacob deGrom and Noah Syndergaard.

A couple of months after the New York Mets took a savage chomp out of his Cubs in the National League Championship Series, it was onward, upward and westward for Bryant, who immediately began preparing for 2016 by not brooding over the way 2015 ended. As much as any other Cub, Bryant lives by manager Joe Maddon’s credo of “don’t ever let the pressure exceed the pleasure.”

Right player, right talent, right place, right time.

Not every player is built like this, of course. But if you can step away periodically from the game’s pressures, expectations and hype, how can it not help avoid pitfalls like, say, the sophomore jinx?

“I’m all for the fun part of the game,” says Bryant, who has two homers and seven RBI in the Cubs’ first 15 games. “I think when you’re not playing baseball, you need to go out and enjoy yourself, just be a normal person and do things that you’ll remember.

“I got a chance to do some things that not many people have a chance to do this winter, and I had a blast with it.”

He already fills his spare time by playing golf and the guitar, among other interests. In Hawaii with his fiancee, Jessica, Bryant went bike riding through the jungle, paddle-boarded, golfed, went on a sightseeing helicopter ride above the islands and watched a surf competition.

“Had a blast,” Bryant says.

Especially because he emerged with limbs intact and nary a bite.

“Good thing he was inside of a cage,” injured teammate Kyle Schwarber quips. “I’d be sweating.”

The shark encounter resulted from one of Jessica’s ideas.

“My fiancee wanted to go swim with the dolphins,” Bryant says. “I was like, ‘Let’s just swim with the sharks. That’s even cooler.’

“I mean, dolphins, yeah, they’re cool. But sharks? Not many people are going to swim with them. We had to wake up super early, like 5 in the morning. Spontaneous. So we did it.”

From inside of a large cage, it was every bit as cool as he thought it could be.

“You could reach out and touch them if you wanted to,” Bryant says. “It was fun. I’d recommend it to anybody. I wasn’t scared at all. I was in a cage, fully protected. They weren’t coming to get me.”

It turns out there also are shark adventures where you can swim without a cage. Presumably, for folks with death wishes.

“I was not doing that,” Bryant says. “I’m in a cage, they say the shark’s not going to bite, but I’m sure if a shark sees a foot hanging out they’re going to bite it.”

Yeah, then he wouldn’t be quite so popular in Chicago anymore.

“I wouldn’t be playing anymore,” he says, chuckling.

Already, many contract clauses prohibit offseason activities like skiing and basketball. Surely, shark encounters are not exactly contract-friendly, either. Especially for a man who many think will become a National League MVP, possibly as soon as this year.

Bryant grins sheepishly.

“I don’t even think I was supposed to do that,” he says. “I was in a cage, which was good. But I’m never doing that again, that’s for sure. I mean, I had fun doing it, I just get seasick. I can’t be on a boat. So I was done. But I’m able to say I swam with sharks.”

His favorite thing, though, was the helicopter tour.

“We went with a surfer, Jamie O’Brien, and he knew the pilot and so the pilot was kind of showing off a little bit, doing some crazy maneuvers, and I’m like, ‘Whoa!'” Bryant says.

“It was like an intense roller-coaster ride. I hate flying, too. I’m petrified of flying. I was just like, ‘Oooh, this is fun.’ We landed on top of a mountain and looked all around the island. It was really cool.”

They were in Oahu, and it sure must have been beautiful, because getting Bryant up in the air is no small thing.

“Hate it,” he says. “I hate the flights here. It’s funny; the more I fly, the more I hate it. All of it. I don’t like the heights, I don’t like anything about it.”

So there’s the ivy-covered secret surrounding the Cubs’ third baseman: keep the guy on land. He hates flying. Gets seasick on boats.

But his manager? Boats, planes, sharks, whatever, Maddon is all-in on Bryant’s down-time odysseys. It all fits into the vibe he’s worked hard to create, the organizational culture he continues to feed.

“Love it,” Maddon says enthusiastically. “That’s part of what we do here on a smaller scale, taking chances, the risky component of how we do things on a daily basis.

“The fact that they know they can make a mistake out there [during a game]. The fact that a magician’s going to show up in the clubhouse in New York during a losing streak and it’s OK. That you’re going to dress up crazily among a group.

“That sounds superficial, but there’s this underlying component to this that permits you to take risks, step outside your comfort zone, step outside that box and take on these different kind of calculated risks.

“I am certain that everything he did here last year permitted him to swim with the sharks more easily.”

When flying, Bryant simply tries to sleep as quickly, and for as long, as he can. He does not take any sleep aids, though when he is embarking on a personal trip and not a baseball trip, he will drive instead of fly whenever possible.

Surfing, well, Bryant has tried it but figures at 6’5″ maybe he’s too tall. He couldn’t stand up on his board. Which made his admiration for what he watched at the Volcom Pipeline Pro in Hawaii during his trip swell like the waves.

“We were at a surf house, and some guys were coming back with gashes on their faces because of the rocks,” Bryant says. “The waves were massive. This was some serious stuff. I found a new appreciation for what they do.”

Just as, undoubtedly, others continue to find a new appreciation for what Bryant and the Cubs are doing. And, for what they hope to do this summer.

He is thrilled that the spotlight that followed him in the early part of last season as the Cubs and his agent, Scott Boras, wrestled over the business part of his service time and call-up date, has subsided. Now, he feels like just another guy in the clubhouse, and he is “having a blast” with it.

“He’s blossomed, he’s really blossomed,” Maddon says. “Even last [spring], we would have conversations in my office before it was being determined where he was going to go (ultimately, Triple-A Iowa to start the season) and he was very matter of fact with me. And I loved it.

“After he took a deep breath and understood that I was going to listen, the conversations were really open. And I really, really liked that a lot. Because I knew how good he was, and once he had an opportunity to be here that was going to show up.”

And, show up enjoying himself. Baseball, after all, is a game. You’re supposed to enjoy yourself.

“I’m pretty good at that,” Bryant says. “I go out there with a smile on my face and enjoy it, good or bad.

“Sometimes it’s hard, but Joe makes it a lot easier, just the stuff he does out here during stretch. The shows, the skits, it’s a lot of fun.”

All designed, of course, to keep the winning flowing for as long as possible. Because one day, you know, it is inevitable: Bryant and the Cubs themselves will, yes, jump the shark, but hopefully for the young Cubs with a trophy or two in hand.

Scott Miller covers Major League Baseball as a national columnist for Bleacher Report.

Follow Scott on Twitter and talk baseball.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

Few things excite Mike Trout like the weather. Give him a good storm, and you can see lightning bolts in his eyes.

During a blizzard last winter, he phoned in a report to the Weather Channel. In appreciation—or, perhaps, out of sheer amusement—the network promised to send him a weather balloon.

“I heard it’s pretty big. I haven’t seen it yet,” he said this spring. “You send it up in the air, fill it with helium, and it sends you some weather reports, like the wind speed.”

His father piqued his interest in the weather when he was young.

“Storms, I’m always on the computer,” Trout said. “It’s cool. It gets my mind off baseball, for sure. I get real excited. Every city we go to, if [my teammates] know it’s going to rain that night, they ask me what’s going to happen.”

These days, clouds surround his Los Angeles Angels much of the time, and few can predict with certainty what’s about to happen. True, they’ve turned around a 1-4 start to enter Friday on a modest four-game winning streak. But by most other barometers, things appear ominous.

Owner Arte Moreno’s latest attempt at stacking sandbags to stem the flooding sat in his spring training office one day late in camp and pondered a question: Are the consistently underachieving Angels blowing it by failing to take advantage of the prime of Trout?

“I don’t think our urgency is heightened, because we’re always at a high expectation level,” new general manager Billy Eppler said. “We clearly want to build a nucleus around our young, controllable talent.”

Eppler is in this chair because the last GM, Jerry Dipoto, could not work with manager Mike Scioscia under the conditions set by Moreno. Dipoto fled last July, smack in the middle of the season, after losing another head-butting contest with Scioscia, another brush fire set roaring through the smog choking this Angels organization.

The team’s marquee free agent of a few seasons ago, Albert Pujols, is 36 now and has battled leg injuries as he’s aged. Two other key free-agent signings, outfielder Josh Hamilton and starter C.J. Wilson, did not pay off as hoped.

At 33, ace Jered Weaver’s fastball has been muted. He had difficulty reaching 80 mph on the radar gun this spring. The Angels hope he can get by this summer with a chip on his shoulder and smoke with his mirrors.

Moreover, there is not much help on the farm right now to aid either the everyday lineup or to use as trade chips to import new talent. Baseball America this year ranked the Angels as having the worst farm system in the majors. Keith Law, ESPN.com’s expert on prospects, wrote that the Angels have the worst farm system that he’s “ever seen.”

It is not like this just happened overnight. Baseball America last year ranked the Angels system 27th among the 30 big league organizations. In 2014, just like this year, the publication ranked the Angels 30th.

Yes, welcome to Rally Monkey Nation, Mr. Eppler.

Though the Angels produced the best record in the majors just two years ago, they presently appear more in need of extra sandbags than extra October press-box seating.

“This is a team of young, controllable talent,” said Eppler, a top assistant to New York Yankees GM Brian Cashman before taking on the Angels’ challenge. “I look at this club and I see Mike Trout, Kole Calhoun, Andrelton Simmons, C.J. Cron, Garrett Richards, Andrew Heaney, Tyler Skaggs, Carlos Perez. And some [others] are going to emerge.

“But I’m counting those eight guys as young and controllable guys who can be part of a championship core for years to come.”

As each day passes during the prime of Trout’s career, that championship core, if there is to be one, had better come together soon.

“It’s easy to lose focus of the rest of the guys on the ballclub because of who he is,” Eppler said of Trout. “But other names in those eight are very good players, too.”

The Angels hear this talk about winning with Trout before it’s too late. Predictably, it is not on their list of favorite topics.

“We can’t control that,” Pujols said. “All we can do is control getting ready for this season.”

Said Richards: “We’re not worried about it. We’re going to be fine.”

But time is slipping away.

Through his first six seasons, covering 661 games and 2,915 plate appearances, Trout has played exactly three postseason games. That was two years ago, when the Kansas City Royals skunked the Angels in a three-game romp.

During that span, though the Washington Nationals haven’t won a playoff series either, at least Bryce Harper has been there twice in four years, playing in three times Trout’s total of postseason games. Houston’s Carlos Correa splashed down in October as a rookie last fall.

Though Trout already has won one American League Most Valuable Player award (2014) and finished second three times (2012, 2013, 2015), the Angels have consistently failed to put the kind of team around him that can put a franchise player on the game’s biggest stage.

In Trout’s first full season, 2013, the Angels went 78-84.

Then came ’14, the best record in the majors (98-64) and the postseason splat against Kansas City.

Last year, the Angels dug themselves an enormous hole with inconsistent play early and then came charging back and just missed a playoff spot on the last day of the season with an 85-77 finish.

“It was exciting,” Trout said. “Looking back, it was a positive. We fought until the last day. Every out was huge.

“You look back now, one game maybe in April or May, or June, we let slip by or we weren’t focused the whole game, that one game could have helped us. It comes down to the wire every year for some teams. It’s just getting off to a good start this year. That’s the most important thing.”

The Chicago Cubs buried the Angels in the season’s first two games. Two scouts who watched the Angels this spring said they aren’t bad, maybe a .500 team as constructed, but each noted a potentially lethal lack of depth. A key injury could wreck things quickly because of the paucity of the farm system, putting Trout even further from the postseason stage.

“He’s still only 25 years old,” Calhoun said of Trout [who actually turns 25 in August]. “From a baseball standpoint, he’s got a long baseball life in front of him.”

Before the 2014 season, Trout signed a six-year, $144.5 million deal with the Angels that runs through 2020. It is heavily back-loaded: He will earn $33.25 million in each of the last three years of the deal.

One of these years, he figures the club will get over the October hump.

“You know, we can’t look ahead,” he said. “We’ve got to just make the playoffs. Start from there. That’s the big thing.

“Then, if you get hot during the playoffs, anything can happen. You’ve seen it the past couple of years with the Royals. They have a great team and got hot. We played them…they got hot.

“I think playing meaningful games in September helps you out. It was an exciting finish last year. Obviously, we fell short. But there were definitely some positives.”

As is the case in nearly every other clubhouse at this time of year, the Angels feel good about the spring they just completed and are filled with hope that this year will be filled with sunshine and balloons.

And if it’s not, they think, then who’s to say Trout still won’t lead them to the promised land one day soon?

“I think everybody thinks he’s at his peak,” said closer Huston Street, an 11-year veteran. “Everybody wants to say, ‘How can you get any better than what he is?’

“The kid’s 24 years old. Of course, he has time to get better. That’s what’s exciting for me. Why limit him? He’s one of the most focused, talented players I’ve ever been around. He has humility. He loves the game.

“There’s always a sense of urgency with us, and it has nothing to do with Mike. But when you have a Mike Trout on your team, there’s always a possibility. He’s that dynamic. He changes the game that much.”

Street, 32, a two-time All-Star, can’t imagine thinking he had peaked at 24.

“If someone told me at 24 that I’d peaked, I’d have looked them straight in the eyes and told them they’re an idiot,” Street says.

Trout is too polite and friendly to do that.

But this chatter about the Angels consistently failing to take advantage of his prime? You bet it reaches him.

“Obviously, you hear everything when you’re playing,” he said. “We have a great group of guys together. Billy Eppler is a great guy; he interacts well with us. He gets our opinion. He comes down here and sees how we’re feeling.

“That’s the biggest thing that’s going to help us this year. We’re all together. It starts from the top.”

But while he says they’re all in this together, Trout’s singular greatness naturally places him apart from his teammates. His blinders to that probably are beneficial. At least, they reduce the awkwardness.

“It’s a team game. We’ve got new faces in here, new pieces to the puzzle,” he said. “We’ve got one more year of guys who were a little inexperienced last year. [They] know what to expect this year. They’re more confident, and I think that helps us.

“I just keep playing my game hard. I can’t control what people say. We try to set goals, and our goal is the playoffs.”

And if not, well, maybe by October he’ll have that weather balloon to keep him occupied.

Scott Miller covers Major League Baseball as a national columnist for Bleacher Report.

Follow Scott on Twitter and talk baseball.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

Zack Greinke is renewing acquaintances during his highly anticipated return to Los Angeles this week. Alas, he is not starting in L.A.

This is purely a social visit for the man who opted out of his Dodgers deal and signed a whopping six-year, $206.5 million contract with the Arizona Diamondbacks over the winter. His ex-teammates will find themselves on the business end of his pitches somewhere down the line this summer—and yes, when that happens, it sure will be different.

“It will be really weird,” Dodgers catcher A.J. Ellis says. “It already is really weird seeing him on TV wearing a different uniform.

“It was great to see him this spring. He was a great friend to so many of us while he was here. And he was a great teammate.”

What is far weirder than the sight of Greinke wearing a Diamondbacks uniform is that 9.90 ERA stuck next to his name. Two starts into the season, Greinke has struggled.

Last year, his ERA never even climbed into the 2.00s. His season high in 2015 was 1.97, last June 2. Talk about a stark difference. His next chance at his first victory for Arizona will come Friday in San Diego.

“I guess it could have gone worse, but it’s been pretty bad,” Greinke told reporters after the Chicago Cubs cuffed him for four earned runs and seven hits in six innings during Chicago’s 4-2 win in the desert over the weekend. “I should do better.”

That his 2016 numbers would inflate after last season’s sublime run was one of the most predictable things about this summer. The thin desert air is far more friendly to hitters than to pitchers. Still, given who he is, Greinke should—and will—find his footing.

The Dodgers, meanwhile, look forward to their inevitable meeting with him.

“It’s always cool to get a hit off of one of your ex-teammates, for bragging rights,” Dodgers outfielder Carl Crawford says. “I was surprised he left, because he was so close to Clayton Kershaw.”

There are few surprises in free agency, because money speaks loudly. And for a marquee player like Greinke, you never know when the next Brink’s truck will show up in the driveway. The Dodgers thought they had him at one point during the winter when negotiations reached the “1-yard line,” according to Bleacher Report sources.

Greinke‘s agent, Casey Close, essentially was working with the Dodgers on the final, specific details of what would have been a five-year agreement when Arizona unexpectedly called. A couple of hours later, working under the parameters of a six-year deal with the Diamondbacks, the split with L.A. was sudden and complete.

“Players that earn the right to become a free agent get to make whatever they feel is the best decision for them and their family,” Andrew Friedman, the Dodgers’ president of baseball operations, says. “Different people handle it different ways. There is no right or wrong answer.

“This is what he felt made the most sense for him and his family, and we wish him nothing but the best.”

The Dodgers have fond memories of their famously quirky former ace. That part of Greinke still elicits big smiles from his former teammates, many of whom still have a favorite among his many, many eccentricities.

“Probably the way he sits on the bench when he’s not pitching, but watching games,” Dodgers third baseman Justin Turner says, grinning. “He crosses his legs underneath himself. It is so unorthodox.

“Every day coming out of the tunnel into the dugout before a game and seeing that, it was funny to me.”

Says Ellis: “Never knowing whether there was music on when he had his headphones on. You never knew if he was listening to music or not, but you knew he didn’t want to talk.”

“I love the fact that he always gives his honest opinion, and he’s always asking you for your honest opinion,” Dodgers first baseman Adrian Gonzalez says. “I always prefer that to someone who says something to you, and then something else behind your back.

“That’s not a good teammate. With Zack, he tells you right out. Nothing is said behind your back.”

Though he only spent one year with Greinke, Friedman agrees with Gonzalez.

“Just the fact that he didn’t have a filter, it was really refreshing,” Friedman says. “A lot of guys are really premeditated with what they say. I could count on 100 percent honesty from him at all times. It was great.

“It was great dialogue back and forth. I have a lot of respect for what he does to prepare himself, both mentally and physically. I think it’s something that is a little unique among baseball players.”

After this week, the Dodgers don’t play the Diamondbacks again until mid-June, when they travel to Arizona. The Diamondbacks don’t return to Dodger Stadium until July 29-31. So after this week’s hellos, it will be a while before their businesses intersect.

“I always feel like the pitcher has the advantage, no matter what,” Gonzalez says. “Obviously, we haven’t faced him in a long time. It’s all about the unknown. You don’t know what his pitch selection is going to be.

“With really good pitchers, it’s their job to make you go 0-for-3 or 0-for-4. You get a hit, you’ve won.”

Turner, the former Met, ran into similarly awkward situations when the Dodgers played New York in 2014, which was the third baseman’s first season in Los Angeles. Facing his old minor league roommate Matt Harvey was especially entertaining for him.

“It was definitely fun facing all of the Mets guys,” Turner says. “You know what they throw so well. And the competitiveness. You want to beat them.”

Assuming he’s finished wobbling by the time he faces the Dodgers and is back to his regular, dominating self, the thing with Greinke is, he brings so many weapons. And not all of them are obvious.

“The one thing I’m worried about when we face him is his offense,” Ellis says of a former teammate who hit .249 in 185 at-bats with the Dodgers. “I’ll spend more time looking at that, and how to stop him, rather than how to prepare to hit against him.”

By then, assuming Greinke is back in rhythm, preparing to hit against him can be everybody else’s problem.

Scott Miller covers Major League Baseball as a national columnist for Bleacher Report.

Follow Scott on Twitter and talk baseball.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com