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Colorado Rockies outfielder Charlie Blackmon left Wednesday’s game against the San Francisco Giants early after suffering a toe injury, and the timetable for his return is uncertain. 

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Blackmon Placed on 15-Day DL

Thursday, April 14

According to the Rockies, Blackmon was officially placed on the 15-day disabled list Thursday due to turf toe on his left foot.

In his third season as a regular starter, Blackmon is hitting .185/.241/.575 with no home runs and three runs batted in so far in 2016 to go along with one stolen base.

The 29-year-old was extremely productive in 2015 with a .287 batting average, 17 homers, 58 RBI and 43 steals.

The Rockies outfield entered the season in a state of flux. Gerardo Parra signed a three-year deal in the offseason, creating a logjam, which Blackmon was initially not a fan of.

“I was [a] little perplexed at first,” Blackmon said, according to Nick Groke of the Denver Post. “Because I didn’t really see it coming. Going into the offseason, I didn’t know that was in play, really. But after looking at it, he’s a great player. I’ve played against him, seen him play. He’s got one of the best arms in the league. He can only make our team better.”

Luckily, Colorado’s depth should allow it to withstand Blackmon’s absence to some degree.

Parra and Carlos Gonzalez make up the rest of the outfield, while utility man Ryan Raburn can fill in for a period of time, particularly against left-handed starters.

In addition to that, shortstop Trevor Story, third baseman Nolan Arenado and second baseman D.J. LeMahieu are off to red-hot starts.

Assuming they can keep up their level of play and LeMahieu replaces Blackmon effectively as the leadoff man, Colorado is capable of playing winning baseball even without Blackmon’s services. 

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The Boston Red Sox will place third baseman Pablo Sandoval on the disabled list after he suffered a left shoulder strain. It is unclear when he will return to the lineup.

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Sandoval Undergoes MRI 

Friday, April 15

Red Sox general manager Dave Dombrowski said Sandoval has “a lot going on with his shoulder,” per Peter Abraham of the Boston Globe. Dombrowski added Sandoval will see Dr. James Andrews and that surgery is an option.

On Wednesday, Sandoval said he woke up not having any feeling in his arm, which also happened to him in 2011, per Evan Drellich of the Boston Herald.

How Sandoval’s Absence Impacts Red Sox

Rob Bradford of WEEI reported Josh Rutledge will replace Sandoval on the 25-man roster. 

Sandoval, 29, is without a hit in six at-bats this season and lost his starting job to Travis Shaw. 

One of Boston’s major offseason signings prior to the 2015 campaign, Sandoval’s time in Boston has not gone to plan. He hit .245/.292/.366 with 10 home runs and 47 RBI last season while playing perhaps the worst defense of his career. FanGraphs‘ WAR formula graded it as his worst season by far.

“Every year I have to prove something to my teammates, to the fans, to everybody,” Sandoval said in March, per Scott Lauber of ESPN.com. “Why am I going to get mad? We are teammates, we’re playing good. It’s not my decision; it’s not [Shaw’s] decision. We’re going to keep playing and working hard.”

In all likelihood, this is as much a move for Sandoval’s mental health as it is anything. Manager John Farrell categorized it as a chance to “step away from the scrutiny,” per Brian MacPherson of the Providence Journal.

The Red Sox aren’t going to see much impact on their on-field product given they weren’t using Sandoval much as it was.

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Rather than make fans wait until the first pitch approached, the New York Yankees pre-emptively postponed Monday’s Opening Day game against the Houston Astros because of inclement weather.

The game was scheduled for a 1 p.m. ET first pitch. The teams will instead play Tuesday, which was originally scheduled as an off day. Sweeny Murti of WFAN noted the game will have a 1 p.m. ET start time, and fans can either attend that contest or use their ticket for another game in the future.

Rain has been coming down throughout the morning in New York and is expected throughout the day, according to Weather.com. No inclement weather is expected for Tuesday or Wednesday, but there is currently a 100 percent chance of rain Thursday—the day of the final game in the three-game series.

Monday’s game was supposed to be an early-afternoon chance for a national audience to see the Yankees and Astros renew their 2015 Wild Card matchup.

Houston defeated New York 3-0 in the one-game playoff behind six innings of shutout ball from Dallas Keuchel. The Astros’ ace is scheduled to start their season opener against Masahiro Tanaka, who took the loss in their playoff matchup after giving up two runs in five innings. Both pitchers should still be on the mound Tuesday.

The Yankees come in having lost their last three Opening Day games, including one to the Astros in 2014. Houston, by contrast, has won its last three openers.

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The Detroit Tigers agreed to send catcher Bryan Holaday to the Texas Rangers on Tuesday in exchange for catcher Bobby Wilson and right-handed pitcher Myles Jaye.

Holaday, 28, has spent parts of the last four seasons in Detroit as a backup. He hit .281/.292/.453 with two home runs and 13 RBI in 2015. The Rangers may be looking at Holaday to compete with Robinson Chirinos, who has raw power but has never been an every-day option.

Wilson, 32, split the 2015 season with the Rangers and Tampa Bay Rays. He hit .189/.255/.250 with one home run and 14 runs batted in. A backup throughout his career, most of which he’s spent with the Los Angeles Angels, Wilson will likely slot into Holaday‘s vacant backup spot. He may even wind up as the team’s third catcher.

Jaye, 24, was traded to Texas in the offseason. A former 17th-round pick of the Toronto Blue Jays, he has also spent time with the Chicago White Sox in addition to Texas. This will be his third organization since the beginning of the 2015 season.

“I’d like to thank the Texas Rangers for everything. First class organization! Looking forward to the road ahead with Detroit,” Jaye tweeted.

Overall, this is a deal that won’t move too many needles. Jaye and Holaday are the two biggest pieces moving. Jaye has a chance to be an end-of-the-rotation starter if certain things break right, while Holaday probably tops out as the better of two players in a catching platoon.

There won’t be any World Series games won or lost here. Just two teams looking to make the best of their organizational situations as we head into the regular season. 

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Boston Red Sox outfielder David Murphy has exercised an opt-out clause in his contract, forcing the team to place him on its 40-man roster or release him by Tuesday.

Tim Britton of the Providence Journal reported the news. Murphy, 34, signed a one-year contract with the Red Sox that is worth $2 million if he makes the major league roster. 

The veteran, who split last season with the Cleveland Indians and Los Angeles Angels, has had a mostly solid spring training. He hit .281/.294/.375 with three runs batted in, going without a home run in his 32 at-bats. The Red Sox plugged him in mostly as a backup option to their young outfield, which doesn’t feature an expected starter above 28 years old.

“I’m interested in winning a World Series,” Murphy said, per Scott Lauber of ESPN.com, “and you can’t do that in the minor leagues.”

Based on his 2015 stats, it’s hard to see why a team wouldn’t take a chance on Murphy. He hit a solid .283/.318/.421 last season with 10 home runs and 50 runs batted in. FanGraphs’ WAR formula had him as basically a replacement-level player, which shouldn’t put him in starting contention but is enough to throw him in an outfield platoon somewhere. 

Murphy’s decision to sign with the Red Sox confirms he’s more interested in winning than extended playing time at this point. If Murphy doesn’t make it in Boston, though, he’s seemingly interested in continuing to play, per Lauber:

I feel like, I don’t know, with as crazy as the offseason was and having a pretty decent year last year, I felt like if I took care of business [in spring training] that good things would happen. And as well on the reverse side. If things didn’t end up the way that I wanted them to, then that was part of my thinking, like maybe it’s time to consider walking away. Because at the age that I am and just where things are, it’s not like there’s a ceiling to be reached.

Now that he’s put the pressure on, the Red Sox have to make a decision. Murphy’s performance has largely been on par with his career norm, but his opportunities waned as spring training went on. Odds would be on Boston moving on, but we’ve seen far stranger things happen. 

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Joe Garagiola Sr., who spent nine seasons in MLB before moving on to a storied broadcasting career, died Tuesday. He was 90.

“We are deeply saddened by the loss of baseball legend and former #Dbacks broadcaster Joe Garagiola,” the Arizona Diamondbacks said in a Twitter statement.   

Garagiola batted .257 with 42 home runs and 255 runs batted in across his nine seasons, playing for the St. Louis Cardinals, Pittsburgh Pirates, Chicago Cubs and New York Giants. A St. Louis native, he joined the Cardinals’ radio broadcast booth—where he truly found his calling—after retirement.

Garagiola’s broadcasting career spanned parts of seven decades. He spent a majority of his career calling baseball games for NBC, serving both as a play-by-play announcer and a color commentator. His work with Vin Scully carried the network throughout much of the 1980s, and the pair called multiple All-Star Games and World Series together. The two famously called Kirk Gibson’s 1988 World Series home run in one of the most iconic moments in MLB history.

“Scully and Garagiola are considered by many to be the best baseball announcing team ever,” Larry Stewart wrote in a 1987 Los Angeles Times profile of the two.

“Joe was remarkably prepared for every single broadcast. He was professional from head to toe. And fun to work with, as you can well imagine,” Scully said in a 2013 broadcast after Garagiola’s retirement, via Eric Stephen of SB Nation’s True Blue LA.

After leaving NBC after the 1988 season, Garagiola largely stepped away from full-time duties. He briefly worked for the California Angels in 1990 and then was an occasional broadcaster for the Diamondbacks from 1998 through the 2012 season. While he never worked a full-time schedule, Garagiola became a beloved member of the community in Arizona—staying long after his son Joe Garagiola Jr. left the organization.

“What I tried to do was talk baseball. And the big thing I learned was to stay with the ball, stay with the game,” Garagiola said of his broadcasting style, per Michael Hiestand of USA Today. “Statistics weren’t my line. Statistics are like a lamppost for a drunk. If you don’t know what to do, say what somebody hit in Paduka. But who really cares?”

In addition to his work in baseball, Garagiola had a notable career in other forms of media. He served as a panelist on the Today Show for nearly a decade (split across two stints), was the host of a number of game shows and even was the guest host of The Tonight Show at times in place of Johnny Carson.

The Baseball Hall of Fame honored Garagiola twice, first in 1991 with the Ford C. Frick Award and again in 2014 with the Buck O’Neil Lifetime Achievement Award. He is one of just three men in history to win the Buck O’Neil award.

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Continuing a movement that has been sweeping through major cities, the New York City Council officially banned all chewing tobacco from Citi Field and Yankee Stadium on Tuesday.

Jared Diamond of the Wall Street Journal reported the news. The legislation had been makings its rounds for months, getting approval from the health department in February before going up for a formal vote this week. The council’s health committee passed the ban by a 7-1 vote Monday, setting up Tuesday’s formal decision.   

“In New York City we’ve seen smoking rates precipitously decline because of public health measures, but chewing tobacco has remained steady, without much of a decline—especially among young men, and especially among athletes. And I think that’s primarily because it’s socially acceptable, and we see baseball players using it on the field,” Councilman Corey Johnson said, per Erin Durkin of the New York Post.

New York joins Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco and Boston as the major U.S. cities to ban smokeless tobacco in ballparks. The Yankees and Mets have come out publicly in favor of legislation.  

“Major League Baseball has long supported a ban of smokeless tobacco at the major league level and the New York Yankees fully support the proposed Local Law to amend the Administrative Code of the City of New York pertaining to prohibiting the use of smokeless tobacco at ticketed sports arenas and recreation areas,” the Yankees said in a February statement. 

“The New York Mets join Major League Baseball in the support of the local law to ban smokeless tobacco in New York ticketed arenas, stadiums and ballparks. Preventing children from being exposed to smokeless tobacco is an important initiative and we are glad to play our part in achieving this important goal,” the Mets’ statement read.

While the ban has support from MLB and its teams, players have seen the issue differently. Many have wondered aloud how or if it’s even possible to police chewing tobacco, and they’ve voiced their displeasure about a long-standing tradition being taken away.

“Does that mean a fan at the game will get a citation or something, whether another fan acknowledges it and calls the police or the helpline?” Mets outfielder Curtis Granderson said, per Mike Puma of the New York Post. “If a security guard or police or unmarked sees another fan doing it, do they do something? If you see a player doing something, do you give him something, during the game, after the game? It will be interesting to see what the definition is.”

Chicago Cubs manager Joe Maddon was also critical of his city’s ban, saying he is “not into overlegislating the human race,” per Patrick Mooney of CSN Chicago.

It appears these bans are here to stay, and there should be more down the pipeline. As other cities begin seeing how places like L.A. and New York police smokeless tobacco, each will likely examine whether its city’s infrastructure could handle a similar situation.

It’s possible this winds up being nothing but a paper ban and players continue chewing unimpeded. But if these cities are serious, some players are in for a big change.

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Chicago Cubs manager Joe Maddon does not agree with the city’s decision to ban smokeless tobacco in sports stadiums. 

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The Atlanta Braves and Miami Marlins will play their July 3 regular-season matchup at a newly constructed ballpark at Fort Bragg Military base in North Carolina, MLB and the MLB Players Association said in a joint release Tuesday.  

“Major League Baseball’s boundless gratitude to our military has led us to a unique event that will benefit the men and women of Fort Bragg and their families for many years,” Commissioner Rob Manfred said in a statement, per MLB.com’s John Schlegel. “I thank the Braves and the Marlins for their participation and all of our Clubs and Players for contributing to this gesture, which will stand as a fitting new chapter in the National Pastime’s proud and distinguished military history.”

The game is the first regular-season game to ever be played on an active military base in United States professional sports history. ESPN will broadcast the game as its Sunday Night Baseball telecast, which will come as part of the Independence Day celebration.

The ballpark, which will be converted into a softball field and multipurpose facility, has a capacity of 12,500. MLB and the MLBPA collaborated on the field’s construction and gave it as a gift to military members. MLBPA Executive Director Tony Clark issued a statement thanking the service men and women for their protection, per Schlegel:  

As the son of a Navy officer, I am extremely proud to stand with all Players and Major League Baseball as we honor our nation’s military and our country, through the playing of a regular season game in historic Fort Bragg on Fourth of July weekend. Many players are the grandsons, sons and brothers of men and women who have served or continue to serve our country. This one-of-a-kind ballpark construction project provides us with an opportunity to say ‘thank you’ to all who serve to protect our great nation.

The Braves will give up one home game for the honor of hosting this contest. The North Carolina military base is one of the largest in the world, housing the Army’s special and airborne forces. It has been around for nearly a century, becoming a vital resource for the United States during World War II. Fort Bragg continues to be the most densely populated military base in the U.S.

The donation of the field by MLB and the MLBPA, as well as the Braves’ and Marlins’ participation in the event, is a commendable service to those who risk their lives to keep this country safe. There’s nothing else to say here other than to give kudos to MLB, the MLBPA and all involved for making this happen.

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Pedro Alvarez’s surprise entry into free agency has landed him in Baltimore. The Orioles announced Thursday morning that they agreed to a one-year contract with Alvarez after his abrupt departure from the Pittsburgh Pirates.

“To make room on the 40-man roster, the Orioles have released RHP Andrew Triggs,” the Orioles announced.

Dennis Lin of the San Diego Union-Tribune (h/t Ken Rosenthal of Fox Sports) first reported the deal on March 7, and Joel Sherman of the New York Post reported the deal is worth $5.75 million with $1.5 million available in performance bonuses.

The Pirates non-tendered Alvarez on Dec. 2, bringing an abrupt end to his six-year run in the Steel City. While it was widely known that Alvarez could have been had via trade, it was still a surprise to see Pittsburgh let him walk one year early with nothing in return.

Alvarez, 29, hit .243/.318/.469 with 27 home runs and 77 RBI last season. He showed marked improvement from his 2014 power numbers (18 homers, 56 RBI), but it was far from the type of performance the Pirates expected. Moving Alvarez from third to first base was supposed to lessen his defensive workload while allowing him to return to offensive form.

It didn’t quite work out that way. Alvarez was the sport’s worst defensive first baseman by a significant margin and did not flash the same level of pop he had in 2012 and 2013, when he combined for 66 home runs. He accounted for just 0.3 wins above replacement over the last two seasons, per FanGraphs, and produced one win in just three of his six campaigns.

Nevertheless, Alvarez still led the Pirates in home runs and could have more value if he’s forced to play the field less.

“Pedro has extraordinary power,” Alvarez’s agent, Scott Boras, said in December, per Rob Biertempfel of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. “He’s got a history, when he plays every day, of hitting 35 home runs and driving in 90 to 100 runs. And he’s done it in a ballpark (PNC Park) that’s very tough on left-handed hitters. That’s something most teams don’t have.”

Alvarez also has problems that stretch well beyond his defense. He’s struck out on 29.1 percent of his at-bats for his career and has drawn 50 walks in a season just once. His plate discipline is below average on a good day, and even in an era where power matters more than ever, having a .309 career on-base percentage is disconcerting.

As it stands, Alvarez got his wish of leaving Pittsburgh and will get the chance to turn his career around in the hitter-friendly setting of Camden Yards. We’ll see if the change of scenery rejuvenates Alvarez, or if the former No. 2 overall pick’s early MLB success was an outlier. 

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