Injuries bedevil the Rays, as both Carl Crawford (right middle finger tendon injury) and Evan Longoria (broken wrist, thank you, J.J. Putz) hit the 15-day DL, Longoria retroactive to Friday.

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I don't know how I stumbled into this, but somebody over at Red Reporter was whinging about the long six-team NL Central division, because it takes away postseason opportunities for teams in that division.

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Tom Kotchman, Casey's father, won his 1,500th game as a manager last night, beating the Dodgers' Pioneer League affiliate team, the Ogden Raptors, 5-3 in ten innings on the road.

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Al asked earlier in the thread about Friday's game when the last time was that the Cubs had actually had the best record this late in the majors. I thought it would be interesting to look into some other years, using 47-22 as a jumping-off point.

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John Lackey threw what will probably be his last rehab game in extended spring training today, and it was a success.

"He maintained his stuff the whole way," Angels manager Mike Scioscia said before Friday night's game against Tampa Bay. "His workout today was what we were looking for."

After throwing today, that would put him back on the club on May 14. The big question, of course, is who will go down once he goes up. I can't imagine it will be Moseley, Darren O'Day is pitching reasonably well but is on the cusp, and Bootcheck and Moseley are about the same as far as I can tell.

Poll

Who goes down once Lackey comes back up?

• Dustin Moseley
• Chris Bootcheck
• Darren O'Day
• Brandon Wood (or some other position player)
• Nick Adenhart

  91 votes | Results

Can't believe this hasn't been posted, but former Angels GM Buzzie Bavasi passed away at the age of 93 today, according to the AP. Bavasi ran the ship from 1978-1984, the Halos' first heyday when they won the the AL West in 1979 and 1982. I always get the sense reading about him that he never really understood free agency, and it hurt him while he was running the Angels in that era.

More at MLB.com and the Seattle Press-Intelligencer blog, which has a mini-bio of him from the perspective of son Bill, currently the M's GM.

Robothal is reporting Seattle has extended the contract of their starting catcher, Kenji Johjima, for another three years. That means he'll be with the team through 2011, playing out his age 35 season. He's starting very slowly (.200/.268/.246), which leads me to two possibly conflicting conclusions:

1. The M's have lost faith in ex-USC catcher Jeff Clement and will move him to 1B/DH.
2. The M's want Johjima as a backup at exorbitant rates, and don't understand the number of free agent catch-and-throw guys available as backups.

Just the sort of deal to make you happy Bavasi isn't running the Halos anymore.