HumpLinks: Halos whip up a W

Starling Marte, busted. 80-game PEDs suspension. That puts a hole in left field for Pittsburgh. But I do have to wonder. Marte's slash line is only .241/.288/.370 with an OPS of .659. Maybe he should go and ask for his money back from his source..........For the most part, players (well, at least the LAA players interviewed here) feel that this is a pretty good deterrent. Since it didn't deter Marrte, one must presume the players feel that without this level of penalty, everybody would still be chasing the PEDs dream. Jake Diekman, bullpen arm for the Rangers, has some fairly draconian feelings on the issue. As Bill Baer immediately points out, Jake Diekman is not an econ major.........

When I read Ken Rosenthal's take on the Marte story, I cannot help but think back to our own Gary Matthews, Jr...........

Remember when the Phillies thought they were beefing up their rotation when they acquired Clay Buchholz from the Red Sox? The Red Sox, after having acquired Chris Sale to add to David Price, saw Buchholz as an excellent piece to offer up for salary relief to afford Sale, and maybe get back some prospect or two. They got the salary relief. They got the one prospect (Josh Tobias). And they got extremely lucky. The Phillies thought they were getting a rotation anchor. So did everybody else. Not so. Buchholz, for all intent and purpose, is done for 2017..........

This lit up the baseball reddit page last night. MLB umpire CB Bucknor has himself an absolute shitshow of a night behind home plate. He completely lost track of where home plate was bolted down onto the field of play, but was laughably one-sided about it. He's pulling the plug on pitchers into their windup. And then, to end it all, he completely lost track as to how to end it all. "I don't even think he knows what town he's in right now."...I defy you to find any such video documentation of his disaster on the official MLB web site..........And even as I do my scouring of the Internet, more eyeballs are getting pasted on this dude's comically bad work............

Major League Baseball gets an overall grade of C+ for hiring diversity. I harp on this a lot, but that doesn't mean I cannot look at that kind of report with a long sideways stare of curiosity. You bet there are certain layers within the enterprise that are predominantly, or even exclusively, white male. But in the overall context of how many total humans are employed in the industry, with a disproportionate number of them the players themselves, that grade just doesn't pass the smell test. Not for me, anyway. Some things skew the numbers in ways I would need to study harder to get explained. Are franchise front office interns counted as "employees" for purposes of this study? Are the franchise owners, who are NOT hired personnel, excluded from the Front Office personnel counts? Why are the players NOT counted? (Counting players, of course, would render the numbers for female involvement almost non-existent.) Maybe in another life I will have time to totally vet stuff like this, but not today. Feel free to do so and report back for all our benefit.........

Uh, quick, somebody get me the Commissioner's office. If we want to speed up the game, we certainly do NOT need to extend the Instant Replay delays any further by giving umpires a mic so that they can announce to all present when the ruling was all about. We get enough theater out of these guys as it is. Just give the info to the broadcast booths and the press box, and put some text on the scoreboard for fans present. Let all that info get out at its own pace while the game can continue..........Oh wait. I'm not the only one who noticed this!..........

Billy Ripken takes on The Shift. I wonder what the BAPIP would be if teams did NOT shift?..........And the Cards and Cubs seem to be taking on defensive metrics in the StatCast Age. Case in point: Dexter Fowler..........