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It was an all-around tough day for the Tampa Bay Rays, who saw Fernando Rodney blow up in the ninth inning and blow a lead to the Red Sox, this just a little while after they placed Cy Young Award winner David Price on the disabled list.

For an organization that maintains a disciplined, big-picture view of operations, the Price situation is now completely muddled. Manager Joe Maddon spoke about Price’s DL stint through a glass-half-full prism, about this being a relatively minor injury that would only cost the left-hander two or three starts. But then, Maddon would be the one guy in the lifeboat perpetually telling everybody else there is land just over the horizon; it’s part of what makes him a perfect fit as the manager for a team with a relatively minuscule payroll.

In a perfect world for the Rays, Price would have zipped through the American League in the way that he did in 2012, dominating hitters and contending for another Cy Young Award. In a perfect world for the Rays, he would have led them into the postseason, thrown well in October, enabling them to market him with his trade value at its highest.

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I heard a great description of Matt Harvey’s curveball the other day from a longtime evaluator, and it really would apply to Clayton Kershaw’s curveball as well: Even when a hitter is looking for it, even when he plans to swing at it, even when he knows it’s coming, it really doesn’t matter -- he still can’t hit it.

Over and over again, this is what happened to the Nationals’ hitters Tuesday night, because over and over again, Kershaw pitched with the same pattern and there was nothing Washington was able to do to stop him. He’d get ahead in the count and then finish them off with a curveball; check out Tyler Moore 25 seconds into this video, and it goes from there.

Kershaw threw a career-high 132 pitches in shutting out the Nationals over 8 2/3 innings in a 2-0 Dodgers win.

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You can count four or five steps on the warning track by Bryce Harper before he crashes into the wall at Dodger Stadium in Monday’s game -- four or five steps on the warning track, which is called that for precisely the reason the name implies. Fielders can feel the change in their footing and are able to estimate, without looking down, how close they are to the fence.

So Harper either wasn’t cognizant that he had sprinted onto new ground or else, more likely, he simply ignored all the sensory information gathered in his pursuit of A.J. Ellis’ long fly ball. Harper collapsed onto the warning track and had to come out of the game and get 11 stitches. He was bleeding all over the place, his manager said.

Harper is one of the best young players we have ever seen, and his habit of going all out all the time is why he’s fun to watch -- and why the Nationals should be concerned, and probably already are.

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CHICAGO -- The back of Paul Konerko’s baseball card is impressive and Adam Dunn might finish with 500 homers. Addison Reed is an excellent young closer and Jake Peavy is a battler. All that said, the other White Sox know that Chris Sale has really become the guy on the team, manager Robin Ventura mused before the game.

Sale is the biggest difference-maker on the White Sox, the new face of the franchise, with a body and delivery that reminds some evaluators of Randy Johnson -- and Sunday night, he had Big Unit-type stuff.

I have been fortunate enough to cover two of the 23 perfect games thrown in major league history -- David Wells in 1998 and David Cone in 1999 -- and I thought I was seeing another Sunday night. Sale, pitching in short sleeves on a cold night, had overpowering stuff in the early innings, his fastball crowding right-handed hitters at 95 mph and his slider making their knees buckle.

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CHICAGO -- My mom was an incredible cook, making an onion-covered pot roast that all of her children remember vividly (including the daughter who became a vegetarian). I will search in vain the rest of my life for any blueberry pie that might be considered comparable to hers.

She could play a mean game of badminton, drawing on her years of tennis. She was a heck of a writer, with her work appearing in everything from The New York Times to Hoard’s Dairyman to Reader’s Digest. Her penmanship was absurdly perfect. She had a great sense of humor, which came through in the ad copy she wrote. She had a gift for working with the calves on our farm, especially those who had been born sick or vulnerable in the Vermont winters. Mary Ann Lincoln was a diligent gardener, before she passed away unexpectedly seven years, one month and 46 days ago.

But what she was best at was being a mom, which meant raising four kids who had completely different interests and working to help them along on their respective paths. She had only cursory knowledge of baseball -- she could recount the rise of the ’69 Mets, her favorite team, and she knew who the third baseman was in the Tinker-Evers-Chance infield, as a matter of necessary trivia.

Mostly, however, she didn’t like professional sports, and didn’t really understand my growing obsession with them as I got older, which is why she held firm to her rule of no television in the house until shortly before I enrolled at college.

But when I was 8 years old, she bought me my first baseball book, “The Baseball Life of Sandy Koufax.” The following summer, she bought me two packs of baseball cards at the Barnard General Store -- the first card was that of Gary Sutherland, I believe, the second of Lee May -- and this really cemented my interest in sports. It was an event which mostly brought chaos to her life, because I tended to leave my growing collection of thousands of cards all over the house, at a time when she was raising my infant brother and sister, Sam and Amelia.

None of my siblings liked sports, and my mom couldn’t imagine why in the world I would want to spend all of the money I got for my daily chores -- $20 a month -- on baseball cards every spring. But she’d always honor the requests, picking up the boxes of Topps cards at Floyd’s General Store every Sunday morning, and adding The Boston Globe to our pile of Sunday papers because I wanted to read Peter Gammons’ notes column.

On the morning of April 9, 1974, I came down before dawn to do my morning chores and found a handwritten note from her on the kitchen table, describing in detail the scene that had occurred in Atlanta the night before. Hank Aaron had broken Babe Ruth’s career record for home runs, she wrote, noting how loudly the crowd had cheered. She had listened to the news on the radio the night before and knew that I would want to know.

When I started writing for newspapers, she was a precise editor, nudging me to get better -- and was a perfect audience for a young writer, because I knew that if I could write a story that caught her attention, as a very casual fan, then I had something. Writing for baseball nerds like myself would never be a problem, but to write something that my mom liked, well, that meant the piece could have a broader appeal.

For Christmas in 2005, she gave me a box of baseball-themed New Yorker cartoon cards. I sent her a thank you note using one of them.

But I have kept the rest, on my desk, the last of many gifts my mom bestowed.

Happy Mother’s Day, everybody.

News and notes

The day after Shelby Miller retired 27 straight batters in his start, Adam Wainwright threw a two-hitter against the Rockies -- which excited the stats guys at both the Elias Sports Bureau and ESPN:

1. Wainwright’s no-hit bid of 7 1/3 innings was the longest of his career; his previous long was 5 2/3 innings against the Royals on June 13, 2007.
2. Wainwright has pitched well against the Rockies in the past:, compiling a 1.17 ERA against them.

How Cardinals starter Adam Wainwright shut out the Rockies:

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The look and tone that Angels manager Mike Scioscia aimed at the umpires in Houston on Thursday night reminded you of a third-grade teacher admonishing students over a paper airplane thrown across the room.

Scioscia’s language, however, was a little bit more PG-13 than elementary school.

“You gotta be s------- me,” Scioscia said, staring out at the umpires with incredulity.

We still don’t know why the umpires allowed Houston manager Bo Porter to relieve Wesley Wright without the left-hander having faced a single hitter; Fieldin Culbreth would not give an explanation for the call that was made, as Alden Gonzalez writes.

Based on what Porter and Scioscia said after the game, the switch did not involve an injury to Wright. It may well be that the umpires botched a basic rule that is used at every level from Little League to the majors. If a pitcher is summoned into a game as a reliever, then Rule 3.05 (b) applies:

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There really is no gray area with the disputed home run call in the Oakland Athletics-Cleveland Indians game: Upon further review, the umpires still missed an indisputable call on Adam Rosales’s long drive to left-center field.

There could be explanations. Maybe the television that the umpires have in Cleveland to review home runs is an old black-and-white from 1957 and has a problem with its horizontal hold. Maybe the remote control ran out of batteries.

Maybe there is some Magic Baseball thing going on, like the Magic Bullet Theory: The ball stops in mid-air, changes direction, goes down, changes direction again … back and to the right … back and to the right … back and to the right…

The evidence is clear, and action is needed. Immediately. As in, the next few hours. The Athletics are in Cleveland and will play the Indians in a noon game today, and what needs to happen is for the commissioner to use his powers and overturn the call of Angel Hernandez’s crew, and replay it from the point of the disputed home run. The score would be 4-4, it would be the ninth inning. Then, after the resolution of that game, the two teams can play the regularly scheduled game.

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For five years, Carlos Gomez says, he listened to others tell him what he needed to do to be successful. "They wanted me to hit line drives, hit the ball on the ground," he said Tuesday, over the phone. "They treat me like one of the fast guys."



Gomez's image of himself as a player was different from that. Oh, sure, he has big-time speed, but when Gomez played winter ball, he would swing very hard and try to drive the ball and felt he was a very different player, and a better player. He felt he knew why.



As he came back from a broken collarbone late in 2011, he met with manager Ron Roenicke and talked about the player he felt he could be. "I'm going to try something different," Gomez said to Roenicke. "I've been trying this for five years, and it doesn't work. I want to be me."




Many at-bats later, Roenicke complimented Gomez on his adjustment, on understanding what type of player he needed to be, because clearly, something is very different; now, something works, in a way that it hadn't in the years he was with the Twins and at the outset of his time with the Brewers. Gomez felt he was at an important crossroads, changed, and now he's better for it.



"I've taken my ability and shown what kind of player I can be," said Gomez, who clubbed 19 homers last year, among 42 extra-base hits, and is now hitting a league-high .364, with 8 doubles, 2 triples and 6 homers.



Gomez spoke Tuesday about two drills that have helped -- two drills he does regularly. A lot of hitters focus on taking the ball to the opposite field, but Gomez has a drill that forces him to pull the ball. Brewers hitting coach Johnny Narron sets up behind a screen about 10 to 15 feet away from Gomez and flip balls directly at his hip with some pace, and this requires Gomez to swing quickly, efficiently and hit the ball before it hits him. Sometimes, he says, the ball hits him early in the drill.



In the other drill that Gomez described, he stands at home plate, bat in hand, and watches about 30 to 50 pitches -- only watching. He doesn't swing. He focuses on tracking the ball, on following the spin of the ball, so that when he's in a game, he is locked in on the flight of the ball and can react to it better.



When in games, Gomez tries to hit the ball as far as he can to straightaway center field, and through this approach, the counsel of others (including Manny Ramirez), and his own vision of what he is, he has found success.



Gomez helped the Brewers end their losing streak. Gomez's contract is looking wise now, writes Tom Haudricourt.

Around the league

• It's hard to imagine a more scary moment in a game than we saw Tuesday night, when J.A. Happ took a line drive off the side of his head. There was a sickening thud and it hits home, as R.A. Dickey explains within this Brendan Kennedy piece.



This will renew conversation about whether there is some equipment that could be put in place to protect pitchers -- most notably, a cap lined with some sort of protective covering, as has been discussed.



After Happ was hurt, the game seemed irrelevant, writes Tom Jones.



• We had Indians manager Terry Francona on the podcast, and he told a couple of stories that became legend with the "Sunday Night Baseball" crew: The Zipper Mishap, and separately, The Target Pants Story. And we talked a lot about the Indians.



Francona said to me in spring training that he was really impressed with Zach McAllister, and Tuesday night, McAllister showed why.



• So the movement has started to line up Matt Harvey as the All-Star Game starter in Citi Field, because, well, he's pretty much unhittable. His outing against the White Sox Tuesday night was Goodenesque. He joined Nolan Ryan and Randy Johnson as the only pitchers since 1900 to pitch nine innings, strike out at least 12, allow one or fewer hits and get a no-decision.



From ESPN Stats & Info, how Harvey dominated:

A. He got 20 of his 27 outs, including nine strikeouts, on pitches on the outer third of the plate or further outside. A career-high 63 percent of his pitches were outer-third. Of the 13 right-handed batters he retired, 11 came on outer-third pitches (see image).



B. Harvey retired the first 20 hitters he faced and threw a first-pitch strike to 16 of them. The first 2-0 count Harvey went to came to Adam Dunn, the batter after Alex Rios' infield single broke up the perfect-game bid.



C. He started ahead 0-1 to 17 of 28 batters and threw first-pitch strikes to 20. Rios' hit came after an 0-1 count, but for the season hitters are 9 for 102 (.088) against Harvey after starting behind 0-1, the lowest average against any starting pitcher this season.



D. For the first time in his career, Harvey did not allow a "well-hit" ball, as judged by the Inside Edge scouting service.



E. The White Sox put nine of Harvey's off-speed pitches in play and hit eight on the ground. A season-high 66 percent of his off-speed pitches were down in the zone or below it (season average entering was 57 percent).



The Mets won in a walk-off, as Jorge Arangure writes.



• The Reds frolicked after back-to-back homers in the bottom of the ninth inning beat Craig Kimbrel, a huge win.

From ESPN Stats & Info: This is the only the second time in the past 30 years that teammates have hit two-out, back-to-back game-tying and walk-off homers. The other instance was June 1, 2004 when the Braves' Nick Green hit a game-tying homer and J.D. Drew hit the walk-off homer. The last time the Reds did it was Aug. 27, 1977, when Dan Driessen tied the score and Johnny Bench hit a walk-off homer against the Phillies.

The win was No. 1,600 for Dusty Baker, who passed Tommy Lasorda to take over 18th place on the all-time wins list for managers.

• The Padres continue to build momentum, as Corey Brock writes, and were helped along by a weird home run.

Moves, deals and decisions

1. The Red Sox moved Felix Doubront to the bullpen and installed Allen Webster into the rotation.

2. Junichi Tazawa has taken over as the Red Sox's closer.

3. Victor Martinez says he'll do what the Tigers need him to do when playing in NL parks.

4. Matt Adams is back and ready to go.

5. The White Sox have a couple of guys coming back and are pondering their options.

Dings and dents

1. The Phillies had no information on Roy Halladay.

2. James McDonald landed on the disabled list.

3. Neil Walker is close to coming back, writes Travis Sawchik.

4. The Yankees have $80 million worth of talent rehabbing in Tampa, as Anthony McCarron writes. Kevin Kernan thinks the Yankees should give A-Rod a chance.

5. Brian Roberts is going to see a specialist.

6. The Red Sox lost two players on one play.

7. Vinnie Pestano landed on the disabled list, and was replaced by Nick Hagadone in a hurry, as Paul Hoynes writes.



8. Dustin McGowan is finding some success.

9. Troy Tulowitzki is not worried about his injury.

10. Josh Reddick is headed to the disabled list, and he's got some ugly history with this kind of thing, as Susan Slusser writes.

11. Zack Greinke continues to make progress, as Dylan Hernandez writes.

12. Henderson Alvarez could be out until June.

Tuesday's games

1. Kyle Kendrick was The Man against the Giants.

2. The Rockies got some great pitching.

3. The softer portion of the Pirates' schedule has begun, and Pittsburgh shut down Seattle, with a lot of help from Andrew McCutchen.

4. The Yankees were shut down.

5. It was a close game; it was the Orioles. You know the rest.

6. K.C. had more bullpen miseries.

7. Scott Diamond threw a gem.

8. For the Dodgers, the losing continues.

9. Once again, the Rays blew a lead.

10. Craig Kimbrel and the Braves had their guts ripped out. Kimbrel already has allowed as many homers as he did all of last year, and maybe there will be a conversation about mixing his pitches a little more: According to FanGraphs, he's throwing a lot more fastballs than last year -- by about 10 percent. Both homers were on fastballs -- first Mesoraco and then Choo.

AL East

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It's as if somebody is sticking pins into the class of would-be free-agent pitchers:

Roy Halladay: Out indefinitely with a shoulder problem; he'll be examined today. His contract with the Phillies is set to expire this fall.

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SAN FRANCISCO -- Let's get this out of the way: Yes, five weeks of a Major League Baseball season is a small sample size. But also remember that teams have been promoting and demoting dozens of players for weeks based on those small samples, because the talent evaluators are gauging what they expect the players to do. Because they believe that sometimes small samples become big samples of more of the same.

Roughly 20 percent of the season has been played, and some of the early-season trajectories are being established at record-challenging levels. When we say a player or a team is on pace to do something extraordinary, well, that almost always doesn't hold its course.

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Over and over, Edward Mujica throws an off-speed pitch that darts downward, under the bats of opposing hitters, and if you look at the movement and trajectory of the pitch -- you can see it here -- this would seem to be something passed down through generations from another St. Louis closer. Bruce Sutter popularized the split-fingered fastball, and depending on where you look, you'll see Mujica's dominant pitch is listed as a split-finger.

Mujica chuckled about this over the phone Wednesday. "It's not a split-finger," he said. "The grip is different than a splitter."

But everybody seems to make the diagnostic mistake, including his All-Star catcher. After Mujica joined the Cardinals last season in a midseason deal with the Miami Marlins, Yadier Molina asked him what he threw, and Mujica listed his pitches: fastball, slider and changeup.

After his first appearance, Molina complimented Mujica, "Hey, that split-finger was pretty good."

So Mujica had to explain to Molina, too, that what he throws is actually a changeup -- the ball buried deep under the three smallest fingers of his hand -- rather than in a split-finger grip between the middle and index fingers. He started throwing the pitch when he was with the Padres in 2009, and pitching coach Darren Balsley told him that he needed to increase the disparity of velocity between the fastball and changeup to make the latter more effective. Mujica then tucked the ball even more deeply toward his palm.



It's the movement that makes it look like a splitter and fools everybody, including hitters, which Molina has recognized. In the first seasons of his career, about 72 percent of Mujica's pitches were fastballs, but Molina has been calling the changeup a whopping 55 to 60 percent of the time in 2013. Since joining the Cardinals, Mujica has issued just four walks in 37 1/3 innings while striking out 32 and compiling a 1.21 ERA. He has taken over as the St. Louis closer, for now.

Mujica thinks hitters tend to misidentify his changeup for his two-seam fastball, and he's gotten so adept with the pitch and can control it so well that he can make it run back over the outside corner to right-handed hitters or inside to left-handed hitters -- in the way that a two-seamer does, but at 8 to 10 mph slower. "I've got a lot of confidence in that pitch," said Mujica, who picked up another save Wednesday as the Cardinals won a series over the Reds.

Notables

• Elsewhere with the Cardinals, Trevor Rosenthal is back working the eighth inning and wants to focus on getting outs. Carlos Beltran continues to mash.

• The Padres' ownership has given the go-ahead to Josh Byrnes to negotiate a long-term deal with Chase Headley. This will be a fascinating contract, because Headley will want to be paid based on the type of player he was in 2012 -- an MVP candidate -- and the Padres might not be wholly comfortable paying him at an MVP-candidate level. We'll see.

• The game is changing dramatically. From Elias: There were 5,992 strikeouts in April, the highest April strikeout total in any season in major league history. And it's not just the total number of strikeouts that was noteworthy; the average of 15.29 strikeouts per major league game during April was the second-highest average in a full month in major league history. (This does not include the fragmentary baseball months, usually March or October, in which fewer than 60 games were played.) The record was just set in September, when there was an average of 15.47 strikeouts per game.

And that brings us to the larger point: Over the 138-year history of Major League Baseball, the top eight months on that list -- that is, the months with the highest average number of strikeouts per game -- are the last eight months. You read that correctly. Not eight of the last 12 or eight of the last 10, but eight of the last eight. There were 14.91 strikeouts in September 2011, 14.63 in April 2012, 14.93 in May, 15.01 in June, 15.07 in July, 14.68 in August, the record 15.47 in September and now 15.29 in April 2013. Those are the eight highest monthly strikeout averages in baseball history.



Check out the top dozen seasons in terms of strikeouts per game, league-wide, since 1969:

2013: 15.3

2012: 15

2011: 14.2

2010: 14.1

2009: 13.8

2008: 13.5

2001: 13.3

2007: 13.2

1997: 13.2

1998: 13.1

2004: 13.1

Tim Kurkjian and I are going to talk about this on the podcast today.

• On Wednesday's podcast, Jerry Crasnick and I ran through some Twitter questions and addressed whether Tim Hudson is a Hall of Famer.

• Jordan Zimmermann was brilliant in his start against the Braves -- nothing less -- changing the hitters' eye levels, working inside and outside and mixing his pitches. I've seen Clayton Kershaw, Matt Harvey and Justin Verlander have dominant starts this season, but I can't remember any start better than what Zimmermann threw out there. He has put himself into the discussion of whether he belongs with the game's elite pitchers, as Amanda Comak writes.



From ESPN Stats & Information, how Zimmermann won:

A) Four of his 8 K's came off fastballs. His average fastball velocity of 93.7 was his highest since 2009.

B) Dominant slider: He hasn't allowed a hit versus his slider over his last three starts. Opposing hitters are 0-for-15 in that span.

C) Tough with two strikes: Opposing batters went 0-for-15 with two strikes, and he allowed just 28 percent of two-strike pitches to be put in play.



• All was not good for the Nationals, though; Bryce Harper got hurt, as James Wagner writes. Meanwhile, Stephen Strasburg had a clean bullpen session. Ryan Zimmerman will come off the disabled list Friday.



• The way the Angels used Ernesto Frieri on Wednesday told you all you need to know about how critical the game was for Mike Scioscia's team.

Elias: The Tigers are the first team in American League history to have a streak of at least six games with 10 or more strikeouts. Some more tidbits:

• Yankees are 5-0 in one-run games this season and are the only team without a one-run loss.

• Giants have six game-tying or go-ahead home runs in the eighth inning or later this season -- most in MLB.

• Lance Lynn has won 10 straight decisions dating back to last season (longest active streak in MLB).

• C.J. Wilson is 3-0 this season while the rest of the Angels starting staff is a combined 3-11.

• Jordany Valdespin hit his sixth pinch-hit home run since 2012 (no one else in MLB has more than three). Six of Valdespin's 10 major league HRs have come as a pinch-hitter.

• Mike Morse is the first Mariner with nine home runs in his team's first 30 games since Mike Cameron in 2002.

• Aaron Hicks recorded his first career triple on a 101 mph fastball from Bruce Rondon -- the fastest pitch hit for extra bases since 2010.

• After the Tigers game, Rondon was returned to the minors. The Tigers need more consistency from him. It was noted that he pitched well when there was no pressure but struggled when the score was closer. He's young and has more development to get through.

• Yankees first-base coach Mick Kelleher had a difference-making observation that helped New York win, as Anthony McCarron writes.

• Mike Napoli's two home runs were ridiculous.



• The Yankees picked up Chris Nelson from the Rockies.



• The news on Gavin Floyd is not good. From Mark Gonzales's story:

According to a source, Floyd is seeking multiple opinions.

The biggest fear is that further diagnosis could reveal an ulnar collateral ligament tear that may require lengthy rest, or surgery that would end his year and his association with the Sox after seven seasons.

Moves, deals and decisions

1. The Pirates' rotation is about to get crowded, Michael Sanserino writes.

2. Ricky Romero has been pitching better and could be back with the Jays, as Richard Griffin writes.

3. Jordan Lyles is replacing Brad Peacock in the Houston rotation.

4. Blake Beavan lost his spot in the Seattle rotation.

5. Nick Green is preparing for his departure from the Marlins.

Dings and dents

1. David Robertson tweaked his hamstring.

2. Shane Victorino hopes to be back soon.

3. Phil Coke landed on the disabled list.

4. Matt Harrison had a second back operation, and the Rangers have no idea when he'll be back.

5. The Athletics put a couple of guys on the DL.

6. Mark Ellis might go on the disabled list.

7. Another Angels player is hurt.

8. Aramis Ramirez expects to return Friday.

Wednesday's games

1. Cliff Lee was hit around.

2. The Pirates have won 15 of their last 22 after beating the Brewers.

3. The Royals staged a huge rally. They are maturing before our eyes. Mike Moustakas rewarded his manager.

4. The Reds lost in the final game of their series.

5. Houston's road trip ended with a loss.

6. Brandon Belt powered another comeback win.

7. The Arizona bullpen gave it up again. From Tyler Emerick's story:

David Hernandez threw two perfectly located fastballs on the outer third of the plate to jump ahead in the count, but the third fastball missed its mark and Belt hit it on the nose.

Needing one more strike to escape the inning after walking two batters, Hernandez sent a heater over the middle of the plate and Belt crushed it for a three-run homer, leaving the D-backs searching for answers as the Giants completed the three-game sweep, 9-6, at Chase Field.

"I threw the first two exactly where I wanted to and threw the third one exactly where he wanted me to," Hernandez said. "Seems like everything is going bad, but that's the way a season goes sometimes."

The Arizona bullpen has now blown 10 saves in 28 games this season and in the Giants series alone, D-backs relievers allowed a combined nine runs in the seventh inning or later.

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It was almost 2 a.m. this morning in Oakland when Brandon Moss wearily pulled on the headphones to do the hero postgame interview with Athletics announcers Glen Kuiper and Ray Fosse. Moss had just ended one of the longest, craziest games you will see with a walk-off two-run homer, and while his teammates had rushed out of the dugout to congratulate him, exhaustion was embedded with anyone in the park.

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DETROIT -- Peter Woodfork is Major League Baseball's senior vice president of baseball operations, and he was on the podcast talking about what happens when there are incidents involving umpires. After hearing about the eruption between one longtime umpire and a star player in Chicago on Sunday, I imagined Woodfork's phone blowing up.

To review: David Price had his best outing of the season, but his postgame exchange with umpire Tom Hallion blew up Twitter on Sunday night, as Marc Topkin writes.



If you look at the videotape, there was an exchange of words between the two as Price left the mound after the seventh inning, and then Hallion ejected Jeremy Hellickson. After the game, Price spoke first. From Marc's story:

According to Price, he was walking off the field after the seventh inning of what was then a 3-3 game when Hallion -- with no provocation -- "yells at me to throw the ball over the f-ing plate."

Hallion, informed by a pool reporter of Price's accusation, denied adamantly that he used a curse word.

"I'll come right out bluntly and say he's a liar," Hallion said, voice raised. "I'm denying what he said I said, pretty strongly. I'm just telling you, he's lying. It's plain and simple."

And Price responded to that denial by maintaining that Hallion was the one lying, and pointed to the reaction of his teammates -- including the unlikely ejection of normally mild-mannered Jeremy Hellickson -- as proof.

"I don't know what he thinks he heard, you can ask anybody that was sitting in the dugout and they all erupted as they should have when you hear an umpire speak to a player that way," Price said. "Something has to be done about that, and that's why I told you guys (the media).

"That's terrible. If my own dad doesn't speak to me that way, some frickin' umpire's not going to speak to me that way."

Here's more from Marc:

"I didn't say one word to him, I didn't even look at him. (The other Rays) said he stared me down the entire way into the dugout," Price said. "That's absolutely terrible. You don't speak to people that way. I didn't disrespect him."

Hallion, the crew chief with 20-plus years of umpiring experience, in 1999 was suspended three games for bumping a player.

He confirmed that Price didn't address him, which raises the significant question why he said anything -- curse words or otherwise -- to Price.

"He might not have said anything but he certainly gave enough body language to insinuate that he was" angry, Hallion explained.

And what did he say?

"I said, 'Just throw the ball.' That's all I said to him," Hallion said.

Several Rays who were in the dugout confirmed Price's version of the events, though they wouldn't do so with their names attached, likely out of concern of retribution from other umpires. Manager Joe Maddon, who joked about Hellickson getting ejected, didn't mention the controversy in his postgame comments.

There are television field microphones that often pick up the words said around home plate, so this could be a simple matter for MLB to address. Only one of them can be right in what he said, in calling each other liars, and the party who is wrong needs to be disciplined -- particularly if it's Hallion, because in that case, he would be wrong on two counts: What he said to Price would have been way, way out of line for an umpire, and then he would have exacerbated the situation by calling the pitcher a liar after the game.

Around the league

• Before "Sunday Night Baseball," Braves manager Fredi Gonzalez talked about the throwback uniforms that Atlanta and Detroit had used Saturday and had an interesting idea: What if, for a day, all the managers wore a Connie Mack getup, with a suit and a hat?

Of course, the first person all of us thought about in that kind of getup was Jim Leyland.

• Tim Hudson reported that he got a B in the government course he is taking at Auburn as he works to finish his college degree. Hudson has about 35 hours remaining and intends to continue picking away, partly because of his kids: He wants to set an example for them. And he has joked with his 12-year-old daughter that they could graduate at the same time.

Hudson is involved with the Auburn baseball program and probably will be the rest of his life, so getting a degree would give him an even stronger platform with the players.

• The Tigers finished off a sweep of Atlanta with an 8-3 win in the rain, and along the way, Miguel Cabrera hit a three-run homer on a 3-0 pitch for just the second time in his career, John Lowe writes.

It was all art in how Cabrera executed on the swing -- which you can see here, including John Kruk's prediction of a three-run homer before the pitch -- driving an outside fastball deep into the right-field stands, and he was still very excited about it after the game.

But there was one imperfect moment at the end, when Torii Hunter tried to high-five Cabrera and then attempted a hug, and both attempts misfired.

So far this season Cabrera has 26 RBIs in 23 games, and he is well on his way toward accumulating 100 RBIs for the 10th consecutive season.

Omar Infante has been killing the ball.

• It was a really rough weekend for the Braves, but you got the feeling that Atlanta was relieved to finish its brutal 11-game road trip -- which had gone through the cold of Pittsburgh, the snow of Colorado and the rain of Detroit. The Braves go home for a week of games before hitting the road again for another long, 10-game trip, and by the time Atlanta gets back from that West Coast swing, the Braves will have played 26 of their first 41 games away from Turner Field. Here's the upside: Sixty-six of their final 121 will be at home.

• The Red Sox took care of business against the Astros, and as Scott Lauber writes, the Boston players have taken on a new gesture. From his piece:

After banging an RBI double off The Wall, Mike Carp stood on second base, turned to face the dugout and flexed both biceps -- a nod to outfielder Jonny Gomes, who struck the pose after his eighth-inning double April 20 in the first game played at Fenway Park following the Marathon bombings and the Watertown manhunt.

Gomes may have been first to invoke "The Flex," symbolic of the "Boston Strong" rallying cry and captured on the cover of Sports Illustrated last week, but it has been copied by others. First baseman Mike Napoli was spotted doing it after hitting a double Friday night, and Carp took his turn yesterday.

"If it makes the cover of SI, I'm sure it's going to friggin' stick," Gomes said after the Red Sox won their fifth consecutive game and tied a franchise record with 18 April victories. "It's kind of international, Boston as a whole. Granted, she's still just a flex, but I think it plays pretty heavy in this area."

• John Lackey had a nice outing.

• Tony Cingrani keeps doing great things for the Reds. He was Randy Johnson and Sandy Koufax all rolled into one, writes Hal McCoy.

• The Twins played well in a series split with the Rangers and continue to hover around .500, better than expected.

From Elias: Kevin Correia hurled eight shutout innings and earned the victory in the Twins' 5-0 win over the Rangers on Sunday afternoon. Correia has now pitched at least seven innings and allowed three or fewer runs in each of his five starts this season. Since the Twins moved to Minnesota in 1961, they have had only three other pitchers who have opened a season with five consecutive starts with at least seven innings pitched and three or fewer runs allowed: Jim Perry in 1965 (first five), Scott Erickson in 1991 (first seven) and Brad Radke in 2001 (first seven).

• The Twins are rolling at all levels, writes Bruce Brothers.

• Clayton Kershaw keeps doing amazing stuff.

From Brandon Mendoza of ESPN Stats and Info: Kershaw got his 19th career 10-strikeout game Sunday versus the Brewers. Over the past 90 seasons, only five other lefties 25 years old or younger have more 10-strikeout games than Kershaw. However, Kershaw just turned 25 on March 19, so he'll have the rest of the season to add to his total.

Most games with 10-plus K's, LHP age 25 or younger (past 90 seasons)

Sam McDowell: 49

Sandy Koufax: 31

Frank Tanana: 26

Herb Score: 25

Fernando Valenzuela: 24

Clayton Kershaw: 19

Vida Blue: 19

Kershaw has allowed three earned runs or fewer in 18 straight starts, the longest active streak in MLB. The last time he allowed more than three earned runs was July 24, 2012, when he gave up eight at St. Louis.

Kershaw's performance on Sunday was one of the most dominant by a Dodgers pitcher since the team moved to L.A. in 1958. He became the sixth Dodgers pitcher to record a threshold of 12 K's, no walks and no runs allowed during that span. Only Sandy Koufax has accomplished that feat more with four such games.

How Kershaw won:

A) Kershaw retired 18 straight batters between the second and seventh innings. Of those batters, nine sat down via strikeout and six hit fly-ball outs. The six flyouts were his second-most this season.

B) Kershaw got five strikeouts via fastball, four via slider and three via curve. It was the first time he's had multiple strikeouts using three or more out pitches this season. (He did so nine times in 2012.)

C) Kershaw threw 117 pitches. It was the 12th time he's hit that pitch count or higher in his career. The Dodgers are 8-4 when he goes over 117, and Kershaw has a 1.90 ERA in those games.

Moves, deals and decisions

1. Joel Hanrahan is ready to come back.

2. Carlos Ruiz came back.

3. The Reds are calling up Donald Lutz, who has big-time power.

4. Dale Sveum won't anoint a closer.

5. Brian McCann is due back soon, but Evan Gattis is likely to stay with the Braves. The league has clearly adjusted to Gattis, feeding him a steady course of soft stuff away or fastballs above the strike zone, and he is struggling. After McCann returns, Gattis' playing time will be reduced at a time when he probably needs to play more, to learn, to adapt.

6. Nolan Arenado's trip to the big leagues was eventful.

7. Yoenis Cespedes was activated, and Dan Straily will get the ball Monday night.

Dings and dents

1. The Rockies are hopeful that Troy Tulowitzki has avoided serious injury.

2. Taylor Teagarden is expected to miss three to four weeks with his dislocated thumb. That is why the Orioles went out and made a deal for Chris Snyder, a veteran catcher.

3. Kevin Youkilis might wind up on the disabled list, writes George King.

4. Frank Francisco is not close to coming back.

5. Gavin Floyd landed on the disabled list.

6. Jason Kubel was activated.

Sunday's games

1. The Indians and Royals exchanged blowouts in a doubleheader.

2. The Cardinals had a bad game; again, Mitchell Boggs got knocked around.

3. Alex Rios made a crucial error.

4. Pat Corbin continues to do good stuff for the Diamondbacks.

5. Oakland rallied for a badly needed win.

6. The Giants have stopped winning.

AL East

• The Yankees keep on finding ways to win.

• R.A. Dickey thought the Yankees were stalling. The Jays are in a free fall.

• GM Alex Anthopoulos met with the media and said his team will rise.

AL Central

• Jeremy Guthrie continues to pitch really well.

• Corey Kluber was The Man for the Indians.

AL West

• Jose Altuve hopes to become Dustin Pedroia, writes Brian Smith. The Astros are on pace for 116 losses, writes Chip Bailey.

• The Texas offense has sputtered.

• Michael Morse got a big hit.

• Jason Bay drove home a message, Geoff Baker writes.

• The Angels are playing badly, and they're in a bad mood.

NL East

• The Phillies thoroughly enjoyed their weekend in New York.

From Elias: Ryan Howard snapped a seventh-inning tie with a pinch-hit double to lead the Phillies to a 5-1 win over the Mets on Sunday afternoon. Howard is now hitting .421 (16-for-38) as a pinch hitter in his career, the highest such batting average among all active players with at least 25 pinch-hit at-bats.

• Giancarlo Stanton is heating up.

From Elias: Giancarlo Stanton went 3-for-3 with two home runs and four RBIs to lead the Marlins to a 6-4 win over the Cubs on Sunday. It is the 12th time that Stanton has driven in at least four runs in a game since he made his major league debut on June 8, 2010, tied with Carlos Gonzalez for the most such games for any National League player over that span.

• No matter how you count it, Stanton hits them a long way, Tom D'Angelo writes.

• The Mets' offense continues to be a problem.

• Adam LaRoche is off to a slow start again.

NL Central

• The Pirates keep doing great stuff.

• The Brewers' small window of opportunity went away quickly.

NL West

• The Padres had a great weekend.

• San Diego third-base coach Glenn Hoffman has been making great reads, writes Corey Brock.

• Carl Crawford has been more selective so far this season, writes Mark Simon.

Other stuff

• The Pittsburgh TV market had a "Heidi" situation with the Pirates' game.

• Yasiel Puig was arrested, and the details should concern the Dodgers.

• Larry Herndon got a nice award.

• A Phillies prospect lit it up.

• An hourlong film on Bryce Harper will debut this week.

• Vanderbilt wrapped up a sweep of Mississippi State.

And today will be better than yesterday.

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DETROIT -- Mike Trout hit a roller toward first base last Sunday and Prince Fielder took a couple of steps forward to corral the ball. You can see it in this highlight reel, starting at about the 18-second mark. Then Doug Fister dove headlong toward the ball.

Fielder immediately rushed toward the base, because the other Tigers have learned about what Fister is capable of with his athleticism over the past couple of seasons. "Gold Glove caliber," said catcher Alex Avila.

Fister sprawled out on the grass, using all of his 6 feet, 8 inches, and gloved the ball. He lurched and flipped the ball to Fielder to retire arguably baseball's fastest man by a step. Fister is pretty good at throwing a baseball, creating movement with a sinker and slider; but he does a lot of other stuff well, too, and hopes to lead the Tigers to a sweep of the Braves when he starts against Mike Minor tonight (ESPN, 8 ET).



When Fister was on the disabled list last summer and in Detroit while the team was on the road, Tigers GM David Dombrowski said he was down in the team's workout room at Comerica Park, battling away on the treadmill, going somewhere between 6 and 7 miles per hour, as best he can remember.

Fister stepped onto a nearby treadmill, and Dombrowski recalls Fister started his workout at about the same pace that the GM had built up to, before quickly accelerating his pace, his long strides covering the treadmill easily at 10 mph. Fister ran cross-country as an eighth grader, and later, his fastest timed mile was 5 minutes, 15 seconds.

He played football, as a quarterback and at other positions, and in basketball he played forward. His growth spurt came early when he was a teenager, and Fister cannot remember a time when his coordination was a problem, when he struggled like a baby giraffe to get synched up in his movement. He played positions other than pitcher as an amateur, playing first and third base up until his junior year in college, and he loved playing defense.

Fister's angularity would seem to be perfect for someone throwing a sinker ball, with his long arms creating the sort of whiplash motion that can make the ball dive. But Fister really struggled to develop any kind of consistent sinker until he was near the top of the Seattle farm system, and the slider that he threw seemed to hurt the consistency of his curveball, which is not an unusual problem for pitchers. He tinkered with the grip of his sinker until he realized that when he kept his fingers off the seam of the baseball, he could command the pitch much more effectively and get more consistent sink. If he touched a seam at all, he couldn't really command it the way he needed to. That changed a lot for him.

Then in 2009, Fister tried a cut fastball, with a very slight alteration from his four-seam fastball. It suddenly gave him a complete set of tools, the sinker that dove down and in to right-handed hitters, the cutter that veered away.

This is what you hear from hitters about Fister: Everything he throws seems to move horizontally a lot, and late in its journey to the plate. Since Fister has joined the Tigers, he has a 2.85 ERA.

Around the league

• For Minor, a turning point came last summer, when Braves pitching coach Roger McDowell asked him to start preparing his own scouting report. Minor is a polite and understated person, and he was not one to shake off Brian McCann or David Ross; rather he would just nod his head at what they suggested.

But in preparing his own scouting reports, in 30-minute sessions with videotape, Minor developed a better sense of the hitters and a better sense of how his stuff would work against them. With that understanding, he became more invested in each pitch he threw. Over the second half of last season and into this year, he has become one of the better left-handers in the National League.

• The Tigers and Braves continued to rave Saturday about Anibal Sanchez's 17-strikeout game on Friday night. The scouting report on Sanchez is that he throws a changeup, but the Braves' hitters think he was throwing something much more like a splitter than a changeup, because of the way it dove and spun.

• Rick Porcello endured Saturday to give Detroit the win in Game 2 of the weekend series.

The Braves have dropped six of their last eight and are ready to get home.

• Justin Upton clubbed his 12th homer Saturday, and like those before, it went a long, long way. From ESPN Stats and Info: Upton's home run traveled 423 feet. His average home run distance is 423.5 feet, the highest among players who have hit more than five home runs this season.

Highest average home run distance this season

Justin Upton -- 423.5

Anthony Rizzo -- 418.6

Mark Reynolds -- 418.1

Jose Bautista -- 417.0

This season, Upton is just 3-for-14 against fastballs away. However, two of those three hits were for home runs, including the one on Saturday.

• Since the start of the 2006 season, Miguel Cabrera and Fielder have missed a total of 40 games. Combined. Just 40 games.

To put that into perspective, think about this: According to the Elias Sports Bureau, since the start of the 2006 season, there have been 1,554 players on the disabled list for at least 40 days.

• Rockies prospect Nolan Arenado is headed to the big leagues, writes Troy Renck.

• Matt Moore is perfect, so far. From Marc Topkin's story:

But the 5-0 start, and the almost equally impressive 1.13 ERA, especially for a pitcher previously known as a slow starter?

"I've never done this before in the beginning of a season," Moore said. "So right now I'll just try to stay hungry and keep feeding off that last one, keep riding the snowball." Those watching him, though, were plenty impressed.

"Same thing as every night he pitches, it's special," [Kelly] Johnson said. "He gets a lot of uncomfortable swings. Guys just don't time him. His fastball looks like 110 (mph) sometimes. Just so poised and smooth."

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