Good morning.

Here are several links from the past week that will make your Monday a bit more bearable:

• Watch the Yankee and Red Sox benches react to a thunder clap that’s a bit too close for comfort. Boston won last night’s rain-shortened game, 3–0.
• According to ESPN1500’s (Twin Cities) Brandon Warne, the Twins organization appears to have moved away from the “pitch to contact” philosophy and appear to be embracing power pitchers instead.
• Baseball Nation’s Rob Neyer chronicles the Royals’ hitting-coach follies, which include the surprise hiring of Hall of Famer George Brett.
• Meanwhile, Rany Jazayerli at his Rany on the Royals blog expresses his disgust at the front office:

Dayton Moore doesn’t [have a wonning season since taking over as general manger]. And he’s had seven [years]. And this winter, he traded one of the most significant prospect packages this century in order to jump-start the rebuilding process and win in 2013. And the Royals are 22-29. A year after they went 71-91, two years after they went 70-92, they’re on pace to go . . . 70–92.

 

So I think it’s time we acknowledge the elephant in the room, and stop worrying about who the hitting coach is. Yes, Jack Maloof deserved to get fired – if not for his performance, than for his ridiculous comments to Jeff Flanagan in this column, comments that I said on Twitter ought to end his career, and – shockingly – actually did end his career. (Although in retrospect, given how fast the move was made, I wonder if Maloof already knew he was being let go and decided to go out with a bang.)

• Beyond the Boxscore’s Lance Rinker asks if Eric Wedge was right to blame sabermetrics for Dustin Ackley’s demotion to the minors.
• Rinker’s colleague, Matt Hunter, breaks down Chris Davis’s amazing first two months of the season.
• Matt Meyers of ESPN’s Sweet Spot discusses Stephen Strasburg’s strained right oblique and reminds us that “pitcher injuries are incredibly unpredictable:”

While the Nationals had the best interests of Strasburg and the organization in mind when they shut him down last season, they had no way of knowing if they could prevent an injury. He could end up on the disabled list because of the injury he suffered tonight – and that could cost them a playoff spot.

(Another perfect example of this phenomenon is Orioles prospect Dylan Bundy. The O’s could not have been more careful with him last year, limiting him to outings of fewer than five innings for most of the season. Yet he’s suffered arm soreness this year and has yet to pitch an inning.)

• Joe Pepitone’s 1973 Topps baseball card offers the Hardball Times’ Bruce Markusen an opportunity to recap the Brooklyn native’s career, noting, among other things, that the first player to bring a blow dryer into the clubhouse also donned a hairpiece. 

• May was very kind to Domonic Brown. Above is a .gif showing all twelve of the young slugger’s dingers of the month, courtesy of Crashburn Alley’s Bill Baer.

That’s it. Have a walk-off week!