Weekend Takeaway
Well, my Little League coach was right: You can’t win games just trying to hit home runs. The Blue Jays did rout the Red Sox Sunday with five bombs, including two from Jose Bautista and Edwin Encarnacion’s league-leading 11^th, and now lead the majors with 51 long balls in 39 games. But despite the power, Toronto sits 24^th in baseball with just 3.74 runs per game, and has only three regulars with an OBP over .340.

Obviously, Jose Reyes’ injury has derailed the Blue Jay offense on every level—although his replacement, Munenori Kawasaki, is one of those three regulars getting on base—but the team has been working under the “swing hard in case you hit it” philosophy for years, dating back to the JP Ricciardi era. (For some reason, I always associate it with Aaron Hill.) In fact, going back to 2006, the Blue Jays have failed to rank higher in the AL in runs scored than they did in homers. Ricciardi took office in Toronto prior to the 2002 season, so this trend began about when his draft classes really started to impact the major-league level.

Thursday Takeaway
The Jake Westbrook bubble will not burst. The Cardinals righty once again clogged the bases but kept his opponents mostly off the scoreboard last night, surrendering one run on six hits with three walks as his ERA ballooned to 1.07. Westbrook has all but ditched the cutter this season and essentially become a two-pitch pitcher, attacking both lefties and righties with a sinker/changeup arsenal that hasn’t kept runners off base but has gotten the job done.

He has walked 17 in 33.2 IP. He has just 18 strikeouts so far, marking his lowest K rate since his first big league season. And when I said, “two-pitch pitcher,” that really only applies to lefties; righties know that sinker is coming and still can’t make solid contact. (Although Westbrook did an excellent job of surprising the Brewers’ righties with the curveball the second time through the order.) Can this continue?

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Happy March Madness, everybody! It’s the only tournament we’re actually less excited for as it moves along, and somehow everyone’s okay with that. No matter—we’ve got baseball news: The Dodgers are juggling their infield, the Yankees are looking “fill vacancies at Scranton,” and The Man is holding down Aroldis Chapman (and he likes it that way).

Hanley out eight weeks; Dodgers look inward
Dodgers shortstop Hanley Ramirez will have surgery today to repair a torn tendon in his left thumb. Ramirez sustained the injury diving for a ball in the World Baseball Classic final, when he could have been sitting in a protective formaldehyde tank like every other baseball player does at this time of year.

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This morning’s top story is no rumor: 2013 will be Mariano Rivera’s final season. Will they be doing a farewell tour where all the clubs bring gifts? If so, the Diamondbacks should present Mo with a 2001 World Series championship ring, in a box that can’t quite be opened. Can someone make that happen? Tony Womack, maybe? Anyway, here’s to an incredible career. Now to the rumors, where we’ve got two teams beset by injury but filling the holes in different ways, plus the next chapter in the Dodgers’ quest to pare down their starting rotation.

Furcal likely to miss all of 2013, Cardinals trying to fill position internally
Yesterday, word came down that shortstop Rafael Furcal is set to miss the entire season following Tommy John surgery on his throwing elbow. Furcal’s absence leaves Pete Kozma and Ronny Cedeño as the Cardinals’ only options at shortstop, and according to general manager John Mozeliak, that’s good enough for the time being. Mozeliak, per MLBTR:

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Welcome one and all to my first Mets-less iteration of the Rumor Roundup! Today we’ve got two injuries that illuminate each team’s lack of depth, one starter that may be on the move, and a heartwarming return to the mound to top it all off. Onward…

Phil Hughes Could Miss the Start of the Season; Damon Rebuffed by Yankees
Phil Hughes was shut down February 18 with a bulging disc, and according to manager Joe Girardi, the righty is still about two weeks away from making his spring debut. Needing at least four starts to be ready for the start of the season, Hughes would have to meet that two-week deadline to make his first start on time.

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In Friday’s Roundup, regular rumor rounder-upper Daniel Rathman noted the Mariners’ recent Felix Hernandez extension might impact negotiations for Clayton Kershaw, with a trickle-down effect on other starting pitchers looking for a new contract. Well, Kershaw may want to slowly back his way out of the war room, because it appears that Hernandez’s megadeal—which would have made him the richest pitcher ever and set a high bar for Kershaw’s inevitable extension—appears to be as tenuous as the right elbow that’s currently holding it up.

Hernandez deal in jeopardy?
Buster Olney had the story Sunday evening, with one source saying a possible elbow problem is “an issue” that might prevent the deal from being signed. No matter where you look on this story, the language is vague, and it almost sounds like there isn’t a medical condition at all but rather the promise that fatigue may cause one down the line. Hernandez apparently took a physical with the Mariners on Thursday (per Jon Morosi), and if it had revealed an immediate medical concern, you’d think we’d have heard about it and the deal would be either all the way on or all the way off. Instead we’ve got a lot of hemming and hawing as the media try to figure out just what’s going on, and both Mariners GM Jack Zduriencik and Hernandez’s camp have been tight-lipped about the proceedings.

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Welcome to another Rumor Roundup. I’m Will Woods, in a rare fill-in spot for resident BP Iron Man Daniel Rathman under our little-known “only Tufts grads can write the Rumor Roundup” rule. I feel like Billy Ripken right now. Anyway, rumors!

Braves Continue Search for Outfielder
With Martin Prado expected to start at third base in lieu of the retired Chipper Jones, the Braves are still short an outfielder despite signing B.J. Upton. To that end, GM Frank Wren has considered putting together a package for B.J.’s brother Justin, who recently invoked his limited no-trade clause to block a strong offer from Seattle. Justin has made exactly zero professional appearances in left field, but one would think he’d be enthusiastic to accommodate his brother and Gold Glover Jason Heyward.

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Welcome to the Rumor Roundup! I’m not Daniel Rathman (who'll be back tomorrow), and that means this won’t be as good as it should be. Seriously, he’s fantastic; you’ll realize that about halfway through this. But we do have some rumors percolating—some big, some small—so let’s get right into it. We’ll start with a story near and dear to my heart.

R.A. Dickey Isn't Happy with the Mets
Because R.A. Dickey’s rags-to-riches, back-to-rags-then-back-to-riches story apparently isn’t cliché enough, the Mets ace and 2012 NL Cy Young winner made like a network sitcom and used the company holiday party as a forum for frank discussion of his contract status. As Mike Puma and numerous others tweeted, the Mets are “not happy” with either the venue or the sentiment. Said Dickey:

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Few things on the internet this time of year are as much fun as perusing free-agent rumors. It’s a perfectly mindless activity – you read enough articles and you’re bound to find every player linked to every team until it all starts to feel like mush in your brain. But if there’s one thing that tides me over, one time suck that keeps me occupied when I’m fresh out of baseball gossip, it’s absently clicking through dating profiles. It’s the exact same brain function: you click, you read, you process…and then you forget almost immediately. And when you look back at the hours you spent clicking around, you remember them all as one large profile, in the way that all the rumors feel like one big rumor.

It’s not just hot stove season, you see—it’s also “It’s freezing outside, I’m still single, and all I have is this stupid hot stove” season. Sometimes, going back and forth between the two after a long day, the tabs start to run together. But I swear I saw these OkCupid profiles last night. They run the gamut: flirty, stuck-up, homely, even flat-out desperate…

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I have two distinct memories of April 29, 2009. One is that Jerry Manuel, then with the Mets, made the single worst managerial decision I’ve ever seen. The other is that what should have been a treat—a Mets fan then living in Boston treated to a rare nationally televised game in resplendent high definition—was somewhat soured by the commentary of then-ESPN analyst and former Mets GM Steve Phillips, whose aesthetically pleasing screen presence was overshadowed by the negative associations of his time with the team.

Late in the game, talk turned to Phillips’ tenure as Mets general manager (which lasted from 1997-2003, or as I like to call it, forever). Phillips said some interesting things about having to learn to run an office and handle a large-market press corps and added a few other nuggets to remind us that being a GM would be much easier if it really were all spreadsheets and video. What he said next, though—a little side comment you’ve surely heard from your favorite team’s general manager, star player, manager, or owner—has stuck with me ever since. This was over three years ago, so allow me to paraphrase somewhat:

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When I was in high school, the thing to do was play poker. Kids would play during free periods, lunch, whenever, sometimes winning and losing over $100 in a day. (And some of them could actually afford it.) Like any high schooler worth his salt, I followed suit, and soon I was a dependably willing player, relatively conservative but always game to try to fleece a freshman who’d just looked up the rules on his expensive new iPhone. As an editor of the school newspaper, I even planted this quote in a cover story we ran on the poker fad: “It’s the most intellectually challenging thing I’ve ever done.” Yeah, when it came to antagonizing our teachers, we had a lot of tricks in our bag.

Poker may not have taught me as much as I wanted my teachers to think it did, but I did introduce me to one piece of advice that has stuck with me ever since: a successful poker player focuses more on his opposition’s holding than his own hand. I find that’s true in many walks of life, nowhere more so than in the duel between batter and pitcher, when it’s just natural to do what feels most comfortable to you, rather than what might feel least comfortable to your opponent. In the most extreme example, Aroldis Chapman walks a Little Leaguer on four sliders because he fears he doesn’t have his best heat that day. In a real-world example, the Yankees don’t adjust to the way their ALCS opponent’s pitchers attack them, and their season ends because of it. (Oh, and Justin Verlander somehow allows a home run to Eduardo Nunez. But we’ll get there.)

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