Tampa Bay Rays starter Alex Cobb was hit in the head during today's Rays-Royals game. In the top of the fifth inning, Kansas City first baseman Eric Hosmer hit a line drive back to the mound that hit off of Cobb's right ear, sending the righthander down to the Tropicana Field turf.

Cobb was taken off the field on a stretcher, but did not lose consciousness during the incident. The incident with Cobb comes five weeks after JA Happ of the Blue Jays was also hit in the head with a line drive at Tropicana Field, though Happ was discharged from the hospital the day after the injury. He hasn't pitched in a game since, as he's been on the DL with a skull fracture that resulted from the line drive.

The Rays ended up winning the game 5-3, but the main story after the game was Cobb's injury, and our thoughts are with him at this time.

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There might be something special happening with the Blue Jays right now. Toronto smashed the Rangers 8-0 last night, and are just six games under .500. The Jays have won three in a row, and in June, their ERA is 2.50, fourth best in baseball and nearly two runs lower than their season ERA. The pitching was the key for Toronto, and now that's coming along and the Jays might be ready to roll.

PIC OF THE DAY

Mets outfielder Juan Lagares runs into the outfield wall at Citi Field and actually knocks it loose. (Brad Penner-USA TODAY Sports)

Game of the Night: Reds 4, Brewers 3 (ten innings). This was a nice little back and forth game between division rivals. The Reds jumped out to a 2-0 lead, but Scooter Gennett homered to cut that lead in half. Martin Maldonado was plunked with the bases loaded by Bronson Arroyo to tie the game, but Cincinnati surged ahead after a Jack Hannahan sac fly. Maldonado homered in the eighth off of Arroyo to tie the game, and we'd eventually reach extras, where Jay Bruce hit a dinger of his own off of Burke Badenhop to give the Reds the victory.

The Diamondbacks-Dodgers brawl on Tuesday has resulted in eight players getting suspended, with ten games for Diamondbacks starter Ian Kennedy being the harshest punishment. Eric Hinske of the Diamondbacks got five games, while managers Kirk Gibson and Don Mattingly each got a game.

JP Howell and Skip Schumaker of the Dodgers each got a pair of games, as did Los Angeles hitting coach Mark McGwire. Dodgers reliever Ronald Belisario also got a game off. Fines were also issued to all of the suspended parties as well as Zack Greinke and Yasiel Puig of the Dodgers, and Miguel Montero and Gerardo Parra of the Diamondbacks. The Dodgers organization was also fined by the league after players on the DL left their bench during the brawl, and neither the Diamondbacks nor Dodgers will be allowed to have players on the DL on their benches through this weekend's games.

There's a bit of a controversy brewing online about Puig and Greinke not getting suspended, but reportedly, MLB passed on a suspension for Puig because they felt that Hinske escalated the conflicted with him. As for Greinke, various fans are citing his throwing at Montero the half inning before the brawl erupted as the reason he also deserves a suspension. But if you want to dredge up the unwritten rules of baseball, a player is allowed to retaliate once a teammate is hit, which is what Greinke did after Kennedy hit Puig near the face in the sixth inning. Then again, those same unwritten rules state that a pitcher gets one shot to retaliate, and Greinke missed hitting Montero twice before succeeding in plunking him.

The ten game suspension for Kennedy seems justified to some, ludicrous to others, and flat out bizarre to people like Dave Cameron of Fangraphs, who explains that because of appeals and offdays, Arizona won't miss a beat due to Kennedy's suspension. The logic is that he'll appeal the suspension, make his scheduled start on Sunday, then drop the appeal and begin serving his suspension. Because Arizona has offdays on both next Thursday and the Monday following that, the Diamondbacks can simply use a four man rotation for the 10 games Kennedy will miss and not miss a beat.

At any rate, while it's good to see MLB getting a little more harsh with their discipline, there's still a lot more work that needs to be done here.

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The Colorado Rockies have placed shortstop Troy Tulowitzki on the 15-day DL with a broken rib after he left Thursday's game with the Nationals in the eighth inning trying to make a catch. Reportedly, Tulowitzki's ribs have been hurting for a week, and Thursday's game was the straw that broke the camel's back. He'll apparently miss four to six weeks with the injury, throwing his seemingly destined start in the All-Star Game into doubt.

There's a lot to break down here, so I'll start with the obvious: if Tulowitzki's ribs have been hurting for a week, why has he only gotten one day off in the last three weeks? He's far and away Colorado's best (and most important) player, and with his injury, Colorado should have handled him with kid gloves the moment he mentioned he was sore. One or two days more days off over the last three weeks could have prevented him from further injury, and that means the Rockies wouldn't be without him until after the All-Star Break.

The worst thing that can happen to a team is losing your best player to injury. But what could possibly be *worse* than that mess? Well, take a look at Denver yesterday, where the Rockies fell to the Nationals 5-4 due in part to a pair of balks by Wilton Lopez. Troy Tulowitzki broke a rib in the eighth inning, and will be placed on the DL. Carlos Gonzalez was hit in the ankle by a foul ball while on deck, and left the game. Dexter Fowler was hit in the hand by a pitch and is day to day after x-rays were negative. Losing one player is rough, but losing your three best players is just not fair.

PIC OF THE DAY

Brandon Moss of the A's levels Yankees catcher Chris Stewart at the plate.  (Ed Szczepanski-USA TODAY Sports)

Game of the Night: Blue Jays 3, Rangers 1. The two teams each scored an early run before zeroes took over the scoreboard, thanks to the stellar pitching of Yu Darvish (not surprising) and Esmil Rogers (very surprising). Toronto finally broke through in the eighth after Emilio Bonifacio reached on an error by Adrian Beltre, and scored (along with Jose Bautista, who walked) on a double by Edwin Encarnacion. Rogers ceded to the bullpen, and Steve Delabar and Casey Janssen shut the door to give the Blue Jays a hard-fought win.

The All-Star Game is about a month away, and will be held at Citi Field, home of the New York Mets. As of Sunday, the only Mets' position player that had a reasonable chance of starting the game was third baseman David Wright. Wright was 200,000 votes behind Pablo Sandoval of the Giants as of the last voting update on Sunday, but will likely end up starting due to Sandoval's foot injury.

Anyway, the Mets would really love to see Wright earn his starting job...so much so that they reached out to Cougar Life in an attempt to get votes for Wright, according to Deadspin and verified by Mike Puma of the New York Post.

Mets spokesperson acknowledges the team reached out to "Cougar Life" dating site to try and get All-Star votes for David Wright.

— Mike Puma (@NYPost_Mets) June 13, 2013

You probably have seen the Cougar Life commercials during a variety of sporting events, but the Mets going to them trying to get more votes for Wright is bizarre, and that's the nicest thing I can say about the situation. It just reeks of desperation, but hey, they're the Mets. What do you expect?

Puma then followed up his initial tweet by saying that Mets decided to pass on the partnership after management got wind of the situation.

"Last year there was a big swing of votes at the end that cost David the starting job. We decided to do everything to make sure that doesn't happen again this year. We ultimately elected to pass. We thank whoever leaked this to Deadspin for increasing awareness of #VOTEWRIGHTNOW at mets.com."

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Dodgers GM Ned Colletti is having a rough month. He spent the off-season handing out other people's money to build a team that he, and many experts, thought would contend for a World Series. Instead, the Dodgers are mired in last place in the NL West and Colletti is spending much of his time trying to undo the mess he made.

First, he began the likely fruitless effort to trade Andre Ethier, who is now an albatross because of the wildly overpriced contract extension Colletti gave him one year ago. Now though, Ned is busy trying to clean the egg off his face after another one of his highly debatable signings worked even more poorly than anyone could have ever imagined.

The latest misstep would be the situation with closer Brandon League who is now former closer Brandon League. It is a situation that only arose because Colletti made the classic mistake of overpaying a reliever because he is a Proven Closer^TM.

A quick glance at the MLB standings might lead you to believe that everything is fine with the Detroit Tigers.

As of June 13, Detroit has a 4.5-game lead over the Cleveland Indians, the largest first-place margin in the American League and second-largest in the majors. The Tigers also have the best run differential in the league, scoring 81 runs more than they've allowed. 

However, the Tigers clearly benefit from playing in the weaker AL Central. Their 36-28 record places them fifth in the league, tied with a Baltimore Orioles club that ranks third in the AL East. Detroit was predicted by many to return to the World Series, yet doesn't currently look like the best team in the league. 

While the Tigers could certainly win the AL pennant on the strength of their starting rotation and powerful lineup, it's not difficult to imagine that an increasingly unreliable bullpen might ultimately prevent this team from meeting championship expectations. 

The most obvious example of Detroit's bullpen ineptness is closer Jose Valverde, who blew his third save of the season in Wednesday's 3-2 defeat to the Kansas City Royals. Valverde served up a two-run homer to Lorenzo Cain on an 85 mph splitter that, well, didn't split and hung out over the plate. The pitch was just asking to be crushed and Cain obliged.

Something has happened with the Kansas City Royals. The butt of a lot of jokes through the first two months of this season, Kansas City is 8-3 in June and is now just 5.5 games out of first place in the AL Central. They rallied late to beat the Tigers last night, Detroit is still playing pretty good baseball, so Kansas City hasn't picked up a ton of ground, but after winning their last three series, the Royals aren't a joke right now.

PIC OF THE DAY

Tom Wilhelmsen, and the agony of an awful appearance. (Steven Bisig-USA TODAY Sports)

Game of the Night: Royals 3, Tigers 2 (ten innings). This game is the rare double feature in the opening, and the GOTN section. Justin Verlander dominated the Royals over sevne innings and left the game to the bullpen to finish the job...whoops. Drew Smyly threw an easy eighth, but allowed a leadoff single to Eric Hosmer in the ninth. Exit Smyly, enter Valverde. Detroit's closer got the first two outs before allowing a game-tying two-run homer to Lorenzo Cain to blow the win for Verlander. In the tenth, Greg Holland threw a shutdown inning for the Royals, and Kansas City won by playing station to station baseball in the bottom of the inning: Miguel Tejada singled, move up a base on each fo the next two outs, and scored the winning run on a walkoff single by Hosmer.