Curtis Granderson is in the starting lineup for the New York Yankees tonight, playing left field and batting fourth for their game against the Seattle Mariners. It's Granderson's first action of the season after breaking his forearm during Spring Training in March, and Granderson is also the first of the highly paid injured Yankees to play this season (in advance of Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriguez, and Mark Teixeira).

Tonight, Granderson is in left field, while Brett Gardner and Ichiro take their usual positions in center and right respectively. Vernon Wells is shifting to DH tonight, and Travis Hafner is on the bench with Granderson's return. Well, that seems like a simple enough solution. Hafner can't hit lefties. His OPS this season is just .720 against southpaws, and Joe Girardi has done a great job not putting him in a position to feed that weakness, as Hafner has logged just 20 plate appearances against lefties this season. His sore shoulder made the decision tonight a little easier, and Hafner's overall frailty could render this entire situation moot.

Going into the 2013 MLB season, the Cleveland Indians appeared to be a fringe contender in the AL Central division.

The Tribe certainly raised eyebrows around baseball by suddenly becoming big spenders and adding significant talent to their lineup. But could the Indians really challenge a Tigers team that not only could be the best team in their division, but in the entire American League?

Additionally, Cleveland had to compete with the Kansas City Royals, viewed as a team on the rise after upgrading their starting pitching.

Yet following a series win over the Tigers in Detroit during the weekend and splitting a doubleheader with the New York Yankees at Progressive Field on Monday, Terry Francona's club has the look of a division title and AL wild-card contender. 

Is it still a bit too early in the season to make that kind of declaration? We're approximately six weeks into the season. 

After Bryce Harper's injury last night, Nationals fans held their collective breath. Harper is the best player on the team and one of the best in the league, and any serious injury to him would spell trouble for Washington over the rest of the year. Thankfully for the Nationals, Harper avoided serious injury, and should be able to avoid a DL stint. But after this incident and one in Atlanta two weeks ago when Harper collided with the right field scorebaord and came away with a shoulder contusion, you really need to wonder just where the Nationals will be if Harper suffers a serious injury.

Right now, it's not really a happy time in DC, despite the Nationals' 8-3 tear in May that has moved them to just one game behind the Braves in the NL East. Even with Harper posting a 1.022 OPS in 35 games, Washington's offense has been pitiful. As a whole, the team's OPS is just .670, and their 82 wRC+ and .292 wOBA are the third-worst marks in all of baseball, ahead of just the White Sox and Marlins. Most of that is due to a .281 BABIP, which ranks in the lower third in baseball, but injuries to other players have also played a part.

Justin Upton played his first game at Chase Field last night as a visitor. His new team (the Braves) smashed his old team (the Diamondbacks) 10-1. More telling was Upton's stat line: 4/5 with two runs, two RBI, a double, and a homer. Chris Johnson, who came to Atlanta with Upton in this winter's trade, went 3/4 with three RBI,, a double, and a homer. But it's not all depressing for Diamondbacks fans: Martin Prado went 2/2 with a walk and a double against his former team, but also committed an error at third base and was thrown out at the plate by the elder Upton brother, BJ.

PIC OF THE DAY

Bryce Harper leaves the field after running into the scoreboard at Dodger Stadium. He needed 11 stitches in his chin and jammed a shoulder, but thankfully did not receive a concussion. (Richard Mackson-USA TODAY Sports)

Game of the Day: Indians 1, Yankees 0. There really weren't many close games yesterday. Only one of the 11 games on the slate featured a traditional save (and not one of those garbage time three inning saves, and this one wasn't it. But because of the precariousness of the situation over the course of the entire game, I had to give the nod to game one of the Indians-Yankees doubleheader. Cleveland got a solo homer from Jason Kipnis, their second batter of the game, and got nothing over the rest of the game. But that was still a better effort than the Yankees gave. New York didn't get an extra base hit at all during the game, and they didn't have a runner in scoring position with less than two outs all game. Justin Masterson was dominant, and we'll get to his full line after the jump.

Washington Nationals outfielder Bryce Harper had to leave Washington's game on Monday night in Los Angeles after running into the right field scoreboard at Dodger Stadium.

Harper was chasing a fly ball hit by AJ Ellis in the fifth inning before simply running out of room and running straight into the scoreboard mounted on the right field wall. He didn't move after initially hitting the wall, and it's feared that he lost consciousness for a brief period. Harper would eventually leave the game, walking off the field under his own power with a decent bit of blood around his neck.

Hopefully, Harper only has scrapes and bruises from the collision and he doesn't have a concussion. He's one of the brightest stars in the game, and more importantly for the Nationals right now, he's their best hitter and the main reason they're putting any runs on the board at all. If he's going to miss an extended period of time for Washington, their chances at repeating their NL East championship just got a lot slimmer.

Like TOC on Facebook

Follow TOC on Twitter

We're not even a quarter of the way into the 2013 season, and the umpiring across MLB has had its fair share of awful moments. Perhaps the worst part about all of these gaffes is that there isn't really a consistent problem. Of the five gaffes listed below, they're all different and unique in nature. It's not as if strike zones have been egregiously bad all year, or that numerous replay calls have been botched; it's been a little bit of everything across the board.

April 8th. Rays vs Rangers
Umpire: Marty Foster
Player Screwed: Ben Zobrist

The lone ball/strike call on this list is one of the worst I've seen in awhile, because A) it ended the game, and B) the Rays were in a position to put together a rally and take the lead against the Rangers. Foster's strike three call on Ben Zobrist came on a Joe Nathan pitch that was *way* out of the strike zone, and was a call that was so bad that Foster eventually admitted after the game that he probably wouldn't have called that pitch a strike if he had another chance.

During the 2012 regular season, the Chicago Cubs managed to lock up one of their core pieces for the future when they signed Starlin Castro to a six-year contract extension. On Sunday night, the nailed down another piece of that core with an extension of his own.

The Cubs and first baseman Anthony Rizzo agreed to a seven-year contract extension, on a deal that could pan out to be extremely favorable for Chicago. There are multiple elements of this contract that make this look like an absolute steal by the front office combination of Theo Epstein and Jed Hoyer.

The reason the St. Louis Cardinals have the best record in baseball is that their starting pitching has been dominant. They've posted a major league best 2.11 ERA, with their worst starter posting a 2.72 ERA. But that rotation took a hit today when Jake Westbrook was sent to the 15-day DL with a sore elbow.

The good news is that the Cards have a AAA pitcher who has equaled the start of his teammates on the parent club. 24-year-old John Gast, a 2010 6th round pick out of Florida State, began the year tossing 32 consecutive innings without allowing a run. Now he's pitched 38.2 innings and has a 1.16 ERA.

On Tuesday, he'll get his first start in the majors.

It took Jose Valverde six games to blow his first save of the season. The Tigers fell to the Indians 4-3 in ten innings, dropping into a first place tie with Cleveland at the top of the AL Central, and Valverde's performance was a big reason why. Detroit's closer began the ninth by walking Michael Bourn, then allowing him to steal second. After getting two outs, he then walked Jason Giambi to bring up Michael Brantley. Of course, Brantley singled in Bourn to tie the game an hand Valverde the blown save. He threw 29 pitches in the ninth, and just 15 were strikes. Of those 15 strikes, eight (or more than half) came on foul balls. His velocity also continued its steady decline from the past few years, so the roller coaster ride might continue to be ugly this year for Tigers fans.

PIC OF THE DAY

Felix Hernandez having a good ol' time after the Mariners' win over the A's. (Joe Nicholson-USA TODAY Sports) 

Game of the Day: Phillies 4, Diamondbacks 2 (ten innings). Brandon McCarthy cruised through this game for the Diamondbacks. In eight shutout innings, he didn't break a sweat, throwing just 87 pitches and dominating the Phillies. Then proven closer Heath Bell came in for the save, and everything went to hell for Arizona. Chase Utley led the ninth off with a double, and scored after a Ryan Howard groundout and a Delmon Young double. All of a sudden, it was 2-1 and the Phillies had the tying run in scoring position. Domonic Brown immediately followed up with a single to score pinch runner John Mayberry Jr and tie the game at two. The Diamondbacks didn't do much of anything in the bottom of the inning, and in the tenth, Matt Reynolds took the mound for Arizona. He got Laynce Nix to ground out to start the inning, and then allowed a single to Jimmy Rollins and another double to Utley to put two men in scoring position with one out. Howard followed up with a single to score the pair and put the Phillies in front, and Jonathan Papelbon slammed the door in the ninth to give Philadelphia a great comeback win.

In the latest edition of "stories that aren't really news, yet the New York media will keep shoving them down our throats", Joba Chamberlain and Mariano Rivera of the Yankees reportedly got into a brief war of words before the Yankees-Royals game on Saturday. David Waldstein of the New York Times has the story.

Rivera was conducting a dugout interview after he had finished meeting with local families that have endured hardships. During the interview, Chamberlain was standing on the railing of the dugout signing autographs and speaking loudly to be heard above the public address system to members of his family in the stands.

At one point Rivera called out, “Joba, suave,” and used a hand gesture for Chamberlain to keep the volume down. Rivera continued to speak with the reporters, but once the interview ended Chamberlain said to Rivera, “Don’t shush me.”

Rivera initially thought Chamberlain was joking, but Chamberlain reiterated the point twice more with a stern expression, saying: “I’m serious. Don’t ever shush me.”