MOLINA EYES THUMB SPLINT
Cardinals catcher Yadier Molina will try to play in the NL Division Series while wearing a splint to protect his injured left thumb.
The AllStar, widely considered the best defensive catcher in the game, met with a hand specialist on Monday.
Molina partially tore the ligament on Sept. 20 making a tag at the plate and hasn’t played since. St. Louis said the injury was still present, and he will test the splint during workouts the next few days.
General manager John Mozeliak said Molina was feeling stronger and added he was “still optimistic” the 33yearold would be on the postseason roster.
Backup Tony Cruz would be the starter if Molina is unable to play. Cruz batted .204 overall but was 11 for 38 (.289) with five doubles and four RBIs after taking over in the regular season.
Ed Easley, a 29yearold rookie, was the backup while Molina was out and was 0for6 on the year with one RBI.
St. Louis starts its postseason at home Friday night against the Cubs or Pirates.
PADRES: Admitting San Diego “didn’t have the right formula” this season, general manager A.J. Preller said he’s looking for a manager who can get the underachieving team to play at a high level.
Preller fired interim manager Pat Murphy after the Padres finished 7488 and fourth in the NL West, 18 games behind the division champion Dodgers.
The Padres were a disappoint ment. Despite the addition of stars such as Matt Kemp, Justin Upton and James Shields and a bump in payroll past the $100 million mark for the first time, the Padres had their worst finish in four years. DIAMONDBACKS: Arizona fired pitching coach Mike Harkey.
Harkey held the position for two seasons and had been retained on the staff after manager Kirk Gibson was fired a year ago.
Harkey has coached in the majors for 16 years and was Joe Girardi’s bullpen coach for six seasons with the Yankees before coming to Arizona.
A’S: Oakland wanted to make sure it could keep David Forst in the front office after other clubs sought to hire him, so they promoted him to GM and elevated Billy Beane to executive vice president of baseball operations.
MLB: It was another year of big shifts in Major League Baseball.
Teams used 17,733 defensive shifts on balls in play this season, Baseball Info Solutions said. That is up 33 percent from 13,298 last year.
Shifts increased from 2,357 in 2011 to 4,577 the following year and 8,180 in 2013.
Baseball also managed to cut six minutes from the average time of a nineinning game this season, when it adopted some speedup rules.
STATS said the season average ended at 2 hours, 56 minutes. While the average dropped to 2:53 in the first half of the season, it was back at 3:00 after the AllStar break.