SnakeBytes, 6/1: ...and sometimes the Cubs eat you edition

Quotes of the day

• "I'm pretty frustrated, but you've got to take those last four innings. I feel like that's more me. I've got to move on from there and put all that other stuff behind me. I've got to quit thinking, get the mental stuff out of my head and go out there and compete."
  -- Wade Miley
• "Actually, I thought he was hurt to be honest. He was throwing 88-89 and I’m like, ‘Is he all right?’ I went and talked to him and he said he was fine. After that homer, it was kind of like a spark for him. Hopefully that’s the start to getting his confidence back. He threw a really solid (four) innings after that."
  -- Miguel Montero
• "He better... I'm not going to let him go out and keep doing that. It's a tough go when you're down six or seven to nothing."
  -- Kirk Gibson, asked if Miley might get some momentum from how he finished
• "It looked a lot bigger when I was watching from the stands."
  - A.J. Pollock, on returning to Wrigley Field for the first time since junior high.

Brandon McCarthy injury alert: light amber

This was just a sentence fragment in Nick P's recap: "With right-hander Brandon McCarthy’s condition uncertain — he intimated Thursday that he was going through some arm issues " But it set off alarm bells, as this has, traditionally, been the time of the year when McCarthy's stress fracture starts playing up. Digging back to Thursday's piece, I found this: "After being pounded for nine hits and six runs in 2 2/3 innings, McCarthy said he felt "just dead," and when given chances to declare his body and arm healthy, he was somewhat evasive. Asked if he felt OK, he said he felt normal given the time of year." It may be nothing. On the other hand...

No more slideshows!

Ladies and gentlemen, are you tired of generating spurious page views on flaky sites that use unnecessary slideshows? I give you the Deslideifier! Pop in the address of the first page, and it will spit out one page with all the slides on it. For example, Scott Bordow's piece in the Republic ggrading the moves made by Kevin Towers over the winter? Pop that into the Deslideifier and, hey presto, out it comes on one page. Bookmarking this heavily for future use... Oh, and Bordow's conclusion? "Towers was right more than he was wrong this off-season. His moves are a big reason the Diamondbacks, despite all their injuries, are atop the NL West."

The return of Willie B

Perhaps a little ahead of schedule, Bloomquist came back to the roster, but arrived in Chicago too late (not until 4am or so) to be used in yesterday's game. Wouldn't be surprised to see him in there today, and he's looking forward to returning. He seems fully recovered from the oblique strain which cost him the first two months of the season. Bloomquist said, "The last week or 10 days or so, I haven't felt it in a game, and each game that goes by, [I] get more and more confident with it and don't worry about it at all. The past four or five games, I haven't even given it a second thought, so that's where I need to be."

Diamondbacks links

• Skaggs has bright future with solid three-pitch mix: "Skaggs projects as a high-quality starting pitcher with a great future. He will likely be part of a rotation that comes close to duplicating the 2011 Mobile effort. D-backs fans would love that."
• Pitch and catch with ... Arizona Diamondbacks' Brad Ziegler: The Ziegster discusses his love of hockey, and fandom of the San Jose Sharks, which began when he was growing up in Kansas City.
• No consensus first-round pick for Arizona Diamondbacks in expert mock drafts: The draft is next Thursday, but it's hard to say which way the D-backs might go. Probably unsurprising, considering how low down the draft we are picking this year, at #15.
  
• Brenley enjoying Diamondbacks gig: Doesn't look like he's interested in becoming a manager again. "I'll never say never if the right situation came along. I'm not pursuing it. Obviously, nobody's pursuing me. I'm intent to stay where I'm at right now and just go home at the end of the day, and it's not my fault and I don't pick up (the newspaper) the next day calling me an idiot."
• Diamondbacks Can Afford a Little Change at Catcher: Thinking the unthinkable i.e. Miguel Montero not being the everyday catcher.
  

Around baseball

• Todd Helton's time to take a seat on Rockies bench awkwardly arrives: It's the end of an era at Coors. "Helton has lost a legitimate claim to be the team's regular first baseman. Weiss doesn't have the heart to tell Helton, so somebody must say: It's time to take a seat on the bench, big fella."
• Mother Nature forces Cardinals, Giants postponement: Not often a game is called off before the first raindrop arrives, but the tornado warning in effect helped decide this one. Shame: I'm sure we'd all have been amused to see St. Buster swept off to the Land of Oz, purely for the resulting uber-angst outburst among Giants' fans.
  
• B.J. Upton To Minors? The reuniting in Atlanta certainly doesn't seem to have helped one Upton brother. "Braves manager Fredi Gonzalez says he has considered asking center fielder B.J. Upton to work out his struggles in a minor league assignment. Upton, signed to the biggest contract in franchise history at five years, $75.25 million, has a .146 batting average."