The Tigers are built to win now. From the owner to the position players to the pitchers, this team is built for short-term glory and some long-term pain. in that context, their latest trade — a package featuring top prospect Jacob Turner for Anibal Sanchez and Omar Infante — fills their greatest short-term needs and readies the team for postseason play.

Their 83-year-old pizza magnate owner, Mike Ilitch, bought the team from another pizza magnate, Tom Monaghan, in 1992, or eight years after the Tigers won their last world series championship. After some early success, the owner looked to put a long-term plan in place and hired Dave Dombrowski to captain the ship. 2003 saw the Tigers lose more than any other American League team in history, but then the pieces Dombrowski put together started to come to fruition. It’s still the stars from that accumulation of talent that power the team — Justin Verlander, Austin Jackson, Miguel Cabrera — but recent acquisitions have cemented the win-now feeling.

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It might be shape up or ship out time for Seattle first baseman Justin Smoak. Ever since his high-profile arrival from Texas, Smoak has failed to live up to expectations. His manager, Eric Wedge, makes it sound as if the organization is nearing their wits’ end and may make a move:

We’ve been patient, they’ve been addressed, and we’ve come at them in different ways and different fashions. But ultimately, they’re grown men out there and either they’ve got to get it done or they won’t be here.”

Delve into Smoak’s numbers and the picture doesn’t get any rosier. He’s already accrued over 1200 major league plate appearances that we can use to judge him against history, and his numbers don’t suggest a hopeful future.

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Keith Olbermann was fired by the Yankees, sort of. Reggie Jackson was fired by the Yankees, sort of. Both of them disparaged Alex Rodriguez, sort of. This means that the Yankees are protecting the feelings of their aging star — sort of.

First was Olbermann’s transgression. He spotted Yankee assistant Brett Weber relaying signs to Alex Rodriguez, so he posted the picture and pointed out that the star was getting confirmation of the pitch he just saw. It wasn’t cheating because Rodriguez was in the on-deck circle. The Yankees retorted that the gun wasn’t working well that day, and it was all an effort to help their players get information they normally received from the stadium boards. Olbermann, in a post that laid this all out on his MLBlog, insinuated that the implication was still there: Alex Rodriguez needed help from the stands in order to understand what he had just seen from a closer vantage point.

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If being a subject of more study, research and incredulity than perhaps any other pitcher in baseball is a burden to R.A. Dickey, the down-to-earth New York Met doesn’t show it. Perhaps it’s because he’s studied, researched and been baffled by the knuckleball more than anyone in the game these days. Maybe he welcomes the help. Given his status as Lead Knuckleball Researcher, it made sense to ask the all-star about some findings about his work and his unique pitch.

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When we look at a hitter that’s struggling to produce, we have plenty of peripherals at our disposal. When we look at a pitcher that’s struggling with his control, we have… two? We have his zone percentage, and we have his first-strike percentage. We can compare those to the league average and hope we have a sense of how important either is to his walk rate going forward.

Well, let’s see how well these things correlate to walk rate. Why not.

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Right now, like as this is being written, Ricky Romero is in the process of getting bombed by the Red Sox. The 27-year-old lefty just finished an inning in which he gave up a double to Dustin Pedroia between two walks before an error and a few groundouts allowed singles from Mike Aviles and Darnell McDonald to plate some runs. Six runs in all. So far all the balls in play have been ground balls — his bailiwick — but something is still off.

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Few players have had the swings of fortune that Anthony Rizzo has experienced.

After being drafted in the sixth round by the Red Sox in 2007, he had an unspectacular but promising debut for an eighteen year-old in rookie ball (.286/.375/.429). Then he found out he had Hodgkin’s lymphoma and spent most of 2008 eating, sleeping, and getting chemotherapy. It took him until 2010 to really bounce back, but that year he hit .263/.334/.481 in Double-A for the Red Sox and suddenly appeared on prospect lists. Then he was traded to the Padres and hit .141 with the big league club in 153 plate appearances. Then he hit 26 home runs in Triple-A. Then he was traded to the Cubs. Then he hit 23 home runs in 284 Triple-A plate appearances.

Now the 22-year-old first baseman has been called up a second time, perhaps to stay. That’s a lot of back-and-forth swings for Rizzo. It should be no surprise, then, that his fortunes hang on his ability to sustain the changes he’s made to his swing.

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Esteemed colleagues Dave Cameron and Carson Cistulli are correct — it’s about location and movement when it comes to R.A. Dickey’s excellent work so far this year. Certainly, a knuckleball pitcher isn’t blowing it by the batters he faces.

That doesn’t mean that velocity doesn’t have a lot to do with why Dickey’s been good this year — and why he might be able to keep it up.

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That teenager with the eye black in Washington is setting records as he blazes a trail through his rookie season, but today Bryce Harper broke a record that he may not brag about. In seven plate appearances against the Yankees, the outfielder struck out five times. He becomes the youngest person to ever earn a platinum sombrero, and the first teenager. Does it matter?

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Punctuation is so fascist. Throw punctuation on this title and you rob it the statement of its’ many possible meanings. While we can say that Vladimir Guerrero is now a free agent after the Blue Jays granted him his release, to say that Vladimir Guerrero is now free is much more ambiguous. And, in a way, captures more of the essence of what happened today.

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