Yes, the Cincinnati Reds lost an excellent pitchers’ duel between Bronson Arroyo and Jaime Garcia last night, but you undoubtedly stayed up to watch that whole thing. What you may have missed was Jay Bruce reaching his limit of twitter abuse around midnight after the game.

Bruce has started the season slowly and has yet to go on one of his signature player of the week tears. Not to mention he ended the game last night by striking out. But lashing out on social media?

The Enquirer does a great job rounding up the response.

I appreciate all the tweets, good and bad, actually. You guys are what drive the game. I’m obviously not hitting as well as I’d like to, yet I actually feel sorry for the people on here who feel that it’s necessary to try and put me down on twitter. It really just explains [f]urther who you are, and there are obviously things in your life that you’re unhappy about and you take it out on me via twitter. I suggest you look into talking with a life coach or something to help you get over whatever you have going on in your life. There is obviously a lack of something going on, and I hope you guys get it straightened out, because you all sound like idiots Everyone have a good night. Haha

[View the story “Jay Bruce takes to Twitter after game” on Storify]

I think Enquirer reporter John Fay has the best response.

My advice when I saw Bruce looking at Twitter: “You don’t want to do that.” It[‘s] not [a] pleasant place for a struggling athlete to be.

That’s very true. I can’t imagine the grief he must receive on a daily basis. People on the internet are assholes. Sports fans on the internet are even worse, as the twitter account showcasing the self-proclaimed best fans in baseball of the Cardinals has shown.

I can’t see much good coming from Bruce’s outburst. The more knowledgeable fans already realize that one month doesn’t equal a whole season. The sky-is-falling set will just brush it off as another entitled, rich athlete making excuses for not performing up to his paycheck.

With more and more athletes engaging in social media from a younger age, this type of thing is something I can see happening more often in the future. And the only real solution to it is for the player to not engage with his fans and cancel his social media accounts. That would be a shame, considering some of the entertainment and goodwill that’s come from them, such as from Brandon Phillips’.

At the end of the day, though, I’d much rather Bruce be focusing on improving his baseball-playing ability than paying attention to idiot criticism. If the trade-off is fewer athlete twitter accounts, that’s something I can live with.

It took four tries, but Mat Latos finally overcame his streak of terrible Aprils to start seasons. That it came in his second year with the Cincinnati Reds is not really a surprise, given how much looser he was coming into camp.

Latos talked about this during spring training, mentioning the pressure that he felt after the trade in 2012.

“Who’s to say that I’m that good to be traded for four guys? That’s what killed me,” Latos said. “If I had been traded for one guy, it would have been a lot different. Something like that happens, automatically there’s a pressure regardless. You’re like, ‘Crap, I’ve got to prove that I’m worth four guys.'”

That feeling is over with this year.

And the results have shown it. Consider his first three Aprils in the majors.

Year	W	L	W-L%	ERA	G	GS	CG	IP	H	R	ER	HR	BB	IBB	SO	HBP	WHIP	SO/9	SO/BB
2010	1	2	.333	6.20	4	4	0	20.1	24	14	14	5	6	1	13	0	1.475	5.8	2.17
2011	0	4	.000	4.98	4	4	0	21.2	19	17	12	5	10	0	25	1	1.338	10.4	2.50
2012	1	2	.333	5.97	5	5	0	28.2	35	19	19	4	10	0	18	0	1.570	5.7	1.80

6.20, 4.98, and 5.97. Those are not the ERAs of someone who starts the season strong.

Now look at 2013.

Year	W	L	W-L%	ERA	G	GS	CG	IP	H	R	ER	HR	BB	IBB	SO	HBP	WHIP	SO/9	SO/BB
2013	2	0	1.000	1.83	6	6	0	39.1	35	11	8	3	8	0	37	1	1.093	8.5	4.63

An ERA below 2.00 and almost 40 innings. Back in the spring, Latos had this to say.

“I’m hoping to resurrect my April,” Latos said.

With those stats, consider that mission accomplished. Now if he can make this his weakest month, then 2013 will be shaping up to be an amazing year.

I’m so glad Mat Latos is a Red.

Effective today as of when the online edition of Sports Illustrated went live, the major male American team sports finally have one openly gay player. Jason Collins, a 12-year veteran of the NBA, published a first-person essay in Sports Illustrated in which he came out. From that essay:

I realized I needed to go public when Joe Kennedy, my old roommate at Stanford and now a Massachusetts congressman, told me he had just marched in Boston’s 2012 Gay Pride Parade. I’m seldom jealous of others, but hearing what Joe had done filled me with envy. I was proud of him for participating but angry that as a closeted gay man I couldn’t even cheer my straight friend on as a spectator. If I’d been questioned, I would have concocted half truths. What a shame to have to lie at a celebration of pride. I want to do the right thing and not hide anymore. I want to march for tolerance, acceptance and understanding. I want to take a stand and say, “Me, too.”

Good for you, Collins! Not on the being gay part; that’s not really so much an achievement. But being the first guy to actually say it has been surprisingly difficult for what must literally be hundreds of active players.

Steam has clearly been building for a while now and the topic has come up often thanks to almost 20% of the states in the US now allowing gay marriages. In fact, I talked about this just last month when Dusty Baker was quoted in a story about the dearth of homosexual players in baseball.

I’m glad that the seal has finally been broken. Of course, I’m a little disappointed that it wasn’t an MLB player. I think that would have been something really historical to have been a part of.