The San Francisco Giants manager explained why this afternoon on the MLB Network Radio channel on SiriusXM with hosts Jim Bowden and Casey Stern:

“Well, Jim, I’ve got to be honest here, that would be really hard for me to consider that. And I’ve already had that question. I guess there was somebody who wrote they would like to see him there and that he deserves to go because this game is for the fans and they want to see not just the best players, but the most interesting or intriguing players. I would have a hard time picking somebody who has been here three weeks, to be honest. The numbers would have to be so stupid that you say, ‘Ok I’ll consider it.’ But, you know, I couldn’t take away from a player who has been here and done it the whole half and been out there grinding every day and he doesn’t go. I couldn’t look at that player. I couldn’t look at myself, to be honest. So that’s why I’m saying, that’s a really long shot.”

Bochy won’t have too much choice in selecting his position players. Between fan voting, the restrictions of having enough players at each position, and an arcane MLB requirement that every team be represented by at least one player, Bochy’s opinion on Puig might not matter.

Still, it might poke at the fire of the Giants-Dodgers rivalry and, if anything, incentivize fans to write Puig in as an All-Star. The Dodgers’ right fielder is not listed on the All-Star ballot.

Since his recall from Double-A, Puig is hitting .479 with four home runs and 10 RBIs in 13 games.

Clayton Kershaw is looking for a lot of money in his contract extension. But we knew that already, right? (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)

Clayton Kershaw and the Dodgers are talking about a contract extension. One side or both might be getting antsy.

At least, that’s often the case when the terms of a deal are leaked to the media: To achieve something that negotiation cannot.

Kershaw said the leak came from the Dodgers’ camp, not his. Regardless, there’s not a whole lot we can read into the reports on CBSsports.com and FoxSports.com, mainly because the two stories differ on the dollar amounts being discussed and the likelihood of a deal happening in the near future.

If — and this is a fairly big if — Kershaw is seeking “about $225 million,” as CBSsports.com reports, he probably wouldn’t prefer the 10-year or 12-year contract structures mentioned on FoxSports.com, which would almost certainly lock in Kershaw to a longer term than he’s seeking. Those terms were more likely to have been proposed by the Dodgers. Again, this assumes the two reports are both drawing their separate information from reliable sources.

Is it wise to invest 12 years in a 25-year-old pitcher who has already thrown more than 1,000 major-league innings? In any player?

These are legitimate questions here. The Dodgers have probably asked them internally. At some point, we might discover what conclusion they reach. Does Kershaw think he’s worth 12 years and $300 million? Ask him yourself in about an hour.

Some bullet points for an Autistic Pride Day:

• The Dodgers are in New York. Seems like Hanley Ramirez was reminded of this in an unusual way.

• A good question pondered on CBSsports.com: “Dodgers-Yankees is the most common of all World Series matchups, played 11 times. Nothing else even comes close. So why in the world, then, has Dodgers at Yankees been the least common of regular-season interleague matchups?”

• New York Yankees GM Brian Cashman grew up a Dodgers fan.

• From ESPN.com: “(Don) Mattingly might very well manage in the home dugout in the Bronx someday. That is, if (Joe) Girardi ever relinquishes his spot.”

• Ian Kennedy dropped his appeal of his 10-game suspension for throwing a pitch near the head of Dodgers pitcher Zack Greinke.

• The Huffington Post has video of the weekend brawl between the Albuquerque Isotopes and Memphis Redbirds.

• A young Dodgers fan spoke his mind. The next Tommy Lasorda, or the next Skip Bayless?

• Gwenn Knapp’s take on Yasiel Puig for Sports on Earth is a thorough snapshot of his place in the moment.

• ICYMI, the song “Puig Destroyer” by the band Puig Destroyer is 48 seconds of thrash-metal heaven.

• “The Mushroom Of Course!” by promising indie rapper Castle is one of the most delightfully goofy songs I’ve heard in years (and NSFW):

A whirlwind, to be sure.

“It was still a lot of fun,” the 24-year-old pitcher said after the game. “Definitely to get out there and get my feet wet was an awesome experience. I wish my results were a little better. When you come into a game, it’s 4-3, you want to hold the lead. I wasn’t able to do that so i didn’t get my job done.”

Withrow’s statistics aren’t particularly flattering. He was stuck with a 13.50 earned-run average after being charged with one run in two-thirds of an inning. He is so far the only member of the Dodgers’ 2007 draft class to reach the majors, and looking down the list he might bear that distinction for a while. (Not his fault, but for a moment you had to wonder if any of them would make it.) And while he didn’t take the loss, Withrow was charged with a blown save and was arguably just as responsible for the loss as Brandon League or Ronald Belisario, the losing pitcher last night.

That said, looking on the bright side of Withrow’s debut wasn’t particularly hard. He touched 100 mph on the stadium radar gun with his fastball (if you round up the numbers from Brooks Baseball), 20 mph faster than his curve. He stayed around the strike zone, working the corners, and the three hits he allowed were seeing-eye singles.

“That’s just bad luck,” Dodgers manager Don Mattingly said. “He had the first two guys overpowered. This kid’s got a special arm. With all our DL guys, he’s kind of a weird guy that’s here. He could give us a power arm that could really help us.”

Given that last statement, and given the struggles of League and Belisario this year, you wonder how much Withrow’s debut served as an audition for a larger role — and if so, if he passed.

“I could have executed a couple pitches a little better and maybe my results would have been better,” he said. “I had so many butterflies last night, so much adrenaline last night, that tonight when the phone rang and it was my name, I had to put it all behind me and do my job. Once I got out there it was trying to execute pitches.”

Mark McGwire and Kirk Gibson aren’t talking about the 1988 World Series in this photo, but isn’t it fun to imagine they are? (Associated Press photo)

Like Yasiel Puig’s arrival last week, The Brawl has been a gift to the media that keeps on giving.

Accuse us of glorifying violence, I don’t care. It was a rare occasion and one that’s been examined from a lot of angles. Searching for the words in the moment, some of us in the media not typically prone to hyperbole rose to the level of hyperbole (before remembering that, no, the 1984 Braves-Padres brawl was much worse, even when it’s set to the “Benny Hill” theme song).

Ken Rosenthal of FoxSports.com hopes The Brawl inspires baseball’s rulemakers to forbid players from leaving the benches and bullpens during a fracas. Still others couldn’t get over the number of coaches involved who filled out our baseball card collections in the 1980s. One piece exploring this topic concludes with God admonishing Ryne Sandberg. The gift that keeps on giving.

And oh, the photos.

Take a moment to appreciate it all before the MLB-induced discipline squashes the moment today.

Some bullet points for a Thursday morning:

• Last fall, when Major League Baseball first approached the Dodgers and Diamondbacks about opening the 2014 regular season in Australia, it seemed like a random matchup. It fit MLB’s desire to have two Western-based teams, but that’s about it. Not a rivalry. Dodgers and Giants, maybe — and maybe the league asked the Giants if they were interested. That footnote might be lost to history, unless someone within the Giants organization is willing to put forth a good reason why they would have turned down a trip to Australia.

• Now, in the wake of The Brawl, there’s something resembling a rivalry. If The Brawl does help promote the Sydney games, Dodgers president Stan Kasten said, “it’s still not something I would endorse. There are other, better, less injurious ways to promote this.”

• Don Mattingly and Kirk Gibson made their peace during the pregame lineup card exchange Wednesday, then shook hands. Mattingly extended an apology to Alan Trammell, whom Mattingly tackled to the ground Tuesday. Gibson reiterated that Ian Kennedy wasn’t trying to hit anyone, according to Mattingly. There was nothing resembling animosity on the field during the game.

• Someone help me out with this: I don’t know how nicknames are bestowed on athletes in the Information Age. Must they be crowdsourced first? Does something (a quote, a video, a .gif) need to go viral?

• If this were not the Information Age — the age of Grantland Rice, not Grantland.com, and bums like me were spinning prose about skinny college kids playing like “four horsemen” — I might have shoved my line about Puig looking like a bull in Pamplona down everyone’s throats a bit more. That’s what he looked like Tuesday: A bull with more rage than room to express it, running into a crowded group of people for what appeared to be no good reason other than his own self-spun momentum. And I’d keep calling Puig the “Raging Bull” whether you liked it or not.

• In honor of the Raging Bull, here’s a tune from Toro Y Moi:

They entered the series 7 ½ games behind the first-place Diamondbacks and finished 8 ½ back. They might have lost their manager, a coach, and some players to MLB-issued suspensions, depending on how the league metes out discipline Thursday for the massive brawl on Tuesday night.

If the Dodgers want to reach .500 by the All-Star break, they will need to win at least 19 of their next 29 games.

But hey, at least they’re getting healthier.

Don Mattingly said Tuesday that he would try to avoid using Hanley Ramirez against the Arizona Diamondbacks, even as a pinch-hitter or a late-game replacement.

That wasn’t the case Wednesday, when Ramirez hit and ran and impressed the Dodgers’ medical staff in the hours before the game.

“He went to the Puig School of Medicine,” Mattingly quipped. “He was close to being in the starting lineup. We tried to err on the side of caution. I plan on starting him Friday unless something happens between now and then.”

The Dodgers visit the Pittsburgh Pirates on Friday after a day off Thursday.

Ramirez hasn’t started since June 5, his second game back after spending a month on the disabled list with a strained left hamstring.

The news was also encouraging on Puig, who was scratched from the starting lineup with a strained right shoulder, but returned to the game as a defensive replacement in right field in the 12th inning.

“I listened to medical. They worked on him the whole game — and you saw that throw,” Mattingly said, referring to a heater from right field that hit catcher Ramon Hernandez on the fly to hold Martin Prado at third base.

“I guess they figured there was nothing wrong” with Puig’s right shoulder, Mattingly added — “just sore.”

Matt Kemp will accompany the Dodgers on the nine-game road trip to Pittsburgh and New York and San Diego, though there’s still no target date for his return. If Kemp was headed to Camelback Ranch for additional rehab, his timeframe for recovery might have been less optimistic.

Kemp has been on the disabled list with a strained right hamstring since May 30. He’s expected to need a rehabilitation game before he plays his next game with the Dodgers.

Chris Anderson (foreground) and Tom Windle (background, right) visited Dodger Stadium on Wednesday.

The Dodgers signed pitchers Chris Anderson and Tom Windle, their top two picks in the First-Year Player Draft last Thursday. Both signed for the assigned slot value — Anderson for $2,109,900 and Windle for $986,500 — and will report to the Dodgers’ facility in Glendale, Ariz for a week of training. They will then be assigned to Single-A Great Lakes.

Anderson, a 6-foot-4, 225-pound right-hander, went 7-5 with a 2.49 ERA and three complete games in 14 starts this season for Jacksonville University, earning second team All-Atlantic Sun Conference honors. The 20-year-old junior limited opposing hitters to a .231 batting average with a conference-best 101 strikeouts in 104.2 innings pitched.

Windle, 21, went 6-4 with a 2.14 ERA in 14 starts for the University of Minnesota as a junior in 2013, and threw the first 9-inning no-hitter in school history on March 8 against Western Illinois.

“What I was proud of is that they wanted to get after it, get going,” Dodgers scouting director Logan White said. “I asked ‘em, ‘you need 10 days, two weeks? They said, ‘no, we want to be Dodgers.’ ”

The Dodgers also signed 12th-round selection Adam Law, a third baseman from BYU, and 26th-round pick Thomas Taylor, a right-handed pitcher from the University of Kansas.

Dodgers hitting coach Mark McGwire, right, confronted Arizona Diamondbacks manager Kirk Gibson, left, in yesterday’s brawl. (Getty Images)

Any fines and suspensions that Major League Baseball plans to levy on the participants in Tuesday’s brawl between the Dodgers and Arizona Diamondbacks will have to wait until tomorrow.

That doesn’t mean that players and coaches on both sides weren’t anticipating it Wednesday.

“I’m sure there’s going to be some,” Dodgers manager Don Mattingly said. “They’re not going to let this go on.”

“I don’t know. Whatever happens, happens,” Arizona catcher Miguel Montero said. “That’s not our decision. But when things happen like this, you’ve got to stand up for your teammates whatever the consequences. We’re not going to let those guys come after us and do nothing about it because we’re going to get suspended.”

There was some remorse to be found one day later.

Mattingly said he intended to apologize to Diamondbacks bench coach Alan Trammell for wrestling him to the ground. “I’m not proud of that,” Mattingly said.

Arizona second baseman Willie Bloomquist, Zack Greinke‘s teammate in Kansas City, said “I’m not going to sit here and say that Zack’s a malicious person out there, headhunting and trying to hit people. I don’t think that’s Zack’s game.

“Will he stand up for his teammates? Sure, as good pitchers do. He did what he felt he had to do, and we did what we felt we had to do.”

The Dodgers believed that Greinke was in the right to hit Montero with a pitch because Diamondbacks pitcher Ian Kennedy hit Yasiel Puig in the face in the sixth inning — even if Kennedy wasn’t trying to hit Puig.

“If (Greinke) doesn’t do that,” Mattingly said, “he loses a lot of respect in the clubhouse. It’s more dangerous for him not to do that.”

The Sydney Morning Herald published this image of what the 40,000-plus seat Sydney Cricket Ground might look like if converted for baseball.

The Dodgers and Arizona Diamondbacks confirmed Wednesday that they will begin the 2014 season with a pair of games in Sydney, Australia. The news was first reported last October by the Sydney Morning Herald.

The games will be played Saturday, March 22 and 23, 2014 at the Sydney Cricket Ground. Dodgers president Stan Kasten said that his team will play a spring training game in Arizona on Sunday, March 16 and fly from Phoenix to Sydney that night. After a day off Tuesday, the Dodgers will work out Wednesday, then play an exhibition game against an Australian team on Thursday. There may be a second exhibition game Friday — Kasten said “I don’t think we need it” — and leave for Los Angeles at the conclusion of Sunday’s game.

“It’ll be a long trip but we hope well worth it,” Kasten said.

The Dodgers won’t play for four days after returning to Los Angeles. The annual three-game Freeway Series against the Angels is scheduled for Friday, March 28 through Sunday, March 30. Those games won’t count in the standings but the Sydney games will.

The Diamondbacks will be the home team for both games, meaning the Dodgers will not sacrifice any of their 81 regular-season home dates at Dodger Stadium.

“It was a factor,” Kasten said. “We wanted to keep the home games for our fans.”

Major League Baseball spoke with local representatives in Sydney a year ago, and the league wanted a pair of Western-based teams represented, Kasten said. The league then approached the Dodgers and Diamondbacks and both readily agreed. So did the players, who will receive extra compensation for going on the trip.

“It was a pretty easy negotiation,” Kasten said.

The Dodgers have employed five of the 28 Australian-born major league players, including relief pitcher Peter Moylan. Moylan’s contract expires at the end of the season, but he would welcome the chance to come back and play in his native country.

“It would be huge,” he said. “I’d probably have to leave a few tickets. To be able to do what I love in the country where I was born would be a great opportunity. Let’s not look too far in the future, but I hope I stay here.”

Trent Oeltjen (2010-11), Luke Prokopec (2000-01), Jeff Williams (1999-2002) and Craig Shipley (186-87) are the other Australian-born Dodgers.

Tommy Lasorda coached the United States to a gold medal at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney. Those games were played at Sydney Baseball Stadium and Blacktown Olympic Park.

The Dodgers have played non-regular season games outside the country eight times before: in 1956 (Japan), 1964 (Mexico), 1966 (Japan), 1993 (Japan/Taiwan), 1991 (Mexico), 2003 (Mexico), 2008 (China) and 2010 (Taiwan).

These will be the first regular-season baseball games ever staged in Australia.

Yasiel Puig was hit in the nose by an Ian Kennedy pitch on Tuesday night. He remained in the game. (Associated Press photo)

As Dodgers manager Don Mattingly told reporters that young phenom Yasiel Puig might be feeling some effects from Tuesday night’s brawl with the Arizona Diamondbacks, out on the field Mattingly’s worst fears might have come to fruition.

Puig took only a handful of batting-practice swings before angrily gathering his bats and walking to the dugout, tossing them into the bat rack, then retreating to the Dodgers clubhouse with team trainers following behind.

The Dodgers sent out a revised lineup about an hour and a half before their game against the Arizona Diamondbacks without Puig, who has a strained right shoulder and is described as day-to-day.

The Dodgers’ new lineup looks like this:

Punto SS
Ellis 2B
Gonzalez 1B
Hairston LF
Uribe 3B
Ethier CF
Hernandez C
Castellanos RF
Ryu P

Before batting practice, Puig was rubbing and rotating his right shoulder as if to loosen it up. The 22-year-old Cuban sensation took a couple of hit-and-run swings in batting practice then seemingly attempted some regular swings. But he immediately shut down the session and went to the clubhouse.

Puig was hit in the face with a pitch thrown by Arizona’s Ian Kennedy on Tuesday night in the first of three hit batters that resulted in the bench-clearing melee. Puig was animatedly upset during the brawl and had to be restrained. He was one of six players and coaches ejected from the game.

In his first nine major-league games, Puig is batting .471 (16 for 34) with four home runs and 10 RBIs.

Yasiel Puig is restrained during the benches-clearing brawl in the seventh inning of Tuesday’s game between the Dodgers and Arizona Diamondbacks. (Getty Images)

The Dodgers and Diamondbacks will decide if any further action is needed tonight, 24 hours after Tuesday’s massive brawl.

So will Major League Baseball.

A spokesperson for the league said that Joe Garagiola Jr., MLB’s senior vice president of standards and on-field operations, will review video of the incident to determine if fines or suspensions are warranted. Even though six participants — Kirk Gibson, Ian Kennedy, Turner Ward, Mark McGwire, Yasiel Puig and Ronald Belisario — were ejected, others could face supplemental discipline.

The crew chief, first-base umpire Brian Gorman, told pool reporter Ken Rosenthal that Puig and McGwire were ejected for being instigators, while Belisario was “out of control.”

Gibson and Kennedy were automatically ejected and precedent holds that both could be suspended. Then-Dodgers manager Joe Torre and pitcher Clayton Kershaw were suspended in July 2010 for throwing at Aaron Rowand of the San Francisco Giants. Torre was suspended one game, Kershaw five.

Some of the 15 Dodgers players on the disabled list went on the field, including Chris Capuano and Josh Beckett. That hasn’t historically resulted in suspensions, though Garagiola may choose to fine the two pitchers.

Coincidentally, Garagiola was the Diamondbacks’ first general manager, from 1997-2005.

Some more bullet points that didn’t make my game story last night:

• Puig cramped his left hamstring running out a ground ball early in the game and was allowed to stay in.

• After he was hit in the nose in the sixth inning, Puig was administered concussion tests at home plate by assistant athletic trainer Greg Harrel and head athletic trainer Sue Falsone. He passed and was allowed to remain in the game.

• Still, Puig will probably get a day off soon. That is, if Garagiola slows down the video enough to see this frame.

• Lots of game details were easily lost. Like the fact that Greinke tossed his second straight quality start (7 IP, 2 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 2 BB and 5 K). He had three subpar outings against the Brewers, Angels and Rockies prior to this run.

• Andre Ethier was instrumental to the win. He went 2 for 3, scored twice, and drove in a pair of runs with a two-run homer, raising his average to .236.

• The one mistake he made was to Jason Kubel, a 90-mph fastball over the middle of the plate. “We decided it was the wrong pitch and bad execution at the same time,” Greinke said.

• Greinke praised Tim Federowicz for his pitch-blocking and his offense. Federowicz said that his bases-clearing double in the eighth inning — a line drive that looked like it might leave the yard off the bat. “At the big-league level,” he said, “that’s my biggest hit.”

• In the eighth inning, Mark Ellis got hit in the upper left leg by Diamondbacks pitcher Joe Paterson, but no one perceived that to be intentional. At least Ellis didn’t.

• Ever since I saw him live last year, one of my favorite local rappers has been Jonwayne. Here’s a brand-new track, “Notes to Myself”: