His father might have just been promoted to general manager, but Tigers catcher Alex Avila continues to be held accountable for what he does on the field. Avila played first base while Miguel Cabrera recovered from injury. With Cabrera back, Avila is not going back to catching because James McCann is playing well there. Avila had appeared in at least 102 games in each of the past five seasons.

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The White Sox don't have any regular-season games in National League parks the rest of the way. But manager Robin Ventura let his relievers take batting practice last week, and the group made a little game out of it. Maybe Ventura was scouting for a hitter. "You want them to stretch out and make sure they're ready,'' Ventura told Chicago reporters, "but you want them to have fun."

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Kansas City catcher Salvador Perez doesn't like to take days off. He caught 138 games in 2013, 150 last season and 102 so far this year. But he has a bruised left wrist, the result of opponents' foul balls. So he sat out three days in a row before returning to the lineup Saturday night. Perez, of course, called a coach right after having a magnetic resonance imaging exam to see if he was in the lineup, then tried to talk his way into it.

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Cleveland used its pounding of the Twins last weekend as a springboard into their series against the Yankees. The Indians took two of the three games and suddenly they feel like they have an identity. "At some point, you never know when it's going to be, the team that starts to win, that turns a corner, you start to see a personality," manager Terry Francona said. "You can't force it, but like I said we work hard at knowing that it has to come natural."