Johnny Cueto back on the DL

ARLINGTON, Texas (AP) -- Cincinnati Reds starter Johnny Cueto is on the disabled list for the third time this season because of issues with his right lat muscle.

The Reds put their opening day starter on the DL again Saturday, a day after he left the series opener at Texas because of tightness in his upper back. Cueto threw only 29 pitches and came out one batter into the second inning Friday night.

''It's very disheartening,'' manager Dusty Baker said Saturday. ''So close to being himself. It's hard. I just hope we can come up with a solution.''

Cueto returned to Cincinnati on Saturday to be examined by Reds medical director Dr. Timothy Kremchek.

Cincinnati recalled right-hander Logan Ondrusek from Triple-A Louisville.

Cueto (4-2, 3.33 ERA) was on the DL from April 15 to May 19 with a strained right lat. He missed the first half of June with what was called a strained right shoulder, though it was related to the lat problem.

''I don't know how to explain what is happening,'' Cueto said through a translator after Friday night's game. ''It's the third time it's happened. I just want to keep working and hope it will get better.''

Baker said left-hander Tony Cingrani (3-0, 3.42), who took over for Cueto and went four innings Friday night, will again fill Cueto's rotation spot. That next comes up Wednesday against San Francisco.

In Game 1 of the National League division series last season against San Francisco, Cueto left after only eight pitches because of a strained right oblique and didn't pitch again in the postseason. But he was healthy throughout spring training.

Cueto, a 19-game winner last season, made three starts in April before going on the DL for the first time. He came back to make three more starts before another DL stint, and was making his third start since returning again when came out Friday night.

On at least one pitch in the first inning to Adrian Beltre, who had an RBI single to put the Rangers ahead to stay in a 4-0 victory, Cueto clearly grimaced.

Though he wasn't feeling right, Cueto spoke to pitching coach Bryan Price after the first inning and said he wanted to keep pitching. Cueto thought maybe he'd loosen up and the discomfort would go away.

But after Cueto threw a 1-2 fastball that Mitch Moreland fouled off leading off the second, he was done for the night.

''Your heart sort of sinks when you go out there and you know the news you're about to get. See the look on his face,'' Baker said Saturday. ''Especially a guy that loves to pitch like that. ... He lives for it.''

Even before Baker got to the mound Friday night, Cueto had already put the ball in catcher Devin Mesoraco's mitt.

Asked if his twisting motion has contributed to the issues with his lat muscle, Cueto said he didn't think his mechanics had anything to do with it.

''I always discuss it with the pitching coach, and he said I don't have to change,'' Cueto said. ''If it's anything that would hurt with my mechanics it would be my oblique area.''

Dodgers' Beckett needs season-ending neck surgery

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Dodgers right-hander Josh Beckett is scheduled to undergo season-ending surgery in about 1 1/2 weeks to relieve pressure on a nerve in his neck.

The announcement was made by the club on Saturday following a consultation Beckett had with team physician Neal ElAttrache and Dr. Greg Pearl of Dallas, who will perform the surgery there.

''I know he had some tingling again yesterday after throwing,'' manager Don Mattingly said. ''He didn't throw very long. I know there was a little bit of a setback there.''

Beckett, 33, is 0-5 with a 5.19 ERA in eight starts and hasn't pitched since May 13. The three-time All-Star joined the Dodgers last August in a blockbuster nine-player trade along with first basemanAdrian Gonzalez, left fielder Carl Crawford and utilityman Nick Punto.

Doc Rivers headed to the Clippers

After days of wrangling, negotiating and posturing, the Los Angeles Clippers have agreed in principle to a deal with the Celtics for coach Doc Rivers, pending league approval, according to sources.

Sources confirmed on Sunday that the Clippers will sign Rivers to a three-year, $21 million contract. They will send a 2015 first-round pick as compensation to the Celtics, who have agreed to release the coach from the three years, $21 million he has remaining on his deal with the club.

Sources close to the process told ESPN that the Clippers believe the deal with Rivers will clinchChris Paul's signature on a new five-year max contract. Paul becomes an unrestricted free agent July 1.

Contrary to previous reports, according to league and team sources, the Celtics have been complicit all along in assisting Rivers make the switch from Boston to Los Angeles.

Although Danny Ainge, the Celtics' director of basketball operations, was initially irked that Rivers was lukewarm about returning to Boston, where a rebuilding process soon will be underway, team sources said he recognized the best way to accumulate the first-round draft picks he covets would be to relinquish his two most valued assets -- Rivers and Kevin Garnett. Since then, he and Rivers have been working side by side to secure a deal that is best for both parties, sources said.

Team sources confirmed Ainge also has been trying to secure a first-round pick for veteranPaul Pierce, who can be bought out by June 30 for $5 million. The Celtics have been unsuccessful thus far, leaving open the possibility they keep Pierce and his $15.3 million contract and attempt to deal him again at the trade deadline next winter, when teams historically look for veteran help and are willing to overpay.

Celtics ownership, which blanched at the thought of paying a coach $7 million a season for a team that will not be in contention for a division title, never mind an NBA title, is also on board with Rivers' departure, sources said.

League and teams sources also confirmed that for now, any deal involving Garnett and the Clippers is on hold in light of commissioner David Stern's objections to the appearance that the KG deal (for DeAndre Jordan) and Rivers were related.

One source with knowledge of the NBA's thinking told ESPN.com that the league does not intend to change its stance as expressed by Stern in multiple radio interviews Thursday, meaning that the league would view any subsequent trade agreement between the Celtics and Clippers involving Garnett to be part of the Rivers deal and thus in violation of league rules.

Team sources also indicated that Rivers is frustrated with the perception that he was the driving force behind the push to go to the Clippers, or that he was unwilling to coach the Celtics if Pierce and Garnett were not going to be on the roster.

"Doc never said any such thing," a source close to the coach said. "He just wasn't sure if he could rev himself up for years of rebuilding. He never issued any ultimatums about anyone."

The Celtics have a news conference scheduled for noon on Monday, where, sources said, Rivers is expected to explain his decision to leave Boston after nine seasons.

The Clippers always believed they would be able to land Rivers and never considered Friday's breakdown in talks to be anything more than a "cooling off" for both sides. Clippers president Andy Roeser and vice president of basketball operations Gary Sacks called Boston early Sunday morning to revisit the talks.

Yahoo! Sports and The Boston Globe earlier reported the Clippers and Celtics renewed talks for Rivers after hitting an impasse on Friday.

The Clippers were prepared to hire either Brian Shaw or Byron Scott on Monday if the deal for Rivers could not be worked out, sources said.

MLB players could soon see flip side to Biogenesis scandal

SAN FRANCISCO – Anthony Bosch, proprietor of a Miami-area wellness boutique that served the kind of high-end clientele that might pop up on your All-Star ballot, has turned.

Once he sold the fountain of youth. Now he's a fountain of information.

Reported by ESPN and confirmed by Yahoo! Sports, Bosch – founder of the Biogenesis clinic and alleged supplier of performance-enhancing drugs to Major League Baseball players – is cooperating with MLB's investigation into the likes of Alex Rodriguez, Ryan Braun, Melky Cabrera and at least a dozen others.

Melky Cabrera was suspended last season with the Giants after testing positive for PEDs. (AP)MLB's job just became easier. The kingpin – the man MLB believes served those clients, prescribed their drugs, in some cases administered their drugs and kept records – has traded his silence for a somewhat softer punitive landing.

Presumably, Bosch's former clients are not surprised. Hire a pseudo-doctor in a strip mall so as to obtain illicit drugs, and now your reputation, your career, even your life is in the hands of a pseudo-doctor from a strip mall who sells illicit drugs.

Those guys flip, because the first rule of self-preservation isn't more synthetic testosterone, despite what the company brochure might have read. The first rule is bury the other guy. Save yourself. When the heat comes, it's every artificially enhanced man for himself.

On the bright side for the players ensnared in the scandal, MLB investigators' best witness against those players just might be the sleaziest part of this whole deal. As an attorney in this case, you could do worse than to oppose Tony Bosch.

According to ESPN's report, MLB will target at least 20 players and will seek 100-game suspensions for some. It may eventually be so, but the players' union might resist, leading some to believe the threat of 100 games would more likely result in 50. Either way, MLB is too early into its conversations with Bosch to know exactly where this will lead.

What MLB does know is it is better off with Bosch in one of its conference rooms than Bosch standing behind one of his lawyers. And that tremor you felt was a number of ballplayers shuddering at the same time. Maybe it's just a few. Maybe it's dozens. Maybe the names you know or not. But what we do know is that this isn't a witch hunt, because, for one, there are no such things as witches, and there are such things as sporting cheats.

The boos emanating from McCovey Cove on Tuesday night were for Melky Cabrera, whose career as a San Francisco Giant lasted 113 games. They loved him here. They chanted his name. They dressed up as milkmen. Melky was their guy.

Then he was caught with synthetic testosterone in his bloodstream last summer, suspended for 50 games, and cast off. The Giants won the World Series anyway, in spite of losing a middle-of-the-order hitter, an All-Star who might have won the batting title.

There is the incongruity of lauding Barry Bonds while vilifying Melky, perhaps because one was not only better at being a ballplayer, but also at covering his tracks. At least Bonds' website was real. So, Cabrera, allegedly linked by documents to Bosch and Biogenesis, and guilty of bailing out on the Giants mid-summer, heard about it each time he came to the plate.

Biogenesis owner Anthony Bosch is cooperating with MLB's investigation. (AP)We continue to sort the cheaters from the falsely accused. It's a big job that won't ever be finished. The rewards of cheating are too great. Cabrera, whose offensive statistics spiked around the time his name reportedly started showing up in Biogenesis notebooks, might have lost his big payday, but he's still working on a two-year, $16-million contract with the Toronto Blue Jays.

He got his World Series ring. In every sense, it is hollow. Before Tuesday night's game, he sat in the visitor's dugout and insisted he'd not relive the past. He'd done what he'd done. He'd apologized. He'd served his time.

"They are good teammates, good people here," Cabrera said. "It was real hard what happened last year. I regret what happened last year."

His lips tightened and his eyes darkened.

"It was tough telling my family what happened," he said. "Especially my family."

On the streets outside the team hotel here, Cabrera had walked the streets. He said people recognized him, welcomed him back. They were the ones who made eye contact. At the ballpark, they booed.

"I'm telling the fans," he said, "I'm sorry for the situation."

They live with who they are. The decisions they've made. The outcomes in them. What that says about them.

They live with the company they keep and what that says about them. Worse, at the moment, what that company might say about them to MLB investigators. And if they happened to walk into a pseudo-doctor's office in a strip mall, where they sought the fountain of youth, then they couldn't have expected this to turn out any different.

Giants DE Pierre-Paul has back surgery

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. (AP) -- Giants defensive end Jason Pierre-Paul should be ready for the start of the season after having surgery to repair a herniated disc in his lower back on Tuesday.

In calling the operation successful, the team announced the prognosis for the two-time Pro Bowl selection's recovery as being about 12 weeks. That means Pierre-Paul is expected to miss all of training camp and most of the preseason, but should be ready for the Giants' regular-season opener against Dallas on Sept. 8.

''I'm going to do everything the doctors tell me to do during my rehab so I can be back playing the game I love at a high level as quickly as possible,'' Pierre-Paul said in a statement released by the team. ''This procedure is going to get my fully healthy, and there should be no more pain.''

Selected in the first round of the 2010 draft, Pierre-Paul has 27 1/2 sacks in 48 games.

He had been bothered by the nagging back problem last season. The decision to have surgery was made over the past week, after the player was examined by several doctors, including Robert Watkins, who performed the operation at a hospital in Marina Del Rey, Calif.

Giants senior vice president of medical services Ronnie Barnes said the team expects a full and complete recovery.

AP source: Drug clinic founder will talk to MLB

NEW YORK (AP) -- The founder of a Miami anti-aging clinic has agreed to talk to Major League Baseball about players linked to performance-enhancing drugs, a person familiar with the case told The Associated Press on Tuesday night.

The person declined to be identified because the investigation was still ongoing.

Information that Anthony Bosch provides MLB on players who came to the now-closed Biogenesis of America clinic could lead to suspensions. Alex Rodriguez, Ryan Braun, Nelson Cruz and Melky Cabrera are among the players whose names have been tied to the clinic.

The agreement between Bosch and MLB was first reported by ESPN.

In addition to Rodriguez, New York Yankees teammate Francisco Cervelli also was linked to the clinic. Cervelli said he consulted Biogenesis for a foot injury, but didn't receive any treatment.

''We'll let MLB handle everything and we don't really have a comment,'' Yankees manager Joe Girardi said after a 4-3 win over Cleveland.

Girardi said the Yankees were still planning on Rodriguez rejoining the team after the All-Star break. The star third baseman has been on the disabled list all season.

As for the drug cloud that has hovered over baseball for years, Girardi said: ''I think we all had hoped we'd gotten through it. But obviously, we haven't.''

Yankees outfielder Vernon Wells said it was too soon to draw any conclusions.

''Everything right now is speculative,'' Wells said. ''We can all sit here and wonder.''

MLB has sued Biogenesis of America and its operators, accusing them of scheming to provide banned PEDs to players in violation of their contracts.

Miami New Times reported in January that it obtained purported records detailing drug purchases by Rodriguez, Cabrera, Cruz and former AL Cy Young Award winner Bartolo Colon.

Yahoo Sports reported that Braun, the 2011 NL MVP, was mentioned in the records.

Most have denied the Biogenesis link, although Rodriguez has admitted using performance-enhancing drugs earlier in his career and Colon and Cabrera each were suspended for 50 games last year for testing positive for elevated testosterone levels.

Braun failed a drug test in 2011, but his suspension was overturned by an arbitrator. He has acknowledged that he was mentioned in Biogenesis records because his lawyers had used Bosch as consultant during the appeal.

After the Brewers' 4-3 win in 10 innings over Oakland at Miller Park, Braun said he was done talking about the clinic.

''I've already addressed everything related to the Miami situation. I addressed it in spring training. I will not make any further statements about it,'' he said.

''The truth has not changed,'' he said.

Braun said the speculation was not affecting him on the field.

''No, of course not. I've dealt with this for two years now. I'm pretty good at avoiding distractions,'' he said.

LA Kings must solve scoring woes to beat Hawks

EL SEGUNDO, Calif. (AP) -- After a rare day off for rest and contemplation, the Los Angeles Kings came back focused on what's missing from their run at a second straight Stanley Cup title.

If the Kings can't score more, they probably can't scare mighty Chicago.

''We have to find a way to get the offensive part of the game accomplished without sacrificing the D,'' captain Dustin Brown said Thursday between the Kings' brief practice and their flight to Chicago. ''We haven't been able to do that yet, especially on the road. There's no one reason, but it all comes back to hard work, just putting in the work to get more goals.''

The defending Stanley Cup champions are averaging exactly two goals per game in the postseason, lowest among the eight NHL teams who survived the first round. The Blackhawks are scoring 2.75 goals per game, while Pittsburgh and Boston are both above three goals per game.

The Kings realize they've got to help out Jonathan Quick, whose dominant goaltending propelled them - or maybe carried them - into their second straight Western Conference finals appearance starting Saturday at United Center.

Quick has allowed just 20 goals in 13 postseason games, but the Conn Smythe Trophy winner and his sturdy defense haven't faced an offense with the Blackhawks' speed and depth. While Quick leads the playoffs in goals-against average (1.50), save percentage (.948) and shutouts (three), even Quick realizes the Kings must do more to reach their second straight Stanley Cup final.

''We've all got to get a lot better,'' Quick said. ''We know we've got some work to do to beat those guys, because they had the best record in the regular season. They're as tough as anybody out there.''

The Kings had few troubles scoring regularly in the regular season, finishing 10th in the NHL with 2.73 goals per game led by Jeff Carter, the Western Conference's leading goal-scorer. Only Chicago and Anaheim scored more frequently in the West, but the Kings' scoring touch has been sketchy in the playoffs despite their consistent success.

The Kings particularly struggle on the road, where they've scored just eight goals in six playoff games. They've lost five times by an identical 2-1 score away from Staples Center, needing overtime for their only road victory.

''It is weird statistically, but we approach every game the same way,'' said Colin Fraser, who won a Stanley Cup ring as a depth forward with Chicago in 2010. ''We've just got to find a way to execute it better on the road. You can't change everything you do if you're not getting the results you usually get. You've just got to work harder and do things better.''

Los Angeles got a day off after finishing its seven-game series with San Jose on Tuesday night, but the Kings are right back on the grind with back-to-back games in Chicago this weekend. The Kings' health is holding up fairly well under the intense scheduling of this lockout-shortened season, with pretty much every regular available for practice.

The Kings are still hoping to get a boost from the return of center Jarret Stoll, who practiced with his teammates Thursday without wearing a no-contact jersey. Stoll, who got an apparent concussion from an illegal hit to the head in the second-round series opener, has been skating for several days.

Coach Darryl Sutter said he had ''no further update'' on Stoll's condition - ''and there won't be any update on him unless you give us an update on somebody from Chicago,'' he said with a smirk.

The Blackhawks' potent offense has had the Kings' attention since they routed the champs 5-2 to spoil their banner-raising ceremony at the season opener in January.

While Chicago has a roster full of high-scoring names, the Kings have their own wealth of veteran offensive talent with Carter, Brown, Anze Kopitar, Mike Richards and others - even if it hasn't produced any eye-catching numbers in the postseason to date.

''I think we have four lines that can play, too,'' Brown said. ''We've both got good goalies, top defensemen in the league. It's about matching up. As an individual, you've got to look across and outplay the guy that's similar to you. That's what it comes down to at this time of year.''