Morning Briefing: This is why parents warn kids that ‘you’ll poke your eye out’

Brock Holt, who plays many positions for the Boston Red Sox, was put on the 10-day injured list on Saturday because of a “scratched cornea in his right eye.”

Must have happened during a game, right? Perhaps a ball took a bad hop? Dirt got in his eye when he was sliding? Reporters wanted to know.

“It was actually a play at the hotel,” Holt said. “It was the morning of opening day. I went and got [my 2-year-old son] Griff up out of bed, and was bringing him back to our bed, and one of his fingernails got me good.”

He didn’t go on the IL right away, trying to play through it, but is one for 16 this season and Holt and the team decided to give the eye a chance to heal.

“It’s not funny, but it is funny,” Holt said. “[Griffin] walks around and tells everyone he poked me in the eye.”

Stay in school

Alabama football coach Nick Saban is not a fan of players leaving early to enter the NFL draft, especially those who have no chance of being drafted in the first two rounds.

“There are guys that have no draft grades, seventh-round grades, free-agent grades, fifth-round grades that are going out of the draft. And the person that loses in that is the player,” Saban said Saturday. “If you’re a third-round draft pick, and we had one here last year -- I’m not going to say any names -- goes and starts for his team, so he’s making third-round money, which is not that great. He’d be the first guy taken at his position this year, probably, and make $15-18 million more.

“So, the agent makes out, the club makes out, and now they’ve got a guy that’s going to play for that kind of money for three more years, all right? And everybody out there’s saying, ‘Well, get to your next contract.’ Well, there’s obviously 50% of these guys never getting to a next contract. And that doesn’t mean all the rest of them got to one, either.”

Saban must be referring to safety Ronnie Harrison, who played for Alabama and was chosen in the third round last year.

“So, it’s the culture and it’s the trend, and I’ve actually changed how I talk to recruits now,” Saban said. “I tell every recruit that I talk to the reason that you’re going to college is to prepare yourself for the day you can’t play football. I think we have a lot of people way back in high school, all right, that look at college as a conduit to get to the NFL. And look, I am 100% NFL. I’m 100% guys having careers, all right? But people have to be smart about the business decisions they make relative to the NFL because it is all business.

He’s very sorry

Theo Epstein, who is the president of baseball operations for the Chicago Cubs, knows who to blame for the team’s 2-7 start. Himself.

“There is always a search for scapegoats when you get off to a tough start,” Epstein said Saturday. “Pitching coach Tommy Hottovy is not the problem. He’s a big part of the solution. Owner Tom Ricketts is not the problem. It’s not a resource issue. I know he’s another one that’s been taking a lot of heat. It’s not a resource problem. If people have a problem with the allocation of resources, then that’s on me. And it has been ever since I got here, with a lot of good and some bad.”

If only Epstein had asked Dodger fans. We would have told him giving $126 million to Yu Darvish was a bad idea.