As odd as it may be, JD Martin's invite to spring training got me thinking.  For whatever reason, I've been rooting for him since his 2005 breakout season (56IP, 63K, 8BB).  Maybe I want to salvage something from that 2001 draft, maybe I have an affinity for short RHPs, maybe I sympathize with a guy who has talent but who has been on the injury fringe for the past few years. Regardless, it made me realize that there are a handful of guys in our minor league system that I adopt as "my guys", and pay attention to more than others.  

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Just a head's up here to catch a few articles.

S.O. @ The ABJ has a pretty uneventful article up this morning about our interest in Dan Haren.  Sounds crazy, I know, but I'm excited to be the one breaking the story here on LGT. Is anybody interested in trade speculation? link  

Hoynes wrote a similar, but more interesting article for the PD. News here: interest has also been shown in Blanton (boring) and Erik Bedard (fresh meat! speculation mania!).  On the notes side, Inge is mentioned (we passed) as well as news about the proposed Jason Bay package which might shock many here (no Lee or Shoppach). link

On the good news front, Lara is breathing, talking, and potentially on his way back to the states for surgery. I'd say something to the effect that this is fantastic news, but I'm not a good enough writer to make it anything but an understatement.

Warning:  Don't click here unless you have at least 30 minutes to kill.  Hit Tracker is a home run playground.  Stolen from their own page:

"Hit Tracker is a spreadsheet tool that takes as inputs atmospheric information and observation data, and gives as an output the true distance that the home run traveled, along with the initial speed of the hit off the bat and the precise angles at which the ball left the bat. It does this by creating as a starting point an initial "best-guess" three dimensional trajectory for the home run, and then modifying that trajectory, a little bit at a time, until the trajectory matches the observed data from the actual home run event."

Is this new?  Am I the last to know about it?  Anyway, it has links to the videos of the home run, breaks them down into 3 different types (just enough, plenty, and no-doubters), has ballpark specific shots, player specific shots, and keeps track of various HR awards on the main page.

Want to see how far Hafner's HR in Tampa Bay earlier this year went, or watch a video of it? You can also learn who holds the Golden Sledgehammer title, or why Brandon Phillips leads a category.  Step right up and buy one today!

Baseball's great, isn't it?

Howdy -

Wayne Drehs over at ESPN.com wrote a neat piece on the home opener yesterday that is worth a read - Link.  You've got to admit it, our early season debacle makes one heck of a story.

Besides tidbits about a subversive sausage and the secret agenda of college students, the financial aspect of the series was elaborated upon:

The Brewers will not make any money on the series. Nor will the Indians and Angels lose money they would have earned on ticket sales or concessions. Major League Baseball told Schlesinger to keep track of his expenses as well as revenue from the series and Major League Baseball would later decide how the teams would be reimbursed.

MLB representatives did not return a phone message Tuesday, but spokesman Rich Levin told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel on Monday that any shortfall of income for the series will come out of an MLB contingency fund.

"They informed us to do what we needed to do to pull this off," Schlesinger said. "So that's what we worried about."

It is, of course, great that the Indians and Angels won't lose any money on tickets or concessions.  But I'm fairly suprised that the Brewers won't make any money on this.

Howdy -

Like more than a few people here, I'm waiting to see if InDemand can work out a deal with MLB to carry the games this season. If you haven't been paying attention, talks are continuing well past the March 31 deadline.  This is good.

 

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Howdy. In case you haven't noticed (and judging by the attendance you haven't), BP's Marc Normandin profiled our young shortstop in a premium article posted Thursday the 11th.  If you're not a subscriber, the player profile series that Marc does is an excellent one.  In fact, that series coupled with Joe Sheehan's daily thoughts are worth the price of admission alone (no offense to Fox or Goldstein, who are right there in my book..I digress.)

Poll

How many premium baseball sites do you subscribe to?

25%

1

15 votes

10%

2

6 votes

0%

3+

0 votes

46%

None (don't want to spend the cash, but I would if I could)

28 votes

18%

None (not interested in the opinions, or don't see the value)

11 votes

60 votes | Poll has closed

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Howdy -

Just a head's up that Shaprio had a chat posted on indians.com yesterday, here.  It's not a brillant read, as most of it is standard ShapiroSpeak (TM), but the first question in particular should be worth 30-40 posts alone.  

Poll

Who would you trade?

34%

Garko

22 votes

21%

Choo

14 votes

43%

Blake

28 votes

64 votes | Poll has closed

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Howdy, All.

Baseball America posted a Q&A with Adam Miller today.  Among other things, he credits pitching coach Scott Radinsky with helping him with the development of a 2 seam fastball.  I'm going out on a limb here, but I think that contribution may someday eclipse the value of that wonderful year Scott pitched in relief for the tribe (2001: 2 IP, 27.00 ERA).

http://www.baseballamerica.com/today/prospects/news/262450.html

Here's a very cool site I learned of on Minor League Ball.  Basically, Jeff over at brewcrewball.com is pulling together all of the stats in the 2006 minor league games and calculating splits for each player/level.  For example, we now can see that Trevor Crowe is hitting .200 vs. LHP and .352 vs. RHP, which may be due to a BABIP of .263 vs. the former and .426 against the latter.  Is that cool or what?  Mind you, it's a bit early in the season to assign validity to the numbers, but it is certainly a site worth bookmarking.

The home page is http://www.brewcrewball.com/special/milb+splits

The Indian's affiliate's page is http://www.brewcrewball.com/special/milb+teams#Cle

This point of all this, of course, is to distract you from some nonsense that occured over the past three days in a sleepy midwest town.

Actually, what if we bonded together to distract each other? To that end, I encourage you to find an interesting, though potentially meaningless, split and share with the rest of the class. We can get through this...together!

BA has the scoop on why Inglett was sent down to AA last week: the front office wants him to have more reps at SS.  This is as a prelude to possilby making him our utility player sooner rather than later.

I'm absolutely on board with this move.  It seems like a great way to fill the utility infielder position for us this year, as well as for him to get some ML AB's in case he's our best/only option for a utilty infielder or even a fill-in 2B next year.  It's also nice to see the organization possibly filling a need from within (that we are capable of filling) without going for a veteran presence.  

Joe doesn't play 3rd, so if Vasquez was released, I'd expect to see Blake taking some balls at 3rd regardless of who will be manning the hot corner for us at the all-star break.  

http://www.baseballamerica.com/today/prospects/news/261196.html

Near as I can tell, the Clippers vs. Bisons game tonight is on MiLB TV at 6:05pm.  The games are free in April, so take this chance to see if Sr. Guthrie has really turned the corner, or just turned the corner again for the Nth time and is headed back to where he started. Chalk me up for guarded optimisim.

http://www.minorleaguebaseball.com/app/multimedia/index.jsp?sid=t422

Dayn Perry is either nutty or looking for publicity.  The 71 win Tigers winning the division?  Don't get me wrong, he's a smart guy - but can he back that projection up?

From his first power ranking of the year:
http://msn.foxsports.com/mlb/powerRankings

Poll

Is Dayn Nuytz?

100%

Yes

31 votes

31 votes | Poll has closed

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BP's Nate Silver has written the first of two installments on thier PECOTA systems' projected value of prospects by positions.  So far, he's covered C, 1B, CF, and LF/RF.  

I don't want to get too far into it, as it is a subscription only feature, but I think it is one of the most interesting things I've read on thier site for some time.

In regards to Indians prospects, it is higher on Garko than many other well-known 1B prospects, and just floored me (happily) with where it put Gutierrez in relation to other CFs. Furtheremore, it considers a few "just past prospect status" players, and I came away with a new appreciation for Cleveland's most popular bachelor/t-shirt pusher - who, according to this system, isn't worth trading for any of the players covered so far.  

Lastly, there was an interesting section about players with high walk rates and limited power with Hermida as a talking point.  For some reason, I'm reminded of Brian Barton.

Anyway, make sure and read it if you are a subscriber, and consider joining if you aren't.  It's neat stuff.