Okay, I guess there is more going on than Chris Carter's exploits but, he sure seems like the one too watch right now huh? in other news Brandon McCarthy goes in game 2 of a twin-bill for OKC- Justin Smoak plays there too, Rick Vandenhurk, Esmil Rogers, Carlos Carrasco take the hill in AAA

Phenom Jenry Mejia is about to toe the bump for Binghampton

 Nick Hegadone, Wilmer Font, Randall Delgado are all scheduled to toss in A Ball games

Have fun posting and musing on whatever interests you guys and gals.

These things are always good- Bowden, Bumgarner, Kiker v Inman, Tanner, Jake McGee!, and Jason Knapp are scheduled to take the mound today- but I guess the real reason for this is to announce that the A's Chris Carter is making his AAA debut tonight.

2-3 so far, with a Double and 4 RBI. Cheers to the Black Deer!

Madison went 7-4-0-0-1-2  To the face of Garden-Haters. Though I can hear the bitching about the K's already-lol

Mike Stanton goes yard!, Eric Young got called up and is playing CF

Thought Id do this kinda in reverse, just for fun- look at the most intriging pitching matchups, THEN see what happened tonight- and might as well list tomorrows matchups as well since these things have been slowing down lately with all the draft signing talk going on.

AAA- Jeremy Hellickson K'd 10 in 5 innings in Durhams 10-2 win. now 4-1 3.31 (Corrected) at AAA

AA - Was supposed to be an intriging Guerra vs Holt matchup but Brad Holt didn't start for whatever reason.Guerra pitched well 6.2 5 2 1 0 6 - Madison Bumgarner 5 4 2 1 3 5, now 8-1 2.05 in AA, really struggling lol - Kyle Drabek was brilliant 7-3-0-0-1-4

A- Carlos Zambrano went 5 shutout innings for Peoria on the rehab train

Not today but, yesterday Brett Wallace had a HUGE game, 2 Bombs, Double, 5 RbI

Pitching on Friday, at least scheduled to: AAA- Bowden, Carrasco, Hayden Penn, AA- Inman, A- Clayton Tanner, Mike Montgomery, Jay Jackson (2-0, 0.36), Randall Delgado, Jason Knapp

These wonderful things have been tailing off a bit lately (none yesterday) and I missed it so I thought I'd do my part.

Here's some of the prospects and former prospects taking the mound today...

AAA: Tom Gorzellany (4-3 2.46), Matt Moloney (7-6, 2.51) vs Shairon Martis, Wade Davis (8-6, 3.22), and Esmil Rodgers (1-1, 6.23) - who BA recently put in thier recent top 50 and I had not heard of. Any body seen this kid?

AA: Brian Matusz (6-0, 1.88), Kyle Drabek (6-1, 3.12) - we'll watch and see if he's pulled early, Tyson Ross - A's 2008 2nd rounder makes debut in TL, Lance Lynn (9-3, 3.22) - Cards big 6-5 250 Righty is very underated IMO.

A+: Mark Rogers vs David Bromberg (8-1, 2.86) is an interesting matchup,

A: Dexter Carter (6-2, 3.16) 136 K's i n 111 IP,



Also one notable game has been played already - future stars Mike Stanton, and Logan Morrison homered in the first for all the runs the Jacksonville Suns needed (and all they got) in a 4-3 win over Birmingham. Stanton's was a majesctic, 3-run bomb and Logan followed to make it back-to-back.

Enjoy watching and posting!

PCL-Nashville is at New Orleans and Brett Sinbeil (1-1 11.57) takes his crack at slowing down Mat "The Bat" Gamel. Good luck Brett but, I'm not hopefull. Mat has been amazing thus far - 10 Games, 11 Runs, 14 Rbi, 9 XBH's, hitting .436. Shoot, if he can go three games in a row without an error he might get his ass to the big leagues.

Round Rock is at Iowa and speaking of amazing, Iowa's Jake Fox has been that through 11 games- 7 Bombs and 50 TB's in 46 AB's. I know he'll be 27 in July but, wow.

IL- Micheal Bowden is going for Pawtucket vs Lehigh Valley. He's tossed 2 scoreless already too

Eastern League- Jake Arrieta deals for Bowie vs Erie

Southern League- Jeremy Hellickson goes for Montgomery vs Mobile. He's been unscored upon his first 2 starts.

Texas League- Dan Cortes goes for NW Arkansas and tries to get his season untracked (0-2 8.10). asking a guy to repeat the TL is cruel and unusual punishment.

The sublime Jhoulys Chacin pitches for Tulsa vs the Padres AA kids tonight

Cal League- Angel V is the shit. After all he's been yakked on about - here he is - 18 years old and raking in the Cal League.  .393 3 Bombs, 10 Games. I'm sure all we'll here about is the  o  walks though- lol - Lake Elsinore is at San Jose.

Carolinja League-  The sweet left arm of Danny Duffy takes the mound for Wilmington vs Salem, as well as the rest of him.

Speaking of sweet left arms, Jeff Locke takes the mound for the Myrtle Beach Pelicans. Jason Heyward plays for them as well. He's good

FSL- Only one game today in the FSL, Daytona at Dunedin. Just wanted to take this opportunity to say that the folks in Sarasota got to see a legend blaze through those parts this weekend - Jupiter's Micheal Stanton - he homered in all three games of the series and went 5-5 in the capper- thats 8-11, 3 bombs, 7 rbi.

I also think he is behind only Mr. Wieters as the second best prospect in the game. The key is to see these things before they happen guys not  "Uh, Im worried about the strikouts so Im gonna wait and see how he does in the FSL..."

Anybody can say "gee, he's awesome " now. Its gonna get worse too. I dont think ANYBODY will be questioning this kid by mid-season. Of course I overestimate the audience here at times :-)

Enjoy the games! Talk amongst yourselves

I've always wanted to do one of these so, I figured why not do one of the most interesting and unique players in the game right now. This is what I think the back of Sandoval's baseball card might look like many, many years from now....

                    AVG     G    AB      R     H   2B  3B  HR   RBI   BB   SO  SB CS   OBP  SLG

08   SFG   .345    41   145    24    50    10   1      3    24      4     14     0    0    .357  .490

09   SFG   .305  152   633    82  194   34    4      9    76    32    78     6    3    .341  .415

10   SFG   .322  138   566    85  182   27    2    21    92    44    72     2    1    .373  .488

11   SFG   .296  144   594    88  176   33    3    16  113    36    88     5    0   . 335  .443

12   SFG   .332  155   647  108  215  44    1     22  105   40    66     3     3   .373   .501

13   SFG   .277  129   524    66  145  18    0     12    62    38    56     0     0   .326   .378

14   SFG   .300  146   597    76  179  36    2     18    82    37    57     3     0   .341   .457

15   SFG   .319  157   625  102  199  43    3     26  112    48    63    4     1    .366  .522

16   SFG   .275    77   258    33     71  14    0       7    44     16    33    0     0    .314  .411

17   SFG   .288  144   465    68  134  24    1     11    72     22    46    0     1    .321  .415

18   LAD   .311  134   447    55  139  26    1        5    64     18   38     1     0    .337  .407

19   LAD   .256  113   332    38    85  11     1       7    47     25   46      0     0   .307  .358

20   NYM  .303  116   238    28    72  16     0       4    24     11   28      0     0   .332  .420

Career: 6071 AB's, 1741 Hits, .287 AVG, 161 Homers

All-Star in 2010, 2012, 2015- Batting Tittle in 2012

A knee injury in 2016 robs him of already declining mobility and moves him back to role of part-time Catcher/ Pinch Hitter.

All in all a memorable and often spectacular career.

This one really happened, btw, albeit in my DMB league. I don't think I've ever asked about anything related to my fantasy league on here in my 4-5 years on here so i thought it would be fun.

 This morning I sent superstar SS- Jose Reyes and OF- Gary Matthews Jr. away

in return I acquired SS- Erick Aybar, 2B- Asdrubal Cabrera, CF- Franklin Gutierrez

By way of some context my league is 24 teams. It simulates real baseball pretty closely if you aren't familiar with Diamond Mind Baseball- Defense counts and matters- so think of it just as you would a real basball trade. Jose Reyes' steals aren't as valuable as his homers or whatever.

From my end I am rebuilding this season (based on 2008 stats) so all that matters is going forward and I had only Blake deWitt slated to play some 2b in 2009- and not much at that with Hudson on the Dodgers. Also had only Sarge Jr. and Brian Anderson on the depth chart for CF and Gutierrez fills that.

Aybar, Cabrera and Gutierrez are all young, have jobs, can play defense but there are some question marks about them all as well. What do you think?

...is about as logical a statement as saying Adam Dunn is a terrible LF

I know this won’t stop any of you foolish ones who criticize Adam Dunn’s outfield play from doing so – (this will just be for fun and my own benifit and whover else is entertained by it) – but there is a way to measure defense – a very BASIC one- its called, well i just call it the amount of plays a guy has made.

In 2008 Adam Dunn made 1.97 plays per game (per 9 innings) as a LF – the league average was 1.90!!

For Adam Dunn’s career he has made the same exact 1.97 plays per game, in 950 games out there – since 2001 when Dunn came into the league the league average for ML Lf’s is 1.93!!!

Do you understand what this means you idiots out there? Dunn was and has always been and was again last year an A-V-E-R-A-G-E major league LF. Do you understand that? ? He’s not a Gold Glover, He’s not GOOD, He’s not BAD, He’s certainly not a DH unless of course you wan’t to classify all of these Left Fielders  as Designated Hitters…

Pat Burrel 1.77 in 1185 games
Moises Alou 1.76 in 1244 games in LF
Luis Gonzalez 1.99 in 2418 games
Josh Willingham 1.76 in 371 games
Ryan Braun 1.95 in 149 games
Carlos Lee 1.98 in 1403 games
Jason Bay 1.97 in 740 games
Man-Ram 1.76 in 890 games in LF
Matt Holliday 1.92 in 687 games
Adam Lind 1.87 in 153 games
Carlos Quentin 1.83 in 135 games
Delmon Young 1.99 in 151 games

Endy Chavez, Alfonso Soriano, Randy Winn, Dave Roberts, Carl Crawford, Johnny Damon, Shannon Stewart, Jay Payton, Ben Francisco, Garett Anderson were/are significantly better than Dunn at catching the ball in Left Field over the years. they were ALL also more athletic players and were all able to play a decent CF at times during thier careers. Besides Soriano, Lee, and sometimes Anderson, NONE of them can put runs on the board like Dunn

The most interesting players on the top list are Holliday and Quentin. Both are damn good hitters like Dunn is, both are error-prone OF’s like Dunn who don’t throw particularily well but catch the balls near them and a few more. Enough to hold down jobs as average fielders who earn thier living with thier bats. Whats the difference?

Neither of them have to listen to MADE UP FANTASY BULLSHIT about how terrible of a Left Fielder they are!

He’s okay out there. Thats it. He isnt killing anybody. Would he more of an asset at 1b? Sure. Maybe. He just isn’t that bad of an outfielder folks

I'm new to FB. I thought I'd see if any nats fans know or have heard anything about if Mock will get a good shot at a starting spot or if they plan to keep him in relief? What do you think of Collin Balester so far? Also, does Tyler Clippard have any chances left? He really hasn't pitched bad in the big leagues when he has been given a shot. I suppose any expert rundowns of the Nats starting siruation would be interesting to hear. Jordan Zimmermann in 2009 possibly as well?

Continue reading this post »