We're now about one month into the minor league season, where we start to get a look at who could be getting promotions later on in the season. We also start to see kind of what to expect from each team, not to say there couldn't be a second half turnaround (see Potomac Nationals 2011). Anyway here's a look at who has stood out in the first month...

• Syracuse Chiefs: (18-22): The Chiefs have started to turn a corner, helped by Xavier Paul's hitting after he returned from the restricted list. The Chiefs offense has been middle of the pack in just about every aspect in the IL. They have a .250/.326/.380 triple slash with 31 home runs. The pitching is still struggling with a 4.35 team ERA, 216 strikeouts and 116 walks.

Xavier Paul: Paul started the season slow, and then ended up on the restricted list and kind of fell off the radar. Now that he has returned from the restricted list, Paul has been on fire, hitting .318 in his 66 AB's with 4 home runs. He also has a .400OBP and a .636 slugging percentage.

Jarrett Hoffpauir: Hoffpauir has been his usual self for AAA Syracuse, not hitting for much power but he gets on base and doesn't strike out much. In fact he has more walks than strikeouts with 12 walks to 7 strikeouts. He still has problems in the field with 4 errors, and that is the primary reason he hasn't gotten an extended look in the majors with anyone.

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For the intro this week, I have to start out by focusing on April 25th's games. In Syracuse, the Chiefs won 10-5, which seems pretty run of the mill, but the Chiefs got eight of their runs on grand slams by Mark Teahen and Jason Michaels. How often do you see two grand slams in one game? In Harrisburg it was an 8-0 win for the Sens, with lefty Danny Rosenbaum following up his complete game with seven innings of shutout baseball, in which he allowed 3 hits and 2 walks with 2 strikeouts. Now in Potomac it was ugly, with nothing going well for the P-Nats. The only offense came from two singles by Zach Walters and Sean Nicol, and the pitching was dreadful, allowing 14 runs all earned. Lastly in Hagerstown, the offense went crazy giving Hagerstown a 24-2 win over the Rome Braves. Matt Skole walked 5 times, and Steven Souza got 9 RBI's.

• For the Transaction recap I will just link you guys over to Luke Erickson over at Nationalsprospects.com as there were a lot of minor moves:

• "Catching Up On Transactions" - NationalsProspects.com

• "Transaction Update" - NationalsProspects.com

• "Pat Lehman Promoted To Syracuse" - NationalsProspects.com

• "Ex-Nats In The Indys: Atlantic League Edition" - NationalsProspects.com

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We are now two weeks into the season, and we are starting to see some early trends throughout affiliates. There were a few transactions this week, with SS Josh Johnson getting called up to AAA Syracuse; OF Xavier Paul being put on the restricted list; SS Chris McConnell being sent down to AA Harrisburg; Potomac C Sam Palace being activated from the DL; Shane McCatty being called up from XST and LHP Josh Smoker and SS Brent Greer being placed on the DL. The Nats also signed Jim Negrych. Click on the team names below to get to that team's stat page, stats are through Tuesdays games.

• Syracuse Chiefs: The Chiefs start to the year has not been great, putting up a 3-8 record through the first eleven games. Syracuse is in the middle of the pack hitting wise, posting a .238/.308/.370 triple slash. The pitching has been what's holding the Chiefs down, with the pitchers posting a 4.74ERA and a 67/48 SO/BB ratio through 95 innings.

Tyler Moore has really been the one carrying the offensive load, hitting .289/.353/.644 with 5 of the 6 HR for the Chiefs. He also has a little more even SO/BB ratio at 11/5 through 45AB's. Moore also got his first career start in the outfield yesterday, and if he continues to hit like this we should see him in September.

Mark Teahen has also gotten off to a hot start, hitting .324/.375/.459 for Syracuse. While he may not be a prospect anymore, its nice to know that we have at least someone hitting at AAA in case something happened to Lombo or DeRosa.

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With the minor league baseball season underway, now seems like a good time to take a look at who has stood out down on the farm. Both Harrisburg and Hagerstown have started off the season 5-2, but down in Syracuse and Potomac, the teams haven't gotten off to quite as good a start. Syracuse has started off 2-3, and Potomac 1-3. Please note that all stats and records are as of the completion of Wednesday's Hagerstown and Harrisburg games:

• Syracuse Chiefs: One reason that the Chiefs have started so slow, might have to do with the fact that the team is hitting .208/.302/.296/.598 AVG/OBP/SLG/OPS. As the low slugging percentage may indicate, the Chiefs have a total of 8 XBH in 159AB's. The pitching also hasn't been great, putting up a 4.40ERA with a horrible SO/W ratio of 28/27. They have by far the lowest amount of SO in the International League, 5 below the next lowest team. Below are some of the better performers for the team:

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Here are the rules

The draft starts out like a normal auction draft, amount of tokens and minium bid can be deceided once we get a league together. The auction draft would be for your starting spots only, and once you are out of starting spots, you must wait till the reserve round to pick another player(ex you have 3 OF's, you cant take a 4th until the reserve round) The reserve round would just be a normal snake draft. The key difference is that you can choes before the season starts, if you want to extend your player for a second year, or 3rd year at the price you paid for him. Once a players contract is up, you get the right to match the high bid for him in the auction(say Ryan Zimmerman is bid up to $10, the person who has the matching rights to Zim would be able to pay $10 to keep him). There is no way other than trade to get out of a contact, if you cut the player you still have to pay them. That should take care of the basics, and once we get enough people to start a league, we can hammer out the details. Thanks for reading!

link to the league: http://games.espn.go.com/flb/leagueoffice?leagueId=51759

league starts when we get 10, most amount of teams 12. Post you email here or send me an email at arizona.cardinals.fan1@gmail.com if you want an invite.

I threw out this idea in the yahoo thread, but wanted to see how much interst there is out there. Right now I will only put up the basics for the draft, because I have a few different ideas for the waiver wire that could work. I will do my best to explain, but I know that at times I am not the best at explaning, so feel free to ask any questions. Here are the basic rules

The draft starts out like a normal auction draft, amount of tokens and minium bid can be deceided once we get a league together. The auction draft would be for your starting spots only, and once you are out of starting spots, you must wait till the reserve round to pick another player(ex you have 3 OF's, you cant take a 4th until the reserve round) The reserve round would just be a normal snake draft. The key difference is that you can choes before the season starts, if you want to extend your player for a second year, or 3rd year at the price you paid for him. Once a players contract is up, you get the right to match the high bid for him in the auction(say Ryan Zimmerman is bid up to $10, the person who has the matching rights to Zim would be able to pay $10 to keep him). There is no way other than trade to get out of a contact, if you cut the player you still have to pay them. That should take care of the basics, and once we get enough people to start a league, we can hammer out the details. Thanks for reading!

1. jeff550

2. dasox313

3. William.Hatheway

4. NatBadger

5. Pig.Pen

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

we can have more than 10, that's just the minimum

As you guys probably know the Caps are getting blown out almost every time they take the ice, and they defiantly need to change things up.  One of the ideas on how to fix the caps problems is trading Alex Semin.  I was wondering how reasonable this trade would be from your perspective.

Caps get: Suter, or Weber

Preds get: Semin, Perreault, and a conditional pick(depends on if Caps can keep whichever D-man they get)

Thanks for reading, and let me know what you guys think

Any team that is going to compete for a spot in the playoffs is going to half to have some good depth, and most of the time the depth is someone that you know what they will do, but sometimes there will be a guy to come out of no where and make an impact.  Last year Ryan Mattheus would be the best example of that, filling in after Cole Kimball went down with an injured shoulder.  Along with Mattheus we saw a couple other rookies make an impact, good or bad, and since we already have an idea of what they can do, im gonna try and focus on The guys who I think could make their MLB debut for the nats next year, and hopefully they will all make a positive impact.

The new names we saw last year were Chris Marrero, Steve Lombardozzi, Corey Brown, Tom Milone, Brad Peacock, Cole Kimball, Atahualpa Severino, Ryan Mattheus, and Brian Broderick.  After the jump I will attempt to predict who will finally get their name on a MLB jersey

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First off, let me note that these predictions are being made using only the guys we currently have in house.  I will probably post another set of predictions after I find out who is retiring, who we signed, and who we let go.  Also I would like to note that you will not see the guys listed below anywhere, that is because I see them possibly getting a spot with the big team, or getting cut/sent to XST(Much like Tanner Roark last year).  If you want to know more about any of the players in this post, LMK and I will do my best to answer your question.  The guys that will not appear on a team in this post are

Lee Hyde, Atahualpa Severino, Craig Stammen, Michael Aubrey, Gregor Blanco, Chris Curran, Jee Frazier, Evan Bronson, Pat McCoy, Garrett Mock, Jimmy Barthmier, Brett Newsome, Randolph Obuder, Brian Peacock, Shane McCatty, Luis Atilano, Carlos Martinez, Orliver Perez, Adam Fox, Chris McConnell, Rob Wort, Jose Lozada, Francisco Soriano, Sam Brown, Wilson Euesbio, Bobby Hanson, Gregory Holt, and Christopher McKenzie  Thanks for reading!

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After a slow day yesterday, we are left to wonder what the FO has in store for the Cards in the next few days.  With all the draft picks under contract, the only real news yesterday was that Ben Patrick went to the Giants.  Will today be the day that Edwards signs, or will we get Floyd instead?  Are the Cards happy with their OL, or will they be going after some Tackles?

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I got bored so I made these predictions using the Nationals 40 man roster.  I will update according to any free agent signings.

Updated with some of the Fangrphs ERA prediction for pitchers, and for Hitters BA, and HR

SP Livan Hernandez 4.71

SP John Lannan 4.40

SP Jason Marquis 4.46

SP Jordan Zimmermann 3.75

SP Yunesky Maya(will be up for grabs in ST) N/A

1B Adam LaRoche .261, 24HR

2B Danny Espinosa .255 21HR

SS Ian Desmond .280, 13HR

3B Ryan Zimmerman .291, 27HR

C Ivan Rodriguez .266, 7HR

OF Jayson Werth .275, 28HR

OF Nyjer Morgan .285, 1HR

OF Mike Morse .278, 11HR 307 AB

Bullpen and bench after the jump

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From Nationals Journal

Livan Hernandez gets contract extension

The Washington Nationals announced today a contract extension for starting pitcher Livan Hernandez through 2011. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Hernandez has been the cl

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