Six wins in nine tries for the affiliates including four performances by top pitching draftees.

I caught up with Doug Davis, the Blue Jays minor league field coordinator, to talk about the short season teams and some of their players.

Thanks to Bauxite Jeremy Kennedy for crafting this outstanding "positional" Hall of Names feature.

NOTE: THIS STORY HAS BEEN FIXED. SORRY FOR THE BLANK PUBLICATION PAGE PREVIOUSLY POSTED! - md

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Over at the Straight Dope message board, there's a thread trying to create an "All-First Baseman" all-star team. The challenge is to find players who played at least 600 games at first base, and 600 games at another position (with the outfield counting as one position) and see if a roster, or at least a starting lineup, can be completed.

Dustin McGowan pitched well in AA and Henderson Alvarez seemed pretty good in the ole MLB, but that doesn't count for these purposes anymore. Elsewhere, some hitting, some pitching, some wins, some losses.

Please check out Anders' thread below regarding ESPN The Magazine's controversial article accusing the Blue Jays of stealing signs. Here is the main thrust of the story.

A few of the players in the bullpen turned their backs to the field to fixate on the man in white, while others watched the stadium's radar gun. As soon as each pitch was thrown, those watching the man would call out what they thought he was signaling, and those focused on the radar gun would confirm his signal. Sure enough, the man in white was raising his arms above his head before every off-speed pitch and doing nothing when the pitch being called was a fastball.

The article, written by Amy K. Nelson and Peter Keating, does not name any of the players making the accusations but makes reference to recent comments by Yankees manager Joe Girardi's complaints and Boston colour man Jerry Remy.

A brouhaha has erupted in the wake of an ESPN report that seems to implicate the Toronto Blue Jays in using some sort of relay (a now infamous "man in white") to steal signs, which would be in contravention of the rules of baseball. You'll note I say "seems to implicate," because ESPN doesn't have any sort of actual proof that the Jays have stolen signs illegally, more like rumour and conjecture; the article by Amy K. Nelson and Peter Keating is at various points subtitled "The Blue Jays deny they're stealing signs - evidence may lead to another conclusions" and "Baseball's Toronto Blue Jays under suspicion again of stealing signs at Rogers Centre."

The evidence offered essentially breaks down to anonymous player reports (seemingly from a single bullpen), statistical cherrypicking, and the extreme unusualness of the Jay's 2010 offensive season. None of these on their own are convincing, but according to ESPN when put together they mean that "every pitch to a Blue Jay in Toronto is worth watching" which is of course meaningless pablum, but which again seems intended to implicate that the Jays are doing something illegal or unethical.

So are the Blue Jays stealing signs illegally? I have no honest idea. I'm sure they are relaying pitch location from second base with runners on; plenty of teams do that, and the Jays seems to be at the forefront of that. I'm willing to acknowledge that it's within the realm of possibility that the Jays are even going farther than that - not especially likely, but not completely improbably either. Mostly though, I think it's unfortunate that ESPN decided to run with what seems like at best a highly circumstantial set of allegations that are not backed up by it's own reporting. Let's review.

The affiliates were 3-4 on the night with one rainout and another game called early.  The highlights were Bluefield's pitching and Las Vegas' bats.

Yeah, its been awhile so here is a thread for all things going on in the majors. From Brett Lawrie's first game in Canada, to Uggla reaching 30 for his hitting streak.

In the final installment of our minor league POTD for this week we will look at some hitters who have been playing well.

Yesterday we looked at a couple of left handed pitchers, today it's the righties.

Tomorrow we will consider some hitters.

The farm featured some great pitching performances from top prospects, but the best performance (possibly of the entire year) came from an unheralded DSL pitcher.

With Henderson Alvarez being called up to start this week, here is a preview of what you will see on Friday.

So for almost a week now, Batter’s Box has proudly displayed a feature thread entitled, The Messiah Is Coming.

That got me thinking, though “Jesus” (pronounced, “gee, zuss”) is probably not an appropriate nickname for the lad, there have been an awful lot of major leaguers in the past and present who bore the given first or middle name “Jesus” (pronounced, ironically, “Hey, Zeus”) – in fact, more than 40 such men have played the Great Game, and that’s more than enough to cobble (er, carpenter?) together a viable Hall of Names squad.

It’s a pretty good team, though the pitching is weak and there is, sadly, no bona fide closer (so no opportunity for a genuine “Jesus Saves” pun).  We do have a manager and All-Stars (almost) all the way around the infield, as you’ll see when you meet ....

It was an ugly day on the farm with just one win.

Now that the short-season minor leagues have passed their halfway mark I thought I should remind you, through photographs, of what these kids look like.  These pictures are from spring training in Dunedin.  Today I will focus on a couple of left handed pitchers.  Tomorrow it's three right handers and on Wednesday some hitters.