Okay, how does the Home Run Derby play out tonight? Tell us who's going to win, and if you're feeling frisky, rank the entrants from 1-8, like I have done here.

For the record, the "voting" about who will win being done on MLB.com has the Jays' own Jose Bautista running second to ... wait for it ... Robinson Cano. (But it's very close -- go vote if you have a moment!)

I personally think the final standings will look approximately like this ...

It was a .500 day on the farm with the affiliates going 3-3. There were some solid performances but nothing that really stood out.

If it's true that you can never have enough pitching, it's probably also true that you can never have enough money.

The three stars yesterday all went to pitchers, who combined for 21 innings of shutout ball with 7 hits allowed and 26 strikeouts. And Drew Hutchison wasn’t among them. However, Jesse Litsch’s rehab start for Las Vegas was not nearly as pretty.

Well, he certainly did it in style. After a first inning single, Derek Jeter homered off David Price in the third inning this afternoon to become just the 28th player to accumulate 3,000 hits in the major leagues. Then he added three more before the day was over, moving past Roberto Clemente into 27th place all time (Al Kaline is next, at 3.007.) His fifth hit of the day broke a 4-4 tie and plated the winning run in the Yankees 5-4 win over Tampa Bay.

Bauxite ayjackson was wondering

When was the last time we were in that situation?  With a 3-4 hole in the lineup as strong as its been since (ever?).  Certainly since Green/Delgado.

Is Bautista-Lind indeed the best one-two punch the Jays have had in their lineup since then?

It was “even steven” on the farm Friday, but Pitchers were knocked around pretty hard and the bats were nothing to write home about.  So 3-3 on the night actually sounds a lot better than the performances turned in by the affiliates.

Time for a new thread. Change the luck.

Besides there are issues to address.

Nine games produced three postponements and a single win. Ugh.

Perhaps it was seeing the name Sam Horn appear, not once but twice, in the list of players who had hit grand slams against the Blue Jays that gave me this idea. (Horn hit just 62 HRs in his career, and most of them as an Oriole, by the way.)

Ricky Romero had on off-night and the Red Sox are a bad team to have an off night against.  Hopefully JP Arencibia's wrist will be OK.  Jonathan Papelboob does a lot of damage through hitting Jays batsmen, doesn't he?

Forgetting about the game, lets consider some questions:

Do the Jays have a chance?

What does the future hold for JP Arencibia?

You are the GM, where would you upgrade the team?

Do the Pirates have a chance?

Details below.

There were a lot of crooked numbers on a good night on the farm, plus a couple of multi-home run games.

Yes, yes. We're quite impressed. It is a very cool play, ending the game with an outfielder throwing the tying run out at home plate.

But seeing as how the Blue Jays seem to have decided to experiment with forsaking all manner of outstanding defensive plays by outfielders, at least for the foreseeable future, it's a good thing that there's an even better baseball play.

In the other games the Jays played in the middle of the night, the affiliates compiled a 3-4 record with one postponement.  Two of the top performers from Tuesday were pretty card sharp to cut into the MLU 3 Stars, do you believe it?

Update 7/6/2011 @ 12:05pm:  More stories on Extra Innings on K.C. Hobson, Lance Durham, Sean Henn, Chris Woodward and Kevin Howard.

Now that All-Star rosters have been announced, it's time for the annual griping. No one has incited more All-Star-based griping over the last few years than Derek Jeter, as he is continually voted in despite sometimes being nowhere near deserving, this year in particular.

Of course, performance isn't the only valid basis for selection to the game, and that's a whole other can of worms. I want to focus, though, on one particular argument that is often used to defend selections like Jeter.