I thought this would be an easier team to build, but no such luck. Did you know that only 22 men named Bret or Brett have even played big league ball? So there will be no full roster, for sure. And three of those 22 had the last/family name Brett, including our only Hall of Famer and one of just five All-Stars. Actually, only one man with the first/given name "Brett" has even made an All-Star team (yes, yes ... the Butler did it!) -- the rest were all of the single-t "Bret" variety.

Well, the GM/owner of this team is another former All-Star -- of the NHL variety, anyway -- as Mr. Hull takes up residence in the front office overseeing the development of ...

The Jay who scored the winning run in Thursday's win over the Minnesota Twins is the subject of today's POTD.

In a season where the minor leagues send players such as Travis Snider, Ricky Romero, Brett Cecil, Marc Rzepczynski and Scott Richmond to the big league club, is it fair to say that 2009 was a disappointing year for the minor leagues?  Although those players made a great contribution to the major league team the system behind them is thin and many players who had great expectations on them failed to develop in 2009.  A major area of concern for the Jays should be the lack of development in most of the high school hitters picked over the last three drafts.  The Jays do a great job in developing pitchers, the success with hitters, in particular the high school hitters, has been less so.  The Jays need to evaluate whether their drafting has been poor or if they need to change how they develop those high school hitters.

Congratulations to the regular season champions - The Pohnpei Papayas, 1 Tool Wonders and outa here.

Jeff Blair gets things going in the Globe and Mail today with a column questioning Cito Gaston.  "Cito should have done better" is the headline.  JP Riccardi has been the target of the scribes up to now but Blair is the first one to take on Gaston.  Blair does credit the blogosphere for discussing this over the last few weeks.

With the Jays touch and go to win 70 games this is likely the first of many such columns. 

Yesterday, braden thought maybe the affiliates would reward him for a year of great Minor League Updates with a perfect night. Unfortunately, they left him one victory short. I'm setting my sights lower: on my last minor league update, would the affiliates win one game???

I've been waiting all season for a perfect 5-0 day from the affiliates.  Could the final Sunday of the season be the one?

And that's 'cause they didn't play.  At least this thing's almost over.

You can keep your Marxist ways, for it's only just a phase...
Money, money, money makes the world go round!

USA Today has published salary data for all 30 major league teams. Read 'em and weep.

They're doing it again...

Four wins out of five = a really nice night for the farm teams. The offense was especially impressive - as were the performances from two catchers.

Veteran Bauxite and original roster expansion choice Mike Green wrote it recently ...  "the RC team ... would be very competitive in the all-initial league (Campanella, Connor, Carew, Chapman, Cey, Colavito, Cullenbine, Clemente, Clemens).  Robinson Cano is a good recent addition to the  bench."

Hm. I could have sworn we did an All-RC club at one point, but apparently not ... we're "limited" in Hall of Names annals, to every single double-initial, from AA to ZZ, as well as G.M., P.R., J.R., M.D., T.O., B.S., M.O., J.V., P.M., K.B., G.B. and M.B. -- and a few others we may have missed -- but never an all R.C. team. So let's see if Mike has it right as we attempt to royally crown a new HoN roster we can only rightfully dub ...

One of the few highlights in Thursday night's 10-5 debacle to the Damn Yankees was turned in by this first-year Blue Jay who began his big league career with the Expos in 1996.  He's the subject of our POTD.

As the season winds down in the minors the affiliates won two of five games last night. Las Vegas won on the strength of a one hit-around inning while some of Auburn’s bats came to life, at least temporarily. Meanwhile, Lansing and Dunedin both lost by two and the Fisher Cats lost a tough game. Players with the initials A and M turned in the two best performances on the farm.

That is the combined score of the games last night (not in the Jays' affiliates' favour), as they combined to go an opposite of perfect 0-5.