Last week I saw one Auburn game, against Williamsport.  I talked with Auburn's pitching coach Antonio Caceres, about some of the pitchers.  That interview and some observations, follow.

A fine, gripping ball game. Alas, a Tough Defeat.

I attended two New Hampshire games in Binghamton last week.  The starting pitchers were Brad Mills and Brandon Magee.  Here is a report on what I saw.

Five games produced a couple of nice performances including good starts from both a recent Blue Jay and a future hopeful.

3-3 on the night for the affiliates but the one you'll really care about was in Syracuse.  What are you waiting for?

In honor of ESPN asking fans to pick the best players in the history of all 30 franchises, ESPN.com's Page 2 is, as they put it, " honoring those who weren't so accomplished."

They're providing three candidates for each team and want readers to choose the worst (player) season for each franchise from the past 50 years. "We scoured the records beginning in 1959 and came up with what we believe are three viable candidates for each team," it says on Page 2. Ready to meet your Blue Jay candidates? Feel free to defend/criticize their choices, but provide alternatives ... here we go ...

Three wins and three losses, plus a hurricane-out.  Dunedin clinch a second half division title with a doubleheader split.  New Hampshire had a big come from behind win as JP Arencibia tied the game in the ninth with a home run and Ryan Patterson won it in the tenth with a triple.  Lansing also came from behind but earlier than the Fisher Cats.  Syracuse and Auburn lost.

Lost as quickly as I'm found
But soon enough it turns around

The Jays are 7-2 in their last 9, and on a roll. They trounced those dastardly Yankees last night, and tonight face the even dastardlier Red Soxs. Marcum takes the bump against Paul Byrd, followed by Litsch/Lester and AJ/Dice-K.

If the Jays can sweep, then things get sort of interesting.

The affiliates knew there was no way they could out shine the "blockbuster" trade the Jays organization made earlier in the day so the players simply mailed it in as the clubs managed just one win.

Read about it here.

So what would it take to get 31-year-old Roy Halladay?

That's a question posed by friend of Batter's Box Jamey Newberg, author of Major League Baseball's best free e-mail newsletter, The Newberg Report (the online bible of all things Texas Ranger) today ... he speculates at length in today's edition, archived on his Web site, here.

So read his full screed (the Halladay-to-the-Rangers stuff, which he admits may be nothing "more than an Internet hallucination," is toward the middle and runs 20+ paragraphs) -- and remember ...

The GCL Jays registered the only win of the day.  Your intrepid correspondent was on hand in Binghamton, New York, to see JP Arencibia walk twice.  There was a charge to the early showers in the Syracuse game, the umpire must have developed a sore thumb from the ejections.  

The 6 game over .500 glass ceiling strikes again.

I pulled this out of the Yankees Games Notes.

Coming into this season, there were six players with 10 years of major league experience who had never spent time on the Disabled List. Two of them were Yankees - Johnny Damon and Jorge Posada - and both of them went on the DL for the first time this season. So did Andruw Jones of the Dodgers.

Three still standing!

And none of them are Blue Jays - as best as I can tell, Marco Scutaro is the Jay with the most ML service (4 plus years coming into 2008) who has never visited the DL.