Here's a dumb and pointless exercise. But when it comes to dumb and pointless exercises, I'm your man.

How bad have J.P. Ricciardi's drafts been?

The Lugnuts were eliminated tonight, while the Doubledays warmed up for the playoffs with a couple of longballs. 

We close out our Friday summaries with the hitters this week.  It has been a disappointing year for the hitters, with only Travis Snider shining and Yohermyn Chavez holding his own.

This is the last week of the minor leagues regular season and it is a good time to look back at 2007 and the performances of the top 30 Blue Jay prospects from a year ago. The Batters Box minor league team will produce this years top 30 list soon but many of these players will drop off the prospect lists. This is also a good time to evaluate how successful was the 2007 minor league season. In summary this has been a disappointing season for the minor league system, many more prospects have regressed than progressed. The one positive aspect is many of the prospects moving ahead are in, or close to, the major leagues.

When you add his 22 minor league innings to his 137.3 major league innings, one realizes that Dustin McGowan has pitched 159.3 innings this season. His career high is 153 in 2003. Since then he’s thrown 31 (2004), 101.3 (2005) and 111.3 (2006). The Jays management team currently is weighing the risk of overworking his arm and a potential injury against preparing McGowan for a full season in the rotation next year and, hopefully, a September pennant race.

Travis Snider provided the only remotely positive news on the minor league front, as the affiliates went 0-2.

One of da Box's founding fathers, Jordan Furlong, sends us a pinch-hit on the end of baseball in Ottawa. Thanks for everything, Jordan, and take it away.

I just posted a piece where I suggested that Walt Jocketty trading Danny Haren and Daric Barton for Mark Mulder looks like one of the worst transactions perpetrated by a current general manager.

What are the other contenders?

If you were paying attention last week, you knew this Hall of Names was coming ... completing All-Birthday teams for my nuclear family, after seeing teams for Mom (Feb. 17), Dad (Oct. 20), big sister Eileen (Aug. 27) and even myself (July 20), we finish up with the oldest sibling -- and frankly, the one who likes baseball the least in the family, though maybe she'll still appreciate this roster -- in big sister Mary.

So let's see if a decent team can be built from the 56 men who have played in the big leagues bearing a birth date of September 5.

New Hampshire lost a 7-4 decision to Portland to lose out on a shot at the playoffs.

Let us consider who should be taking home the Cy Young Award this year. In one league, it's a pretty easy choice. In the other, not so much.

As the BBFL regular season concludes we congratulate our regular season league champions. The Austin Senators in Alomar, the Eastern Shore Birds in Barfield and the Trembling Wilburys in the Carter Division.

Leave it to the Chiefs to win the one game I didn't want them to!  Before anyone dares to complain that my Jays fan club card should be revoked for that statement, it was a nothing game for Syracuse and I would've liked to have seen the Lynx finish things off on a winning note.  On a personal note, it's a sad day for me that the Lynx are leaving because I've been a fan of theirs since Day 1.  Anyways, the affiliates went 3-1 on the night but the one loss was a tough one as a prominent rehabbing Jays reliever was tagged with the "L".   As a result, New Hampshire will have to play one more game to see if they can sneak into the post season. 

The Red Sox entered the month of September smarting from a sweep at the hands of the Yankees. Seven callups and one no-hitter later, they've restored their lead over the pinstripers to 6.5 games. They'll look to blow the race open again by throwing three righties at the Jays. That's not the worst idea I've ever heard...

There are prizes involved. Not for any of us, but the Rookie of the Year gets a shiny trophy. Who's it going to be?

The clock has turned to Sept. 3, the first Monday in September, and here in the U.S.A. and in Canada, that means it's a holiday -- Labor Day.

And a holiday, of course, means a visit to Batter's Box's own Baseball Hall of Names, where in the past we've seen rosters built for Christmas, Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day, Canada Day and others. But where sometimes we will simply build a team of players born on the designated holiday (Dec. 25 for Christmas, etc.), with a "floating date" holiday like today, that would be, well, entirely too laborious.

So instead, we invite your contributions to build a team of players who sound like they deserve the day off today ... for instance ...