Last night was a night of several surprises on the farm. Lansing won due to production from an unexpected spot in the lineup. New Hampshire lost to a surprising degreee. The GCL Blue Jays were strangely already pinch-hitting for the team’s first-round draft choice.

And Victor Zambrano couldn’t complete four innings, gave up a bunch of hits and several walks and turned a lead into a deficit. Oh well, some things never change.

Three hours and fifty-five minutes later...

Right here.

Seriously, y'all want more? Y'all people are vultures.

I'll do my best. The Rockies are steamrolling anything in their path. This series should be a three-day slugathon. Halladay, Marcum, Jeff Francis and Rodrigo Lopez are going to sit this one out. The guys who do pitch will have their hands full.

Buster Olney is reporting that the St. Louis Cardinals have acquired LHSP Mike Maroth from the Detroit Tigers, for an as-yet-unspecified return.

Maroth is 50-62 in his seven-year career, all with Detroit, including a 5-2 mark this season and MLB's most recent 20-loss season (9-21) in 2003.

The St. Louis rotation has been riddled by injuries this year, to the point that earlier this week they signed ex-Jay Tomo Ohka. Is Maroth the (or at least an) answer?

Many were the disturbing sights seen at the ballpark last night...

It's the hitters summary this week. The farm affiliates went 6-1 last night to partially offset the sting of the game in Toronto.

Imagine Shaun Marcum with a faster fastball and a lower homer rate.

Now, imagine that guy facing Marcum as the starting pitcher for the Dodgers tonight...

Remember when the A's "stole" Bradley from the Dodgers, giving up Grade B prospect Andre Ethier? Apparently they felt so guilty about their thievery they've decided to let other teams reap the enormous rewards of having Milton Bradley on their roster. How generous of the A's. Or maybe it was because Bradley missed 117 games in the last two years and was generally mediocre when he did play. You decide.

Question for Bauxites: Is Bradley worth a roster spot? Is Elijah Dukes? I've said this before, and so have others, but if you're going to have as many issues as Bradley -- in addition to his propensity to get hurt -- you'd better be Barry Bonds. And Bradley's not Barry Bonds.

Other opinions?

The phonetically similar first-rounders Ahrens and Arencibia had similar debuts, and Ricky Romero had a (reasonably successful) rehab start in Dunedin last night. The farm affiliates went 2-5.

Sometimes, stories write themselves. Today I was looking at the various men in baseball history named (first/middle name) Philip and (last/family name) Phillips and I ran across one Deacon Phillippe, a name I knew only in passing from reading about the Great Game's early years.

In scanning Phillippe's BaseballReference.com page, I noticed that he had been part of what I can only describe as The Biggest Trade in Baseball History. How did I not know about this trade before now? Consider ...

Dunedin scores their last two runs on bases loaded walks to defeat Lakeland.

The affiliates were 3-0 on the night, with 2 rainouts and an A Ball All Star Game.

In a column at Baseball Prospectus yesterday, Joe Sheehan was highly critical of Jays’ General Manager J.P. Ricciardi.

I am not here to “take sides” on this, save for one of Sheehan’s statements that I will present research on below.

Jesse Litsch gains revenge on the team that gave him a rude welcome back to AA ball from Toronto two weeks ago.  Meantime, a suspended game that was well in hand from last month helped the affiliates come away with a split of their 4 games.

Well, when you're behind Tampa Bay... no manager can survive. Ask Carlos Tosca.

Intrepid reporter Rob couldn't resist a Kitchener Panthers game featuring a Ferguson Jenkins personal appearance. These days "Fergie" and "64" in the same sentence would usually suggest a bad Black-Eyed Peas cover of a Beatles' tune, but not this time. Take it away, Rob.


So how many people spent their Sunday night
a) waiting an hour for the home team's #5 hitter to bat for the first time;
b) watching 23 runs cross the plate; and
c) meeting a Hall of Famer?