There's a bit of a gap between the top pitchers and the group after it. Price, Detwiler, Moskos and Brackman are all likely to go in the top 10. After that no starter stands out and there's a couple closers that are possibilities in the second half of the first round. The Blue Jays were reported to be interested in Vanderbilt closer Casey Weathers.

Another whitewash of the affiliates. Syracuse batted around in the first inning but didn't have a baserunner after the fourth inning. New Hampshire received five straight walks in the ninth inning but it was too little too late. Michael MacDonald and Brandon Magee had ground ball to fly ball ratio's of 16-1 and 17-3 respectively. Syracuse and Dunedin could not get timely hitting that would have turned their losses into wins.

When I was at the park on Monday, looking over the Game Notes, my eye fell upon the item pointing out that the next home run Frank Thomas hits will be the 493rd of his career. He will move, temporarily into a three way tie for 21st on the All-Time list, along with a couple of other pretty good first basemen: Lou Gehrig and Fred McGriff.

The affiliates went 0-4 last night.  However, a successful Litsch debut makes it a good night.

The draft is less than a month away. Time to look to see how the top college hitters are doing since the last time we checked in.

A 2 out of 3 night for the affliates, as Tomo Ohka was not the only Japanese import in the system to help his team emerge victorious.  

On a personal note, I think this week's headline is a nice bounce back effort from last week's debacle, which I apologize for.  I was pressing last week but now I'm back on the beam and I'm ready to carry on the momentum for the rest of the season and finish up strong.

It's the final $2 Tuesday of the year! Will there be Bauxites in the house? Where will they be sitting?

Baseball for a toonie!

The second-place Orioles are the Jays' last opponent before interleague play. Baltimore will throw their top two pitchers and an Adam Loewen replacement at the Jays this series, plus one shellshocked closer too.

People do dumb things - you, me, and major league managers.

I'm only including myself to be gracious, by the way.

With all the injuries on the major league team the Jays have had to bring in new players to fill the gaps in the minors.  Three of them played Sunday, Andrew Good started for Syracuse, Mike Venafro pitched in relief.  Howie Clark played for New Hampshire.   Syracuse blew a lead but won in extra innings with a home run, New Hampshire and Lansing lost.

The affiliates only won one game but there were some encouraging pitching performances.  Ismael Ramirez only allowed one earned run in seven innings for Syracuse.  Russell Savickas made his AA debut and gave up two runs in six innings.  Kristian Bell made his first start of 2007 and pitched five shutout innings and Nate Starner had one bad inning but struck out eleven in six innings.  Curtis Thigpen played second base and made an error.

Someday we'll look back on this and it will all seem funny.
--Bruce Springsteen

With nothing going right for the parent club, some Jays fans hoped maybe the minor leagues would bring some good news. If that’s the case, it’s not going to happen today, as two blowouts and one extra-inning loss means only one win on the farm. We’ll take a look at what happened, as some pitchers continued to struggle, some batters continued to hit and the low minors continued to make errors. However, nobody got hurt, and that's what's important. Seriously.

I'm here in the press box, and they just made the following announcement:

Toronto Blue Jays have placed Roy Halladay on the 15 day Disabled List. He is having surgery for acute appendicitis. It is estimated he will be out for 4-6 weeks.

Two intriguing pitching matchups and Shaun Marcum's long-overdue first start of the year highlight this weekend's series.