Yes, I was away - I was Moving. I could bitch and moan about the whole dreary process of Moving all day long if you like, but you probably wouldn't like, and why should you? So let's get cracking, shall we?

There are 25 men who have more than 3000 hits, and a 26th, Roberto Clemente, with exactly 3000. Naturally, some of the players we are watching today will carve out their own spots on this list. Everyone with 3000 hits is in the Hall of Fame, unless they're actually ineligible. That standard seems unlikely to change - 3000 hits will continue to mean automatic induction.

The affiliates went 0-5 on Monday.

The Rule 5 draft is over 3 months away, but it never hurts to look ahead.

Today is Larry Sherry's 71st birthday. So hat's off to the former Dodger World Series MVP and here's a question -- really don't know the answer here -- but could we possibly put together an entire team of players whose names internally rhymed, like "Larry Sherry" did? (You can see that spelling similarity is optional.)

Sherry (53-44, 82 saves career) is joined by another former Dodger RHP in Ed Head (27-23, 11 saves), and still another righty in the more recent Mark Clark (74-71, 10 years, five teams). Paul Schaal was a solid 3B for 11 years with the Angels and Royals. That's Harry Carey in the announcer's booth.

Who else?

Only six weeks remain in the regular season. Six weeks to separate the men from the boys, the Duckhorn Cabernet from the Boone's Farm, the autographed Roy Halladay jersey from Aaron's Shea Hillenbrand jersey.

Here's everyone's favourite sparkplug sliding into second base:

Nothing.

Lots of late game swings yesterday.  Syracuse, Dunedin and Auburn each took leads to the bottom of the ninth and lost.  New Hampshire were losing going to the bottom of the ninth and won in eleven.  New Hampshire and Lansing supplied the only two wins yesterday.

Okay, maybe the Fightin' Jays aren't invincible, but they laid down one hell of a beating on the Yankees yesterday, won three out of four games and the one they didn't win was awfully close.  To celebrate the newfound optimism in many a Jays fan's heart this morning, I give you a massive team celebration photo:

In celebration of an almost-sweep for the farm affiliates, who won 6 of 7, it's time for our Sunday minor league link-o-rama. 

Once again, here's Alex Obal to tell us about This Day In Baseball:

On paper, Ted Lilly against Chien-Ming Wang looked like the most intriguing pitching matchup of the weekend, and it didn’t disappoint.

The farm affiliates went 2-5; the pitchers had to throw shutouts to get a win.

The Jays have traded Shea Hillenbrand and Vinnie Chulk to San Francisco for pitcher Jeremy Accardo.

Accardo is 1-3 with a 4.91 ERA for the Giants, but 40 strikeouts and only 11 walks in 40 1/3 innings. He'll likely help Speier out in the setup role.

The Giants will apparently take on all of Hillenbrand's salary, so the Jays now have the financial flexibility to add another player at the deadline without going over budget.

Great win for the good guys - coming back from a 3-0 deficit and then winning in extra innings after a blown save 5-4.  Perhaps after the Hillenbrand incident and last night's game the Jays have some momentum and can get on an extended roll.

Auburn were the only winners this night but they did win big with good pitching and hitting.  The starting pitchers for the top three teams had bad nights, Jamie Vermilyea, Michael MacDonald and Billy Carnline as each of those teams lost handily.  Lansing had good pitching but no offense while Pulaski made a late run only to have the tying run be thrown out at the plate to end the game.