It's mid-season and time for prospect polls. Let's start with the pitchers. Here is my list:

1.  Marcum
2.  League
3.  Jackson
4.  Purcey
5.  Banks
6.  Cheng
7.  Rosario
8.  McGowan
9.  Davis Romero
10. Janssen

Ricky Romero's off my list until he pitches. If I were to put him on, he'd be #6. What are your lists? Feel free to flame away at me, while you're at it!

Today's photograph is Roy Halladay between innings in the Jays dugout, gearing up to come back out:

Last week, I went to at least some of two games: Monday, Halladay's great game vs Suppan, and Wednesday, Aaargh, I mean Lilly, vs Suppan. Of course, the Jays won both of those games. My co-worker Rob went to Tuesday's game with friends, and the Jays promptly lost.

This week is turning out to be the Bizzaro version of last week; the games I'm showing up to (Tuesday's) were lost, and the games Rob has gone to (last night's) are won. I think I'm going to today's Halladay-Ponson match-up, and I think I'll invite Rob; if all goes as expected, it'll be 0-0 in the 14th before God realizes what's going on and obliterates the Earth with a comet.

I'm telling you, kid, the public will lap it up! This moving-picture sensation has it all! There's the fallen phenom, returning from the operating table to pitch a masterpiece! There's the powerful kid with an artillery name tailor-made for Broadway! There's a bad-blood rematch that goes badly for the heroes! There's one team throwing a huge lead away, and another overcoming a huge deficit! Thrills, heroics, failures, triumphs, and a whole lotta longball! It'll be the movie-house hit of the year! Write it down, kid -- this show's gonna make us all stars!

"In baseball, my theory is to strive for consistency, not to worry about the numbers. If you dwell on statistics you get shortsighted, if you aim for consistency, the numbers will be there at the end." -- Tom Seaver

There has of course been much talk and discussion and argument on this site -- as on virtually any baseball site -- about the value of various numbers in The Great Game. And the yeoman's work Magpie is doing on compiling the "Lobby of Numbers" for each major league franchise is captivating in its own right.

It's simply true that certain numbers almost inevitably call up the images of certain athletes, baseball or otherwise -- 3 is Ruth, 12 is Namath, 33 is Jabbar on the west coast and Bird on the east coast, 99 is Gretzky. So we know the names within the numbers, so to speak -- but in the spirit of our never-ending quest for the perfect Baseball Hall of Names team, we come to wonder ... are there numbers within the names?

With apologies to the occasional Sixto Lezcano, Cy Twombley, Jack Fournier and Gene Tenace, the answer sadly, appears to be "no." That is, unless ...

With Roy Halladay going tomorrow, the Jays might take 3 out of 4 from the division leader.

Don't look now, but Toronto is five back of the wildcard team, Boston.

She said - "Listen John I love you,
but there's this bloke I fancy
I dont want to two time you,
so it's the end for you and me"

Personally, I prefer the one on the bottom:

They call it short-season ball, but the previews are just as long.

The Auburn Doubledays have averaged 51 wins over their last three years. In other words, going year-by-year and adjusting for a full 162-game season, they have won the equivalent of 100, 123 and 110 games from 2002 to 2004.

Alas, in every one of those years, they lost in the first round of the playoffs. Let's see how the Atlanta Braves of the NY-Penn League fare this year with the following players:

Auburn and Pulaski struggled in their short-season debuts, while the Fisher Cats made Justin Verlander feel most welcome in his AA debut.

The Burley mojo works again....not. The Jays could not overcome a rough first inning. Homers by Alex Rios and Russ Adams made the game interesting for a while, but that was really it. From the larger perspective, the show of oomph from Adams, Rios and Hill bodes well for the future. And that's our topic for today.

Answers to today's questions: the short rest seemed to affect Chacin, and the Jays' bats were lukewarm. Russ Adams continues to sting the ball, even when he makes an out.

Your thoughts?

I was messing around on ESPN, when I saw a link to a page I had never visited:

Lifers: This lists the rare players in MLB who have been with only one team throughout their careers with at least 10 years in the pros.

The Pulaski Blue Jays begin their 60th season of Appalachian League baseball Tuesday night with a match against the Danville Braves.

With a 27-43 start under their belts and sitting a mere 18.5 games out of first, the Cincinnati Reds have axed manager Dave Miley, along with fan favourite and pitcher's scrap pile saviour extraordinaire Don Gullett, Miley's pitching coach and once the most dominant LHSP in the game.

I'd also like to take this opportunity to formally retract the proclamations made in my 2005 Reds Preview, The Hunt For a Reds October, in which I concluded that the Reds would capture the NL Wild Card and meet the Yankees in the World Series.

I offer you the only explanation I can for those earlier guarantees: it was a typographical error.