Toronto’s minor league season began in earnest yesterday as three affiliates played their opening games. Unfortunately, they all lost, but the other affiliate improved to 2-0 on the season. However, there are many debuts worth reading about, from Scott Campbell’s first game in Triple-A to how the 2007 draft class fared in their Dunedin debuts.

The New Hampshire Fisher Cats kicked off the 2009 minor league season tonight.   Brad Emaus continued his hot spring with three doubles and four RBI's.  Marc Rzepczynski got the win and recorded nine strikeouts in five innings.Plus we have some comments from Dick Scott on the opening day rosters.

Minor league rosters will be released this weekend.  Mendocino found the Lugnuts roster last night and it is shown below.   Kevin Gray at the Union Leader got Dick Scott to reveal a few of the players that will be on the Fisher Cats roster, namely 1B David Cooper, 2B Brad Emaus, LHP Marc Rzepczynski, C Brian Jeroloman, RHP Zach Dials, C Kyle Phillips.

Is there anything we can deduct from what we know so far?

All eyes are currently on the big league camp where the races for the No. 4 and 5 positions in the starting rotation, as well as the battle for the back-up catcher's role, appear to be going down to the wire. On the other fields in Dunedin, though, the baby Jays are hard at work fighting for assignments to the four full-season clubs, which begin play in April.

Well, it's officially Prospect List season.  Three Blue Jays hopefuls make the Top 100 this year, though not necessarily in the order you might have thought.

John Sickels has a Blue Jays Prospect Discussion Thread up, and will post the Jays Top 20 in the next week.

milb.com has been doing their Top 50 this week, and the top 10 is set to come out tomorrow. By process of elimination, it should look something like (this is my guess of what it will look like, not what my top 10 would look like, not that I know enough about prospect evaluation to come up with a legitimate list)...

Dick Scott, the Blue Jays Farm Director, joins us in Da Box for his annual post-season review of the farm system.  Last year's interview is here.

These players didn't crack the Batter's Box Top 30 Prospect List but are interesting players to keep an eye on nonetheless.

On Tuesday we delivered #30-#21, and yesterday #20-#11. Now, we are proud to present our selections as the top 10 Blue Jay prospects for 2008.

No intro - let's get to it!

Welcome to the annual installment of Batter's Box's Top 30 Blue Jay prospects.

The minor league system seems to be stronger than it has been in years. This year there were 48 different players that got at least one top 30 vote from the 6 voters in the top 30 prospects. Today we present players #30 to #21.

The New York Mets and the Buffalo Bisons will be joined at the hip for the next two years, the Syracuse Chiefs officially said good-bye to the Jays by signing a two year deal with Washington and the New Orleans Zephyrs will hook up with the Florida Marlins for the next two seasons.  Where does that leave the Jays?  It's the place where Molly Sims, Nikki Cox and Vanessa Marcil used to work.  Sing it now, "A little less conversation, a little more action........"

Update:  The Blue Jays director of player development Dick Scott was at the home of the team's new AAA affiliate to announce their new deal.

Even though it appears that the New York Mets will sign an affiliation agreement with the Buffalo Bisons shortly, Syracuse.com reports the Syracuse Chiefs stockholders are now willing to sell part of the club to the Metropolitans in an effort to change the Mets mind to come to Syracuse instead.  Even though a Toronto-Buffalo affiliation looks like a pipe dream at this point, is there a tiny sliver of hope it could still happen?

It looks like the Toronto-Buffalo sports connection with start and end with the Bills.  The Buffalo News reports that the Bisons will likely sign a player development contract with the New York Mets, instead of with the Jays.  A blog at Syracuse.com linking a blog of the Mets beat writer at the New York Daily News also suggests it's pretty much a done deal with the Mets and the Herd.  

A Phelps had a multi-homer game. But, this Phelps wasn’t Josh, or even Michael, who apparently can accomplish nearly anything. Instead, this Phelps was a second baseman who slugged his Mahoning Valley Scrappers to victory over Auburn.