I apologize for the lateness of today's report.  I was in Wisconsin over the weekend for a Coldplay concert and speaking of cold play (see what I did there?), I managed to catch a Brewers game on the way back where Jeff Suppan got whacked by the Nationals, or more specifically Josh Willingham, 14-6.  With family in the Cheesehead State, I've been a fairly regular visitor to Milwaukee but Milwaukee has certainly had its share of visitors.  The French missionaries and explorers began visiting there in the late 16th century.  In fact, Milwaukee is an Indian name.  It's pronounced "Meel-wah-kay" which is Algonquin for "the good land".

Anyways, it was a busy day for the affiliates as they posted a 5-and-3 mark.  The teams that don't rhyme with Jays had a very good night while the ones that do didn't, save for one game.  Make sense?  Good!  Read on and rock on, my peeps!

Fabio Castro had a fantastic outing, and there were great individual offensive performances on each team (edit: except Dunedin. Yuck.), despite some lousy team performances.

Another ugly day on the farm included just one win, all the way down in Low-A ball while two pitchers, including a rehabbing righty, left their starts early.  Happy Monday!

Portland played New Hampshire a few weeks ago so they thought they knew how to run on Darin Mastroianni's arm.  After Mastroianni threw a runner out at the plate the third base coach/manager might have reconsidered.  After the second out at the plate they might have stopped running.  The third assist for Mastroianni was at third base so that one could be blamed on the runner.  But the fourth Mastroianni assist, at home, should have caused the Portland manager to reconsider his opinion.

The GCL Jays beat up the two Indian reality show winners.  Scott Richmond pitched well in his final rehab start.  Overall the affiliates went 4-2 with the top two teams losing.

It was a three-win night for the affiliates, which is an excellent result given their past performances this season on the same night of the week. The wins came as the result of some nice pitching performances. Dunedin also received some offense with four players going yard for five homers in total.

The six minor league contests yesterday included four shutouts, a bullpen and fielding meltdown and an outburst at the plate for a struggling affiliate. Two Toronto affiliates threw shutouts while two others were held off the scoresheet, as the Fisher Cats were on the wrong end of a one hitter. Dunedin held Sarasota off the scoreboard through 7 innings but ended up losing 5-3 in part due to three errors. Meanwhile, Auburn had their biggest scoring day of the year with 13 runs in a blowout win over Williamsport. Three strong pitching performances meant all the stars of the evening went to starting pitchers and none were awarded to hitters.

Randy Ruiz hit a three run walk-off home run to lead Vegas to victory.  Auburn won a doubleheader 6-5, that was the score in both games.  Henderson Alvarez retired the first 13 hitters he faced as Lansing won.  Carlos Perez led the GCL Jays to a win.  Dunedin scored eight on their way to a win, only New Hampshire spoiled the organizational sweep.

The highlights - a rain-out and a scheduled day off.

Three wins up top and two losses in the low levels made for a fairly decent day overall for the affiliates.

The Jays affiliates have had pretty poor results on Friday nights so far this season, so let's take a look and see how they did last night... (Spoiler Alert: It's not pretty)

All eyes were on New Hampshire last night as one of the best prospects in all of baseball faced off against a rehabbing starter whose absence from the rotation has been sorely noticed in Toronto this season. The game did not disappoint and provided one of the few bright spots on the farm last night. Las Vegas nipped a close game from Tacoma, but Dunedin was shut out, Lansing and the GCL Blue Jays were both blown out and Auburn lost a tight game on a pair of errors.

With all the recent talk of trading Roy Halladay and retooling I have two questions rolling around in my head.  First, if the Jays are to begin retooling who can they count on being ready to help the big club in 2010?  And secondly, with all the promotions to the big league team this season, who is the Jays best prospect who has not yet appeared in the big leagues?

The bats in Dunedin and Lansing thawed out.  The Auburn bullpen blew a good start by Egan Smith, the GCL Jays were short on hitting with just three hits.  Casey Janssen threw a shutout inning for Dunedin.

Las Vegas, New Hampshire, Dunedin and Lansing all had the night off because they're enjoying their All-Star breaks.  However, Auburn and the boys from the Gulf were in action.  Find out who won and who lost in today's truncated minor league update. 

My apologies for the lateness. I'll make up for this transgression by being as brief as possible.

It's All-Star Season, and as such, the Eastern League will soon be holding their all-star game and home run derby. The only Fisher Cat who will participate in the derby is, as you can probably guess, Brian Dopirak. But there's another participant with Blue Jay ties. Try to guess. I dare you.