The latest minor leaguer to get the tap and head into the firestorm is Anderson Garcia, who will replace JA Happ on the 25 man roster. Garcia, acquired on waivers from Baltimore, via the Mets, will be making his Phillies debut sometime soon, and likely will be thrown into the fire that is the Phillies 2007 season. Garcia has had a nice run this year at Reading and Ottawa, and is striking out lots of guys. If he can limit the walks, he might be useful.

Geoff Geary has also been optioned to Ottawa. Let this be a reminder as to how important strikeouts are, especially to relievers. Geary does not have a putaway pitch. When balls are hit at someone, or he gets good defense behind him, he’s capable of being a useful reliever, as was evident last year. However, when those line drives fall in, and you’re still not striking anyone out, you get the 2007 version of Geoff Geary. As “unimportant” as strikeouts are for batters, they are vitally important for pitchers, especially relievers.

The Phillies are running out of minor leaguers to baptize by fire. Matt Maloney has to be next, and I’m sure they are toying with the idea of rushing Carrasco up. I pray to all things holy that it doesn’t happen, and Gillick doesn’t do something stupid, like trade the farm for a Jeff Weaver type. Ok, I removed my finger from the panic button…back to your regularly scheduled programming.

It’s a pretty gloomy Friday morning here, but morale is high after the Phillies top drawer win last night. I’ve kind of been slacking a bit here, but others have helped pick up the slack, and once things slow down at work, I’ll have more time to write. I’m planning a few player profiles and some other things as well, so that should be interesting. If you have any suggestions, please let me know and I’ll see what I can do. In fact, I’ll do a little mailbag type deal if you’d want to. Send me questions to the e-mail addy provided on the right, and put “Mailbag” in the title. I’ll answer as many as I can over the weekend and post them Monday. Now, on to the business…

Continue reading Friday morning thoughts →

We are twelve weeks into the 2007 season and the Ottawa Lynx, despite some promising signs last week, continued their slide deeper into last place in the Northern Division with another losing road trip. Ottawa are dangerously close to the point of no return. This team, who won the IL Northern Division title last season, can’t get a foot forward and put together a long winning streak which might, and I say might, get them back in contention for a playoff spot. This is the month to make up ground and by slipping further behind, the month of July might become critical for the Lynx. Instead of fighting for a playoff spot, Ottawa are struggling to merely hang on.

Continue reading Ottawa Lynx Report Week Twelve →

Slow day at work today.  Google can be a wonderful thing.  The Phillies media guide is apparently available for free on the MLB web site.  Check out the link on this page for minor league players.  Media Guide Link.  The interesting prospect info is on the part 2 link.  There are bios of all Phillies minor leaguers, including the Latin American signings.  Most interesting thing learned?  The Phillies are now active scouting in Mexico.  Sebastien Valle, the Phillies 17-year-old catcher in the DSL this year was signed out of Mexico last October, several months after his 16th birthday.

Pitching is the most sought after commodity in baseball and every team has learned that you can never have enough of it. Good pitching is hard to come by, especially in this day of small parks, tightly wound baseballs, more frequent arm injuries and hitters swinging for the fences. The recent first year player draft was certainly proof of that with young, strong arms being drafted often and in the first rounds. As arm injuries seem to be more and more frequent, pitch counts have grown to be considered paramount in trying to prevent arm, injury and shoulder mishaps. There is also the obvious learning curve for young pitchers moving up through the minor leagues and the progressively tougher competition.

Continue reading Triple A-Last Stop Before The Show? (Part Two) The Pitchers →

I updated the rosters for both short season teams today. You can find them by clicking the appropriate tag on the left side of the page. I still need to spend some time updating the rest of the rosters, but I had a request for the short season teams, so I did those. Not all of the starters might be right, I just did it quickly without looking at box scores to see how many games player X started at Y position. If there are mistakes, just leave a comment on the roster page and I’ll update it. In the next day or two, I’ll also be adding links to the legit prospects on the Prospect Tracker page at the top for our short season prospects, as well as updating all of the other roster pages. If there’s anything else that needs doing here, let me know.

The Clearwater Threshers earned their best first-half record in their short four-year history going 39-31.  The team had six players selected to the FSL All-Star game:  pitchers Carlos Carasco, Andrew Carpenter, Pat Overholt, OF/DH Jeremy Slayden, and catcher Lou Marson were elected by the managers in the league and Greg Golson was selected by the commisioners office to attend the game. 

Continue reading Clearwater Threshers First-Half Wrap Up →