Wheeler - Wreck Of Ole Eighty Six In an attempt to illuminate Tuesday night during Zack Wheeler’s major league debut, SNY announcer Gary Cohen explained that the last time a pair of under-25 pitchers started both ends of a doubleheader, then went on to win at least 75 games each for that team, was when Dwight Gooden and Sid Fernandez accomplished the treat in 1986. Set the bar at 100 games, and the last duo dates back to 1969. And collectively, I assume, Mets fans pleaded with Gary Cohen not to introduce reality into a day for Mets fans to finally, for the first time in, oh, let’s just say the post-Bernie Madoff Era, to dream about the future. Tuesday was Matt Harvey/Zack Wheeler Day. And it was glorious. ...Everyone still focused on Harvey and Wheeler, or Wheeler and Harvey if you preferred (sure, why not?), both still intact, both members of the rotation, both capable for one day of allowing dreams beyond punchless outputs, losing streaks and empty promises, to dream instead of who will pitch Game 1 and who will pitch Game 2, you know, someday, wasn’t all that much more invested in the end of this one than they will be Collin Cowgill’s next at-bat or Scott Rice’s next appearance. Tuesday wasn’t about Tuesday. And whether Harvey and Wheeler are Fernandez and Gooden, Prior and Wood, or Pulsipher and Isringhausen is beside the point. It isn’t about what will be. Harvey/Wheeler Day was about what might be. It was about allowing Mets fans, a group with way too many sleepless nights hearing the phone ringing off the hook from collection agencies calling (and asking to speak to Fred Wilpon), to daydream all afternoon and evening, and go to sleep with visions of Octobers at Citi Field, for the first time in what only feels like forever.

Gotta check those Disabled List League numbers…had no idea Bryce Harper was slumping. No, it’s not more ridiculous than the backhanded campaign to start Mariano Rivera in his final Summer Classic. This one is a bit premature. Dodgers outfielder Yasiel Puig’s 13-game MLB career is barely older than baby Kimye and he has barely played 40 games in the minors, but that hasn’t stopped fans from charging the hype machine and pushing his All-Star candidacy. Puig-mania doesn’t have the mainstream appeal yet, but within the baseball community, he’s their Jeremy Lin. Lin was the epitome of greatness in small sample size. For those first few weeks, he was arguably the most important player in the NBA and remains an international icon to this day. Likewise, Yasiel Puig’s start to his career is one of the best in major league history. Although, he’s not sleeping on any couches with his 7-year, $42 million contract. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. He deserves votes, but he got a late start in the game. The top three vote-getters at each position get voted in and currently St. Louis’ Carlos Beltran is holding down the third spot among outfielders. Bryce Harper is slumping, but he’s more deserving and the aforementioned Upton is leading the field. There’s a legit case for Puig, but catching any of those three will be extremely difficult in the fan vote. On the other hand, nobody would mind him bumping Ryan Braun down to fifth place. His best longshot approach may be to continue impressing and get in as a manager’s selection. Puig’s got a maximum of 16 games left to fluff his numbers and state his own case on the diamond. However, Yahoo Sports’ Jeff Passan is already making the case for him..

Dayn misspelled Manu Ginobili. Not only did the Angels on Tuesday night squander a rare-as-a-com Joe Blanton gem, but they also lost at home in extras to the generally hapless Mariners. Looking for a main offender? It has to be Josh Hamilton. Hamilton is of course struggling badly in 2013, but Tuesday’s performance may have been the worst of his career. Here’s his unfortunate line for the night: 0-for-5, 2 Ks, 3 GIDPs, 7 LOB. Sign of a bad game at the plate? When going 0-for-5 with five strikeouts would’ve constituted an improvement. In fact, Hamilton is just the second player since 1916 (the back end of available data) to go hitless, strike out twice and hit into three double plays in a single game (he joins Jeff King of the 1990 Pirates). As a “bonus,” he tied the Angels’ franchise record for GIDPs in a game. Hamilton on Tuesday night was quite obviously the opposite of “clutch.” The seven runners left on base will tell you that. But here’s another number: -.477. That’s Hamilton’s win probability added (WPA) for the game in question. WPA measures the percentage by which a player improves or worsens his team’s chances of winning. Stated another way, Hamilton, all by his lonesome, reduced the Angels’ chances of beating Seattle on Tuesday by 47.7 percent. That’s ... not good.

16 games today, I say.

Cliff Lee picked up his ninth win as he cruised after a rain-delayed start to propel the Phillies in a 4-2 win over the Nationals and into a tie in the NL East with Washington. At this point last season, Lee was still searching for his first win. But after eight frames of two-run ball, to go with five hits allowed, nine strikeouts and no walks, Lee is now 9-2 this year with still nearly a month to go until...

Bronson: The Man. The Myth. The Cincinnati Celebrity. Arroyo has pitched well enough that he could well end up in the Reds Hall of Fame some day. “That’s something I don’t think about,” he said. “It’s just weird, man. I’ve said it a lot about other guys. You look at Brandon Phillips’ numbers, and they’re neck and neck with Joe Morgan, and you think of Joe Morgan as a god, but when you play next to Brandon Phillips for eight years, you don’t think of him as anything but Brandon Phillips. “It’s just the way we are. You always think of yourself as that 14-year-old kid who was afraid of dogs or snakes or whatever, and you don’t think of yourself as Michael Jackson or whatever it is you have become in life. It’s hard to think about the Reds Hall of Fame thing. At the end of the year, I’ll have 100 wins, and I’ve done some things that will probably put me in there, but it’ll be definitely special, man. “It’ll be nicer when I’m done and I can look back on the accomplishments I’ve had.”

My results were…disappointing. coaching or umpiring baseball games for a number of years should lead to knowing all the ins and outs of the rule book, right? That doesn’t seem to be the case for everyone given the amount of blown calls we’ve seen this season. ESPN’s baseball crew teamed up with a rules expert to create and administer a quiz to current MLB players, managers/coaches and the media. The results were less than impressive. Do you know the game better than the people who live it every day?

Good afternoon prospect watchers. Here we are again. Down to business.

***Yesterday's Minor League Ball Gameday thread has highlights and community discussion of Monday's events in organized baseball.

***Strong start yesterday for Arizona Diamondbacks prospect David Holmberg: nine innings for Double-A Mobile, with one hit, one walk, one run, and eight strikeouts. On the season he is 4-3, 2.31 ERA with a 58/24 K/BB in 90 innings with 76 hits allowed. Holmberg made 15 starts last year for Mobile with similarly solid results (3.60 ERA, 67/23 K/BB in 95 innings). I don't think he has much left to learn in the Southern League, and a promotion to Triple-A Reno could occur at any time. The Pacific Coast League will test him and he'll have to show that his command-oriented approach will work in that environment.

***Philadelphia Phillies prospect Mitch Gueller made his 2013 debut yesterday, throwing five innings for the Williamsport Crosscutters in the New York-Penn League. He gave up three hits, one walk, two unearned runs, fanning three. Gueller is a 6-3, 210 pound right-hander drafted in the supplemental first round last June out of high school in Rochester, Washington. He has a low-90s fastball with a chance for more velocity as he matures. His changeup was considered advanced for a high schooler, but his breaking ball needs work, or at least it did when he was drafted. We'll track it this summer. If all proceeds as the Phillies hope, Gueller can be a number three starter.

***Toronto Blue Jays infield prospect Andy Burns was on my pre-season sleeper list (which we will review soon) and is certainly making the most of his opportunity this year, going 3-for-5 last night, hitting .410 in his last 10 games, and hitting .321/.380/.523 overall for High-A Dunedin with 21 steals. He was an 11th round pick in 2011 from the University of Arizona.

***There was some grumbling a few weeks ago that Oakland Athletics shortstop prospect Addison Russell wasn't living up to expectations in the California League. It is true that he struggled most of April and May, but at age 19 he is very young for High-A, and it looks like the light has come on recently: he's hitting .373/.407/.667 since June 1st. His overall .249/.332/.467 line in 229 at-bats is respectable given the circumstances. My guess is that he'll perform well the rest of the year and by September his slow start will be forgotten.

***Today's schedule of minor league games.

***Examining the performance of my sleeper list is the next large project on my agenda. After that, I'm going to revise my Top 150 Prospects list.

***Andrew Shen at Beyond the Boxscore offers this very detailed breakdown of Gerrit Cole's first two starts for the Pittsburgh Pirates

***Don't forget it's Zack Wheeler Day. I predict 5.2 innings, 7 hits, 3 runs (2 earned), 2 walks, 2 strikeouts, victory in a 10-5 Mets win.

Carlos Ruiz is back and Cliff Lee is on the mound for the Phillies Tuesday night against the Nationals. Lee (8-2, 2.55) hasn't lost since May 1, and is 6-0 with a 1.93 ERA over his last eight starts. Lee has the highest WAR of any pitcher in June and has mastered the controllable aspects of the game. Since May 1, his K/9 is 8.2, his BB/9 is 1.5 and he's allowed just two homers in 60 2/3 innings. His...

######, NYC Tonite, Up Against The Wall The injury hits just keep on coming for the Yankees, who announced that Kevin Youkilis needs surgery to repair a herniated disc and will be out for 10-12 weeks. That puts Youkilis’ season in jeopardy, because 10 weeks would get him into September and any setbacks would leave him running out of time. Youkilis hit just .219 with two homers and a .648 OPS in 28 games for the Yankees after signing a one-year, $12 million deal as a free agent.

When Liquid Plumr failed to clear things up, the city filed suit. The lawsuit argues MLB’s decree that the San Francisco Giants have exclusive territorial rights to San Jose, which the defending World Series champions refuse to relinquish, constitutes unlawful restraint of trade. “For years, MLB has unlawfully conspired to control the location and relocation of major league men’s professional baseball clubs under the guise of an ‘antitrust exemption’ applied to the business of baseball,” said the 44-page complaint, filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in San Jose. The suit, which accuses MLB of a “blatant conspiracy,” is being handled at no cost to the city by the Burlingame law firm of Joseph W. Cotchett, which has handled some of the largest antitrust cases in the nation and represented the NFL in similar litigation. ... “Whereas baseball may have started as a local affair,” the lawsuit said, “modern baseball is squarely within the realm of interstate commerce. MLB Clubs ply their wares nationwide, games are broadcast throughout the country on satellite TV and radio, as well as cable channels, and MLB Clubs have fan bases that span from coast to coast.” But lower court rulings on the exemption since the early 1970s have gone both ways, leaving it unclear how the Supreme Court might rule if it chose to revisit the issue. “Since the law is so murky, there’s no uncontroversial answer,” said Stuart Banner, who teaches law at the University of California, Los Angeles and has just written a book, The Baseball Trust, a History of Baseball’s Antitrust Exemption. “It all depends on which group of cases you think is more persuasive.”

Back in April, I posted a look at my Sleeper Alert! list from the 2013 Baseball Prospect Book. We have enough minor league data now to get a read for how the players on the list are doing, so let's take a look. This is players A through F.

Here are links to the original lists.

Sleeper Prospects for 2013, Part One
Sleeper Prospects for 2013, Part Two
Sleeper Prospects for 2013, Part Three


Miguel Almonte, RHP, Royals: WHAT I WROTE IN APRIL: Age 19, right-hander from Dominican Republic generating considerable buzz this spring with strong command of plus/plus stuff. Could rank among elite pitching prospects in the game six months from now. RESULTS: 3.82 ERA with a 58/22 K/BB in 61 innings for Low-A Lexington, with 57 hits allowed. Reasonable performance especially given his age. Almonte started getting a lot of attention beyond Royals fandom shortly after the book went to press, so he isn't a "sleeper" type as much as the others.

D.J. Baxendale, RHP, Twins: WHAT I WROTE IN APRIL: Age 22, drafted from University of Arkansas in 10^th round in '12. Doesn't burn radar but has exceptional command and posted a 31/2 K/BB in his first 19 pro innings. Inning-eater control type but could be a good one. RESULTS: Outstanding at High-A Fort Myers (1.10 ERA with a 48/11 K/BB in 57 innings), Baxendale has had a rougher time after moving up to Double-A New Britain (6.75 ERA, 14/7 K/BB in 23 innings) but this is not uncommon for finesse pitchers and he's shown the ability to adapt in the past.

Zach Bird, RHP, Dodgers: APRIL: Age 18, drafted in ninth round last year from high school in Jackson, Mississippi. Live arm, projectable, already throws in low-90s and could get faster, long-term investment type with high upside. Like Almonte, could rank much higher entering 2014. RESULTS: Reports on his stuff are positive, but he's shown serious command issues for Low-A Great Lakes, resulting in a 6.00 ERA and a 30/34 K/BB ratio in 36 innings. Given his age, there is plenty of time for improvement.

Kevin Brady, RHP, Phillies: APRIL: Age 22, drafted in 10^th round last June from Clemson, could have gone higher if not for badly-timed injuries. Looked great after signing, posted 1.90 ERA with 54/7 K/BB in first 43 pro innings, throwing strikes with 90+ fastball, slider, changeup. RESULTS: Made six starts for Low-A Lakewood resulting in a 5.47 ERA and a 28/16 K/BB in 26 innings. He went on the disabled list in early May, then was sent to extended spring training. At this point we need to see if he's healthy.

Andy Burns, INF, Blue Jays: APRIL: Age 22, 11^th round pick in 2011 from University of Arizona. Isn't likely to hit for average (he hit just .248 in Low-A), but he has some power, some speed, and defensive versatility around the infield. RESULTS: Hitting .321/.380/.523 with 25 walks, 37 strikeouts in 237 at-bats for High-A Dunedin, also stealing 21 bases. He's been excellent and should be moving up to Double-A sometime soon.

Daniel Camarena, LHP, Yankees: APRIL: Age 20, drafted in 20^th round in 2011 from high school in San Diego. He's barely seen any action yet but he has a 15/0 K/BB in his first 18 pro innings in rookie ball, getting positive reviews for his curveball and fastball command. RESULTS: Not impressive thus far, with a 6.34 ERA and a 36/13 K/BB in 50 innings for Low-A Charleston, with 61 hits allowed. He's thrown strikes but has been very hittable.

Jharel Cotton, RHP, Dodgers: APRIL: Age 21, 20^th round pick last year out of East Carolina University, where he threw 88-91 MPH. He went off to summer college ball, boosted his velocity into the mid-90s, then posted a 20/3 K/BB in 15 innings in rookie ball. RESULTS: 3.55 ERA with a 58/17 K/BB in 58 innings for Low-A Great Lakes, with 42 hits allowed. Reports on stuff were very good, earning him a promotion to Double-A (skipping High-A). He's thrown just 3.2 innings for Chattanooga thus far in a pair of relief outings, but has fanned five. So far, so good.

Jake DeGrom, RHP, Mets: APRIL: Age 24, ninth round pick in '10 from Stetson, missed '11 with Tommy John but came back strong in '12, throwing strikes and hitting mid-90s with his sinker. 2.95 ERA with 118/26 K/BB in 137 pro innings thus far. Often overlooked in Mets system but not for much longer. RESULTS: Made two starts for High-A St. Lucie, then moved up to Double-A Binghamton where he has a 4.80 ERA with a 44/20 K/BB in 60 innings with 69 hits allowed. I felt he was capable of better; he's had several very good games but the bad ones have trashed his stat line so far.

Logan Ehlers, LHP, Tigers: APRIL: Age 21, small-town Nebraska kid drafted in 20^th round out of Howard Junior College in Texas last year, erratic track record but shows four pitches at his best. Very speculative at this point but I track the Midwesterners closely. RESULTS: Used in relief for Low-A West Michigan with poor results thus far, 5.92 ERA with a 16/15 K/BB in 24 innings, 32 hits. Reports indicate that he's gained weight, has struggled with his command, and is not showing the life on his pitches that he showed in college.

Roenis Elias, LHP, Mariners: APRIL: Age 24, signed out of Cuba in 2011, posted a 3.76 ERA with a 128/41 K/BB in 148 innings in High Desert last year, which is like pitching on the moon. Doesn't have tremendous velocity and easy to overlook in Mariners system, but showed great pitchability last year. Should be tracked. RESULTS: Good success so far in Double-A, with a 2.92 ERA and a 59/25 K/BB in 74 innings for Jackson with 65 hits allowed. Continues to fly under the radar, but continues to get people out.

Edwin Escobar, LHP, Giants: APRIL: Age 20, signed out of Venezuela by Rangers in ‘08, traded to Giants in '09 and now on 40-man roster. Velocity pushed into the 90s last year and he always threw strikes, posted 2.96 ERA with 122/32 K/BB in Low-A. The Giants know pitching. RESULTS: As with Almonte, Escobar got considerable attention in spring training after the book was finished. He's lived up to it with a 3.23 ERA and a sharp 73/14 K/BB in 56 innings for High-A San Jose.

Stay tuned for parts two and three.

Any professional who talks to the media about his area of expertise is succeptible to a certain level of contrarianism. Legend has it that even God the Creator once answered a question with the words, “I don’t know if ‘rest’ is the word I’d use to describe that seventh day, but. . .” So when the man responsible for the short and long-term success of the Phillies organization said on Monday afternoon that he doesn’t “do five-year plans,” it may have offered more of an insight into his psychology than his business philosophy (like, perhaps,  previous assertions that he cares about production, not walks, and that a player like Ryan Howard can “set his own market). No doubt, a distaste for five-year plans on the part of the Phillies’ chief personnel executive would offer a tidy explanation for the franchise’s current predicament (after all, a five-year $125 million contract extension looks a lot more palatable when you ignore its ramifications for all five years that it covers). But after Amaro answered a question about how his five-year plan would affect the decisions he makes prior to this year’s nonwaiver trade deadline by saying, “I don’t do five year plans—other organizations do, I guess,” he continued by describing something that sounded awfully similar to one. “We do look at the total picture, and you’re right, the free agent market has been dwindling significantly,” the general manager said. “Some of the guys who are going to have to take the some of the places of the potential free agents who have been core players for us may have to come from within. They may have to come from our own organization. But again, my job is to make sure that we are contenders every year. I know there are some things that have been written about us blowing things up and that sort of thing. I don’t think blowing things up, so to speak, is the way to go for us. I think that we have to do is try to be intelligent about the decisions that we make for now and for the future. And there are ways to do it and continue to contend and move pieces and move things around. Hopefully, we have the wherewithal to be able to do it well.” Whether Amaro does have that wherewithall is the most important issue facing the Phillies as they enter the third week of June with a 33-37 record and a $160 million payroll that includes a number of regular contributors who are scheduled to become free agents after the season. ... The disconcerting thing for fans is that the decisions that the GM makes over the next month are ones that will directly impact the team’s competitiveness in 2014, 2015 and beyond. And when you look at the Phillies current level of competitveness, it is very much the product of decisions that were made over the previous two or three years. ... The question: can Amaro formulate a strategy that is more successful than the one he executed over the preview few years? How does the five-year plan impact the plan for 2013 and 2014? Regardless of what happens over the rest of the 2013 season, the Phillies will finish it in a bind similar to the one they faced in this most recent offseason, with few attractive personnel options to fill the voids that will exist on the roster. We are in a new era of baseball economics, one that features a dearth of impact players on the free agent market and an inflated pool of television revenue that helps drive up the prices on those that do have the ability to make a significant impact.

Woo-hoo…I haven’t laughed at a Strauss this hard since Stanislas “Animal” Kasava danced with Harry “Sugar Lips” Shapiro! #stalaugh17 Joe Strauss @JoeStrauss District in meltdown. Mention Natitude and it’s as if someone shook the hive. #NotMyMarketingCampaign Now, this is funny, because apparently a few Nats fans got angry at Strauss or something. And by writing “#NotMyMarketingCampaig Strauss here signifies that he did not, in fact, come up with Natitude. Meaning he’s zeroing in on the real target: the sports-marketing employees in the Washington front office who came up with Natitude, employees whose hands could never be washed clean of this villainy merely through the deft use of a hashtag. Joe Strauss @JoeStrauss It’s pretty bad when you’re accused of going negative by merely citing a team’s record (34-35) and run diff (-30). #NoRepresentation Now, I’m going to let you figure out for yourself why this is funny, while I go over and lunge into a cement wall 10 or 20 times, because heaven knows I don’t care what some random person from St. Louis writes about the Nats on Twitter, and you sure don’t care, and he doesn’t care, because no one living in St. Louis could possibly care about the marketing slogan of a Washington baseball team in the middle of June, unless that person were actually drowning in several tons of the gloppy tapioca pudding of despair, so starved for angry human reaction that he must taunt a Twitter account purporting to represent the beard of a D.C. ballplayer late at night, but if that’s the case, then what does it all say about the sportswriter/blogger person from half a continent away who takes the time and energy to recognize and sort of winkingly respond to these comments that no one cared about in the first place, and Oh Mercy it might never end if someone else responds with similar weariness, although that would require an energy level that this debate could not possibly inspire, because it isn’t even a debate. It’s just nothing. A vast expanse of nothingness.  

As Thomas Carlyle Overbay once said: “Genius is an infinite capacity for taking painful cuts.” Yankees general manager Brian Cashman insists he’s not angry with hitting coach Kevin Long. But Cashman didn’t too happy with him either when discussing Mark Teixeira’s wrist woes with reporters on Monday. Long said Saturday night that he wasn’t sure if Teixeira’s right wrist “has been right” since coming off the disabled list on May 31. “It’s alarming in the fact that K-Long would say that to the group of the reporters, but he never said that prior to that,” Cashman said. “This is a lot of times how things work out when things go bad, things get said. If K-Long felt that way he should have been saying that from Day 1, but we never heard that from K-Long.” Long said Teixeira was having more trouble swinging from the left side of the plate. He never reported the issue to team officials or the Yankees medical staff, Cashman said. “Am I mad at Kevin Long because of that? No,” said Cashman. “But do I think that commentary jibes with Kevin Long’s comments internally in that clubhouse regarding this player prior to him going down? Absolutely not. … If K-Long said that, he’s a monk because he kept his mouth shut the whole time.” “Some people are better with the microphone than others,” he added. “Let’s put it that way.”

The Cone of Silence can’t drop on Dan Plesac quick enough. I still like pitcher wins, warts and blemishes and gaping scars and all. Are pitcher wins perfect? Of course not. Should they be the first recourse in evaluating a pitcher’s performance? Of course not. Should they be discarded into the trash bin of ill-advised statistics, like the game-winning RBI? Of course not. So I think it’s pretty cool that Max Scherzer is now 10-0, the first pitcher to win his first 10 decisions to begin a season since Roger Clemens started 11-0 for the Blue Jays in 1997. Does it take some good luck and run support to go 10-0? Sure it does; only 12 pitchers before Scherzer since 1916 have started 10-0 or better (Clemens did it twice, also going 14-0 in 1986), so it takes good pitching and good fortune, and Scherzer has certainly done the former and received the latter. Monday’s performance was a little of both, as Scherzer handcuffed the high-scoring Orioles other than a Chris Davis home run in the Tigers’ 5-1 victory. But he ran up his pitch count and made it through just six innings, needing the bullpen to hold on, which it did; or rather, Drew Smyly did, retiring the final nine batters. So Scherzer improved to 10-0 with a 3.08 ERA, racking up 10 more strikeouts to move into second in the majors behind Yu Darvish with 116. Only Darvish has allowed a lower opponents’ batting average. ...From that start to the end of the season, Scherzer went 11-3 with a 2.53 ERA, cutting his home runs to 10 in 117.1 innings and doing a better job pitching out of jams. Over a calendar year he has gone 21-3 in 33 starts with a 2.78 ERA and 259 strikeouts in 213.1 innings. Justin Verlander is still the ace of the Tigers, but Scherzer has turned into ace 1A. If there’s a scary thing about Scherzer—at least for Tigers opponents—it’ that there’s still room for him to get better. He has held batters to a .162 average with the bases empty, but that jumps to .255 with runners on base. That figure has improved from last year. So, yes, go ahead and ignore Scherzer’s 10-0 record if you wish. I’m going to keep watching until he loses. And when he finally does—and he will—I’ll still watch because this guy has become one of the game’s best.

New York Mets pitching prospect Zack Wheeler will make his major league debut today against the Atlanta Braves. Mets fans and thousands of fantasy owners have been waiting for this day with anticipation; let's take a look at what they might expect and make Wheeler today's Prospect of the Day.

Wheeler was drafted by the San Francisco Giants in the first round, sixth overall, in the 2009 draft. Selected out of high school in Dallas, Georgia, he earned a bonus of $3,300,000. He signed right before the August deadline and didn't make his pro debut until 2010. He was rather inconsistent that year for Low-A Augusta in the South Atlantic League, posting a 3.99 ERA with a 70/38 K/BB in just 59 innings. Note the excellent strikeout rate, but too many walks, a by-product of unrefined secondary pitches. A cracked fingernail also bothered him much of the season.

The Giants sent Wheeler to High-A San Jose to open 2011. He posted a 3.99 ERA with a 98/47 K/BB in 88 innings, showing sharper command and better secondary stuff. He was traded to the Mets that summer for veteran outfielder Carlos Beltran, making six starts for High-A St. Lucie after the trade with excellent results (31/5 K/BB in 27 innings).

2012 was a breakout: 3.26 ERA with a 117/43 K/BB in 116 innings for Double-A Binghamton, followed by a 3.27 ERA with a 31/16 K/BB in 33 innings for Triple-A Buffalo. New York's Triple-A affiliate is in Las Vegas this year but Wheeler has remained effective in the tougher pitching environment, posting a 3.93 ERA in 68.2 innings with a 73/27 K/BB and 61 hits allowed.

Wheeler is listed at 6-4, 185, born May 30, 1990. He's got plenty of arm strength, sitting at 93-95 MPH and hitting the upper-90s at his best. He has two breaking pitches, a curveball which is often excellent, and a very solid slider. He has a changeup too, and as Craig Goldstein points out, it is major league average, which isn't a bad thing. Charlie Drysdale made similar observations back in April. Few major league pitchers have four pitches that work, and Wheeler does.

The key for Wheeler has been steady development of his command. The Giants tried to alter his mechanics back in '10 and the first part of '11, but Wheeler went back to his high school delivery shortly before the Beltran trade with good results. It works for him and he's shown consistent improvement in his command ever since.

Wheeler doesn't have much left to prove in the minors and the promotion is certainly deserved. As with any young pitcher, he made need some time to find his sea legs in the majors: not everyone can be Matt Harvey and dominate immediately. Overall, even if he doesn't get there right away, Wheeler projects as a number two starter.

RIP, Stan Lopata… Stanley Edward Lopata died Saturday from heart complications at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania at age 87. Stan played for the Phillies from 1948 to 1958, accumulating a .257 batting average with 25 triples, 116 home runs and 395 RBI in 822 games. His biggest year was 1956 when he had 33 doubles, seven triples, 32 homers, 95 RBI and a .267 batting average. He was selected to the National League All-Star team in 1955 and 1956. Among Phillies catchers, he holds the single-season records for triples (7) and homers (32), both set in 1956. Stan was a member of the famous “Whiz Kids” team of 1950, which won the Phillies’ first National League pennant since 1915. Stan was sharing the catcher’s spot with Andy Seminick that season and batted .209 in 58 games. The team lost four straight to the New York Yankees in the World Series.

El Paso Herald, June 18, 1913:[Naps manager] Joe Birmingham has denied the report that Vean Gregg and outfielder Graney engaged in a fist fight on the train, the result of which Graney received a black eye. Graney admitted a black eye, but said that he bumped into the head of a Pullman porter. Gregg also denied having been implicated in an argument. Suuuuuure, Jack. Sure. You got a black eye bumping into someone’s head.

17 MLB games today!

You have something special on your hands, a true phenom, a man among boys on the baseball field, but because you’ve been around the game a long time, you know there are hundreds just like him around the country, and you understand that injuries happen and flameouts happen and life happens. So you use some perspective. You talk about needing to be realistic. You aim on the low side. “You go out and have a good high school career,” Jeff Trout once told his son, Mike, “and you’ll have a chance to have a college career — for free. And then, we’ll see what happens.”

Still gobsmacked that a major league team is playing in a joint like the Oakland Coliseum, where the raw sewage flows more freely than the Bud Light. So too is A’s owner Lew Wolff, who tells Eric Fisher of SBJ that he is embarrassed by the mess but that it’s out of his control

You killed them. You killed the Mets. You killed everything. You’re a monster. Bob Costas is often evangelical at odd times. His recent ill-timed (if not illogical) remarks about gun control felt like something reserved for the Huffington Post — not the goal post — where he was broadcasting a football game. Now his increasingly throaty, theatrical bent led him to say that the Mets’ celebration after Sunday’s victory was a sign of the “end of Western Civilization.” But this time Costas got only half a wingtip in his mouth. His remarks were a direct commentary on a sporting event and the celebration thereof. The embellishment was certainly unwarranted, but there’s some merit to the notion that a team 14 games under .500 with a new park, no fans and a recent relationship with Bernie Madoff is probably doing things wrong. ...This isn’t a new cultural paradigm. The idea that many folks find that celebrity magically imbues them with political and philosophical superiority is as old as fame itself. Sadly, too many anchors, actors and athletes morph into pseudo-Socratic blowhards because their paychecks suddenly swell a few digits. And there isn’t much we can do about it. And if you consider that Costas — whose mental and semantic alacrity once made him the exemplar of sports broadcasting — is deep into the back-nine of his career, perhaps his fits of shock-jock rhetoric are somewhat expected. There was a time when Curt Gowdy, Howard Cosell and Pat Summerall were faces and voices of American sports, synonymous with monolithic events that had America spellbound around a radio or television for three hours. And Costas was once among them, or at least near them. Perhaps Costas is just trying to remain relevant or witty –or both — even if his comments were not especially so.

Forbes article discussing how the Dodgers will realize much less money from their TV contract than they expected.

Schwabalicious, he ain’t. FTW: What super-famous musician was born Stevland Hardaway Judkins in Saginaw, Mich. in 1950? Swisher: Steven Tyler? FTW: Stevie Wonder. Swisher: (laughing) In Michigan. I’m an Ohio guy! FTW: Besides the Cincinnati Reds, which two Major League Baseball teams did Pete Rose play for? Swisher: The Phillies, and… what other team did Rose play for besides the Reds? Jason Giambi (from a nearby locker): Montreal. FTW: You guys should be a team. FTW: In 1776, the U.S. became the first country to win a war for independence from a European colonial power. What country was second gaining independence in 1804? Swisher: In 1804? I don’t know. FTW: Yeah, I had to look this one up. It’s Haiti. Swisher: If someone gets that one, I’ll be impressed. Great rapping with you, bro! A 3-for-7 performance might not win free drinks for the Swisher/Giambi tandem, but a .429 batting average on some tough questions is nothing to sneeze at. Huge thanks to them for participating when they had an actual, pending baseball game to worry about, and thanks to my buddies at Uncle Barry’s for sending the questions along.

Good afternoon prospect watchers. I hope you all had a good Father's Day weekend. Let's get down to business.

***I finally got my Integrating Baseball Knowledge post up this morning. Not many comments yet and I'm sorry if it seems to dry, but I've been working with those ideas for many months and it was finally time to get something down.

***Did you read Lee Warren's piece on the Negro Leagues Exhibit at the College World Series? You should.

***So Mark Appel and the Houston Astros have apparently come to an agreement. Assuming no last-second hitches, what would be your plans for Appel if you were the Astros? Where should he make his pro debut? High-A for a quick tuneup? Double-A immediately? How many innings would you expect from him this summer?

***The Texas Rangers signed a new prospect today, left-handed pitcher Francisco Cespedes from the Dominican Republic. He earned a $750,000 bonus. A 6-4, 195 pound lefty, he's a bit older than most Dominican signees at age 18, but I don't think that's a big deal; he's still plenty young. Perspective: a $750,000 bonus would slot at the top of the third round in MLB 2013 draft slot values. Ben Badler at Baseball America notes that teams are increasingly willing to invest money in "older" players from the Dominican, especially pitchers.

***Yesterday's Minor League Ball Gameday thread.

***Zack Wheeler of the New York Mets will be Prospect of the Day tomorrow. Someone asked for a retrospective on Corey Kluber so I'll put that on the list for later this week.

***Tampa Bay Rays prospect Taylor Guerrieri threw five shutout innings for Low-A Bowling Green yesterday, giving him a 2.50 ERA in 11 starts with a 43/10 K/BB in 54 innings, with 43 hits allowed and a 3.07 GO/AO. I always associate Guerrieri with Cincinnati Reds prospect Robert Stephenson, since both were hard-throwing high school right-handers drafted in 2011. Stephenson was just placed on the disabled list with Low-A Dayton due to a hamstring injury. Before getting hurt, he had a 2.97 ERA with an 85/17 K/BB in 67 innings with 52 hits allowed. They are both pitching well this spring and early summer, with Stephenson picking up more strikeouts and Guerrieri generating more ground balls.

***Milwaukee Brewers outfield prospect Tyrone Taylor is hitting .500 in his last 10 games for Low-A Wisconsin, giving him an overall line of .297/.355/.435 with 14 steals in 239 at-bats. A second-round pick last June from high school in California, Taylor is outplaying '12 first-rounder Victor Roache by a wide margin. The Georgia Southern power prospect is hitting just .209/.303/.341 in 50 games for the Timber Rattlers, struggling with contact (58 strikeouts in 182 at-bats).

***Chicago Cubs prospect Duane Underwood takes the mound tonight for short-season Boise in Northwest League action against Salem-Keizer. Underwood was a second-round pick in 2012 from high school in Marietta, Georgia, though the Cubs had to spend first-round money ($1.05 million) to sign him away from the University of Georgia. In high school he sometimes hit 98 MPH and showed a terrific curveball; other times he was down at 87-88 and had nothing going with the secondaries. Which Underwood will show up tonight?

***Today's slate of minor league baseball contests.

***The SBNation.com staff looks at their favorite baseball books. What are your favorites?

***Can you crack the Luhnow Code?

The Tampa Bay Rays have promoted outfield prospect Wil Myers to the major league roster and will insert him into the right field spot. Fantasy owners, Rays fans, and even some masochistic Royals fans have been waiting for this; what can they expect? Let's take a look.

Myers was drafted in the third round by the Royals in 2009 out of high school in High Point, North Carolina. His bat was considered first-round material, but questions about his ability to remain a catcher, plus a South Carolina scholarship, knocked him down two rounds. The Royals took a shot at him in the third and it took an overslot $2,000,000 bonus to get him into pro ball. His career began well with a .426/.488/.735 mark in 18 games for Idaho Falls in the Pioneer League.

Sent to Low-A Burlington to begin 2010, he hit .289/.408/.500 in 68 games, followed by a stunning .346/.453/.512 mark in 58 games after being promoted to High-A Wilmington. Converting to outfield to get his bat to the majors more quickly, he suffered through a variety of nagging injuries and hit just .254//.353/.393 in 99 games for Double-A Northwest Arkansas in 2011.

2012 was much better: fully healthy, he hit .343/.414/.731 with 13 homers in 35 games in Double-A, then .304/.378/.554 with 24 homers in 99 games after being promoted to Triple-A Omaha. His 37 homers were second in the minors. He was clearly an elite prospect heading into 2013, though the Royals felt they needed pitching more than hitting and sent him to Tampa Bay this past December as the key prospect in the James Shields trade.

His performance for Triple-A Durham was a bit sluggish at first, but he's been driving the ball for power for several weeks now and has hit .339/.377/.696 in June, giving him an overall line of .286/.356/.520. When league context is considered, his 2013 season (wRC+ 133) is almost the same as his 2012 season (wRC+137). Overall, he's hit .297/.370/.541 with 38 homers, 136 RBI, 74 walks, and 169 strikeouts in 728 Triple-A plate appearances over 163 games.

Myers is a 6-3, 205 pound right-handed hitter and thrower, born December 10, 1990. He's a good athlete with surprising mobility for an ex-catcher, with average running speed and a strong throwing arm. He's athletic enough that the Royals gave him playing time at both third base and center field last year, though ultimately his tools fit best in right. He has the requisite bat for a corner outfield spot, featuring power to all fields. He won't be a huge basestealer but he's efficient when given the opportunity to run, stealing seven bases in eight attempts this year and 36 out of 48 in his career.

His pure hitting skills are inconsistent: I've seen him take big hacks when he thinks he's getting a hittable pitch, which works fine when he gets something hittable and not so fine when he doesn't. He will go through phases when he tries to pull too much. However, I've also seen him work with what the pitcher gives him, showing the ability to go the other way when that's what he's focused on. His plate discipline was superb early in his career and he still shows a good feel for the zone at times, but he's also made a conscious effort to be more aggressive over the last two seasons, in order to boost his power production.

That's a two-edged sword. At his best, he can handle both fastballs and off-speed offerings, but his approach isn't always the best and he is vulnerable to breaking stuff and pitches outside the zone when in an over-aggressive mindset. I think this is a matter of emphasis rather than talent: he has a good natural eye, he just needs to decide how to use it, finding the right balance and developing intelligent aggression. I think he can do that.

Myers has learned all he can from Triple-A pitching; major leaguers will quickly expose any flaws in his approach. I think he has the ability to adapt. In the short run my expectation is that he'll produce power but be rather streaky and perhaps frustrating. In the medium and long runs, he's a prototypical power-hitting right fielder who should produce an impressive batting average and OBP to go with the power.

To counteract the Manmohan Singh Primer… the search for objective knowledge about hitting mechanics. I compiled a list of the top 50 hitters from the 2012 season according to Fangraphs’ Batting component of WAR.  I then looked at side views of each of these hitters from highlights of the 2012 season in which each player hit a homerun.  In the case of switch hitters, I used the side of the plate where they were most successful.  In all but Melky Cabrera’s 2012 stats, that described their left-handed swings.  I then took a series of over 60 discrete, objective measurements of each player’s swing using Don Slaught’s Right View Pro video analysis software to ascertain ranges of values.  I also wanted to see if any of these moves had even a slight correlation to the kind of hitters they were last season.

In what equipment manager Steve Vucinich, a 46-year employee of the A’s, described as a first, the A’s and Mariners had to shower together in the Raiders’ second-floor locker room after today’s 10-2 Oakland win. Players from both teams trudged up and down one stairway in towels and shower shoes as both teams tried to get their flights out of town. “It’s an unfortunate situation,” A’s third baseman Josh Donaldson said. “Kind of a weird thing,” Oakland catcher John Jaso said. “The ups and downs of the Coliseum. Did you hear how loud it got in the stadium when Josh Reddick hit his triple? It was booming. Then you come in here and you’ve got to find another place to shower.” Raw sewage backed up into both clubhouse shower areas, the umpires’ room and all bathrooms on the clubhouse level, as well as both managers’ offices and the Mariners’ training room. The umpires left without showering, as did much of the Mariners’ coaching staff and manager Eric Wedge.

LOAD UP GANG!!! If a great picture studs an art show, you pay a visit before the exhibit ends. If a classic car is for sale, you raid the piggy bank before your dream auto vanishes. If a popular broadcaster announces his retirement, you try as long as possible to postpone the inevitable. Tim McCarver is about to leave us. Let us bid him an affectionate farewell. Born 52 days before Pearl Harbor, McCarver was a fine 1959-80 major-league baseball catcher — one of only seven modern four-decade players. He then became baseball’s — indeed, sport’s — best 1980-2013 television analyst. Like Churchill, the Tennessean was “always ready to learn, though I do not always enjoy being taught.” McCarver will retire this fall after Fox TV’s World Series — his record 23rd. He will also do the Division Series, League Championship Series, All-Star Game, and Saturday’s “Game of the Week.” “I’m here to report and have a good time doing it,” said Tim. We have little time left to have our good time listening. ...One inning, Tim praised Stan Musial. Another Missourian, Harry Truman, “threw pitches left- and right-handed.” The Broadway junkie referenced Stephen Sondheim’s “The Little Things You Do Together”. Tonight, he said, “It was the little things the Mets did together.” How could McCarver know so much? Curiosity: “the first, not second, guess.” ...Tim won his first Emmy as top sports analyst. Joining the Giants, McCarver inherited Barry Bonds, a spectacular new Bayside park, the team’s first pennant since 1989 — and a public that adored him. In December 2002, he left the Giants exclusively for Fox, becoming its baseball prosopopoeia. Last year McCarver became the 36th man to receive the Ford C. Frick award for broadcast excellence — in effect, the Hall of Fame’s radio/TV wing. Many applauded then. In the few months before he retires, we should all watch in a way too deep for applause now.  

The statheads vs. traditionalists conflict has been going on in one form another for 30 years, though it accelerated after Moneyball. As many people have pointed out, the dichotomy between the two stances is overblown, but the dispute keeps simmering. Earlier this spring we had Hawk Harrelson vs. Brian Kenny. Then we had Mariners manager Eric Wedge blaming sabermetrics for the struggles of demoted second baseman and possibly-failed prospect Dustin Ackley.

The argument is wearisome at this point. It seems to me that both sides are talking past each other. Today I'd like to present something of a roadmap to hopefully move things forward.

This is based on ideas laid out by philosopher Ken Wilber, a founder of Integral Theory. Wilber doesn't write about sports (except in the sense that sports are part of the universe and he writes about the universe), but I've found some of his ideas useful in helping me organize my thinking about many things, including baseball. Be warned that Wilber writes a lot about spirituality and that might not be to everyone's taste. However, the esoteric stuff has nothing to do with what I'm getting at, so bear with me on this.

Wilber's basic ideas are too involved to lay out in detail here, but some introduction is necessary. This June 2012 article by Mark Manson is a good primer for Wilber's concepts and presents both his strengths and weaknesses as a thinker. More details about Wilber's work can be found here. Cribbing and paraphrasing from Manson, here are some basic beginning principles:

A) Few ideas, or people, are 100% right or 100% wrong. They merely vary in their degree of incompleteness.

B) Leaps in evolution or and gains in knowledge usually occur by "transcending and including" previous data or ideas, not by completely wiping out what came before. In biological evolution, for example, the development of the single-celled organism did not eliminate molecules or atoms, but included them in a greater order of complexity. According to Wilber, this pattern occurs in all phenomena, including the development of human knowledge. Rational thought does not exclude emotion, for example, but should include it as part of a greater developmental level of consciousness.

C) Knowledge generally advances by including and integrating what came before into something greater.

D) Perception contains and includes both interior and exterior modalities. Let's say I show you a picture of an attractive woman. Then I cut your brain open and track the neurons firing while you think about the woman. Which is real, the neuron firing observed by exterior observers? Or your internal experience of thinking about the hot woman?

While a biological reductionist might say that the only thing that matters is the neuron firing, the person thinking the thought would likely disagree. In human experience, both are real in their own way.

Now, what does all of this have to do with baseball? Stay with me and you'll see in a moment.

Wilber presents a model of knowledge called All Quadrants All Levels. Quoting from Wilber,

"What if we attempted. . .to use all of the world's great traditions to create a composite map, a comprehensive map, an all-inclusive or integral map that included the best elements of all of them?"

This essay by Eric Thompson delves into this aspect of Wilber's philosophy. Wilber attempts to map human experience with four quadrants of thought.

***The upper-left quadrant deals with interior, individual, subjective experiences: feelings and thoughts and emotions as experienced by individuals. This is the Individual Subjective realm.

***The upper-right quadrant deals with exterior, individual, objective experiences, things that have to do with the material body and can be measured scientifcally. This is the Individual Objective realm.

***The lower-left quadrant deals with interior, group-oriented subjective experiences such as culture, shared values, shared emotional experiences, certain disciplines of history, qualitative politics, group psychology. This is the Collective Subjective realm.

***The lower-right quadrant deals with exterior, group-oriented, objective experiences. This would include things like economics and quantitative social science or historical study, and some forms of sociology. This is the Collective Objective realm.

You can draw a map.

Note that these areas can overlap and that all of us operate in all of these quadrants, as individuals and groups. All quadrants are interrelated, and (according to Wilber and his followers anyway) any good system of knowledge has to account for human experience at all these levels.

So where's the baseball?

Well let's take the different forms of baseball knowledge that are out there and place them in these quadrants.

***The upper-left quadrant, Individual Subjective: In baseball terms, this is where player psychological makeup comes in: the interior experience of the player, his work ethic, instincts, feel for the game, level of confidence, intelligence, maturity. When a baseball person talks about the importance of personality and makeup, he's looking at baseball from this point of view.

***The upper-right quadrant, Individual Objective: This is the physicality of baseball: pitcher mechanics, a hitter's swing, fielding footwork, how to run the bases, how to throw, the mechanics of the game. When a scout breaks down a hitter's swing or a pitching coach works with a pitcher on his mechanics, they are looking at the game from this point of view. Sabermetric studies of individual players also come in here.

***The lower-left quadrant, Collective Subjective: In baseball terms, this is where clubhouse chemistry and organizational culture comes in. When baseball people talk about a bad clubhouse (or a good one) or a team that lacks (or has) clubhouse leaders, they are looking at it from this point of view.

***The lower-right quadrant, Collective Objective: This is where team sabermetrics come in. Most knowledge advancement in baseball has occurred in this quadrant over the last 25 years.

Again, these things can overlap and influence one another. A player's subjective experiences can certainly impact his objective performance and vice versa.

Now, with this in mind, let's say your team sucks and you are trying to figure out why.

Grumpy Ancient TV Commentator says your team sucks because the clubhouse is toxic. He talks about the importance of team chemistry. In so doing, he is describing the emotional experience of the clubhouse and is looking at the problem from a collective subjective viewpoint. Perhaps he is drawing on his own experience as a former player.

Smarty Stathead says your team sucks because the on-base percentage is too low. In so doing, he is looking at and measuring the problem from a quantitative, collective objective lower-right viewpoint.

Smarty Stathead is correct. . .the OBP is too low. . .but that doesn't mean that the Grumpy Ancient TV Commentator coming from the lower-left quadrant is necessarily wrong. They can both be right and are describing something real.

On the upper side of the map, Grizzled Old Scout says that your right fielder sucks because he is lazy and immature, or lacks instincts, or his confidence isn't very good. He's looking at it from the upper left, individual subjective viewpoint and focusing on the interior experience of the individual player.

Coachy Coach, looking at the problem from the upper right and the individual objective view, believes that the problem can be fixed with a tweak to the right fielder's hitting mechanics. Meanwhile, Smarty Stathead, also looking at the issue from further to the upper right individual objective but using quantitative descriptive methods, points out that the sucky right fielder is hitting .097 when down in the count 0-2 and that his Pitch f/x data shows he can't handle anything on the outer half.

So who is right? Well, they all are, or at least they are all describing part of the truth. Grumpy TV Commentator, Smarty Stathead, Grizzled Scout, and Coachy Coach are all describing something real, just from a different area on the map. The fact that the individual objective quadrant exists does not mean that the individual subjective quadrant, or any of the other quadrants, does not also exist.

It is true that some arguments within each quadrant are better than others. Modern physics, for example, describes the physical workings of the universe in a more accurate way than the physics of the 15th century. In baseball terms, we know far more about the individual objective and collective objective realms than we did 20 years ago, thanks to the advances in sabermetics. Our understandings within each quadrant are richer and deeper than they once were, and our knowledge of how the various quadrants interact is also deeper than it once was.

So why all the arguing?

I think the problem comes when people get locked into one way of viewing an issue and assume that people looking at the problem from a different quadrant are wrong or stupid. We are all human; all of us are better at viewing problems from certain angles than others. Wisdom is being able to understand the best arguments from all quadrants and finding a way to incorporate them in a larger view, or at least appreciate them.

Most people know the "stathead vs. traditionalist" argument is simplistic and I think most people have an intuitive understanding of what these maps are trying to point out. There is also a large component that I haven't addressed yet, namely how hierarchies of knowledge incorporate and supersede (not necessarily destroy, although sometimes they do) earlier viewpoints.

But that's for a different day.

As College World Series (CWS) fans stroll the perimeter outside TD Ameritrade Park in Omaha and enter Baseball Village located just south of the stadium, they encounter many great entertainment opportunities, but none as important as the two traveling exhibits sponsored by the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City.

One exhibit, "Times, Teams & Talent," showcases the history of the Negro Leagues through stories and photos as well as facts about the various teams. It includes a list of 116 "barrier breakers" – African-American and Latino players who "endured the grueling process of integrating Major League and Minor League baseball organizations throughout North America" as well as a photo of Branch Rickey signing Jackie Robinson.

Photo: Lee Warren

The other exhibit, "They Were All Stars," includes 24 large panels of Negro League players who went on to become Major League All-Stars. Each panel is packed full of facts and statistics about each player.

Photo: Lee Warren

The Great Plains Black History Museum (GPBHM) in Omaha is facilitating the exhibits at the CWS. I had a chance to talk to GPBHM chairman and president Jim Beatty today at TD Ameritrade Park about how fans are receiving the exhibits and about the content of those exhibits.

"We estimate about 75 or 80% of our visitors are from out of town," Beatty said. The exhibits opened to the public on Friday and about 400 people streamed through. "After they have visited, many have stopped and said, ‘Thanks for bringing it. I didn’t realize some of the history.’ Some mentioned they have been to the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City. And all have been very, very supportive."

After becoming engrossed in the history, some even had stories of their own to share.

A couple of men who had just stopped to view the Robinson display told Beatty about a news story they heard about a woman named Sue McEntee in Des Moines who recently nearly sold a baseball bat at a garage sale that is believed to have once been owned by Robinson. Her asking price was one dollar. She had no idea it probably once belonged to Robinson, but an honest potential customer, Bruce Scapecchi, pointed it out to her. Her kids have grown up playing with the bat in the family’s back yard.

Turns out that her uncle was a left-handed pitcher named Joe Hatten and he played for the Brooklyn Dodgers when Robinson was on the team. He must have acquired the bat at some point and it ended up in McEntee’s household. Needless to say, McEntee pulled the bat out of the garage sale and plans to keep it. It sounds like the bat will still need to be authenticated, but if it turns out to be the real deal, Beatty is planning to contact her to see if she will allow the museum to show the bat.

Speaking of stories, Beatty told me about a boy who stopped by the exhibit. He said the boy was maybe 10 years old, sporting a Mohawk and a temporary LSU tattoo on the side of his head. Beatty was struck by the way the boy appeared to be looking up into the eyes of Robinson's photo, as if he were talking to him. And in a way, the picture Beatty snapped of the boy doing so really might be worth a thousand words. At the very least, it shows how the exhibit can bridge the generations.

Robinson’s legacy has a way of doing that. The movie "42" has stirred up interest in Robinson and the Negro Leagues in general.

"Everyone coming in, especially the kids, the first thing they ask about is Jackie Robinson," Beatty said. "So we point them to the display. The movie has been a huge plus in terms of increasing awareness of not only Jackie Robinson, but also the courage of many – not the least of whom was Branch Rickey – in order to make that happen."

As time passes, some of the names of the players in the Negro Leagues are slipping from our collective consciousness and many young people may have never heard of some of these players, making exhibits like these even more important.

"We’ve got to continue to tell their stories," Beatty said. "Once people view these exhibits it piques their interest and they want to know more."

The exhibits will be on display through June 30 in Baseball Village from 10:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m., seven days a week. Photos are welcome and admission is free. Donations are accepted to help offset the expenses of the exhibit and to help further the educational opportunities the museum offers.

Toledo News-Bee, June 17, 2013:DENVER, Colo., June 17.—(Special.)̵ two men on the bases and the star batter at the plate, an unknown minister attempted to interrupt a Sunday ball game here. The minister stepped to the plate and, raising his hands in the air, started to sing a hymn. The umpire called for the continuance of the game. The ball sped from the pitcher’s hand, a hit was made and the runner from third slid over the home plate between the minister’s legs. 65 years later, the unknown minister’s grandson would become a famous comedian.

Dumb Dora/Donald doesn’t pretend to be enough of an ____________ . If an already-signed player who hits an average of 20 home runs and 80 RBIs per year makes, say, $5 million per season, then surely a second player who is averaging 24 home runs and 86 RBIs deserves $6 million per year. It made perfect sense in those honest days, before the introduction of steroids and performance-enhancing drugs to the game. But teams made deals based on the supposed integrity of the accumulated statistics players were reaching each season, some of which were quantifiably fraudulent. I don’t pretend to be enough of an economist to give you a percentage, but suffice it to say that when Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa and Barry Bonds were routinely hitting more than 60 home runs during a season, let’s say at least 15-20 percent of those numbers were illegitimate. Based on that, shouldn’t players found cheating have to forfeit a certain percentage of ill-gotten gains? And just how do fans go back and get their share of these ill-gotten gains? OK, let’s not kid ourselves. We can’t put Pandora back in her batter’s box, but what about moving forward? In this soon-to-be post-biogenesis world, where there might be as many as 15-20 significant suspensions of 100 games or more, shouldn’t the owners once and for all have some legitimate moral outrage about money that players and their agents essentially extorted by unfairly using a system that was based on numbers the owners thought the players had gained ethically?

I have been banned from the computer for Father's Day. I don't know what's going on, so here is your Gameday thread. Behave yourselves.

It's no secret: my interest in collecting sports cards waxes and wanes like the cycles of the moon. But there are certain things about the hobby that pique my interest. Here they are for the week of June 15, 2013.

Cecilio Guante discovered genuine happiness in the spring of '84.

This Cecilio Guante baseball card is the most popular Cecilio Guante baseball card, according to me, who has 1,200 copies of this Cecilio Guante baseball card.

The ratio of Cecilio Guante-to-any-other-player in this 1986 Topps set is 17-to-1.

According to Wikipedia, Guante wore a giant G for Guante on his glove.

Here is proof of that statement.


The "G" actually stood for glove, which helped Guante distinguish his baseball glove from his hat and other things like food.

One time Cecilio Guante tried to catch a bat with a shin guard because none of the equipment was properly identified.

"Guante" is Spanish for glove.

Cecilio Guante and Rick Rhoden were traded to the Yankees for Doug Drabek in 1987.

That trade worked out great for the Yankees, as Rhoden would go on to have an illustrious rap career and Cecilio Guante would win the 1990 NL Cy Young Award.

Cecilio Guante is on facebook, but it might not be this Cecilio Guante.

Nope, it is this Cecilio Guante.

Cecilio Guante could not find a profile picture for his facebook page.

You can like Cecilio Guante's facebook page free of charge.

Here is a trivia question about Cecilio Guante:

What is Cecilio Guante's favorite musical band?

I don't know; you'd have to ask him.

Nirvana, maybe.

Or Simon and Garfunkel. Because of that song.

Here is another Cecilio Guante trivia question:


The answer is Cecilio Guante.

Thanks for playing!