The Toronto Blue Jays (13-15) start a three-game series against the Pittsburgh Pirates (10-8) at PNC Park this weekend. The Jays are three games back in the loss column of the Yankees and Orioles in the AL East while the Bucs are tied with the Cubs for the NL Central basement and are 9.5 games back of the surprising Milwaukee Brewers.

Five games and the affiliates went 3-2. Australian Liam Hendriks was fantastic again for Buffalo. Matt Boyd made his first start for New Hampshire and had a mixed outing. Taylor Cole pitched well for Dunedin and Mitch Nay hit his first homerun for Lansing, where starter Alberto Tirado allowed one hit over five innings of work.

Congratulations go out to Dwight Smith Jr. and Matt Boyd as they captured the Batter's Box MInor League Player and Pitcher of the Month awards for April. The honours are based on the Minor League Crew's Three Stars selections.


Dwight Smith Jr. and Matt Boyd were picked five times apiece by the Minor League Crew during three-star selections in April.

The Jays affiliates were 2-1 today, while the Fisher Cats were rained out versus the Trenton Thunder.  After a few rough starts, we are slowly starting to see the Lugnuts pitchers pitch well, as today Chase De Jong and Tom Robson were fantastic. 

The affiliates took two of out three games Tuesday with a pair of sterling starts turned in. A fourth game was suspended by Mother Nature and will resume today.

The Jays head to KC without Ryan Goins. Goins likely would not have improved his numbers in KC, the Jays face two left handed pitchers plus Yordano Ventura. Meanwhile Chris Getz gets to face two lefties right away, it could get him off to a hot start.

The Jays throw Dustin McGowan, Drew Hutchison and Mark Buehrle against the Royals. I believe I heard, or read, that McGowan might use an insulin pump in this start. McGowan is a diabetic and the loss of blood sugar could explain his difficulty once he gets 90 minutes into the game. I also believe that Brandon Morrow uses an insulin pump when he pitches. All eyes will be on McGowan tonight.

The affiliates played .500 ball in four games Monday night. They wound up splitting a pair against their counterparts from the Yankees and Reds. Two great starting performances were turned in, a Bison clubbed his first AAA homer and Lansing welcomed the reigning Northwest League MVP to its lineup. However, a Lugnuts pitcher left the game after facing just two batters due to injury.

There are a couple of administrative items that I thought I would cover in a separate thread. They concern new member registration and posting challenges.

In case you didn't notice we cut off new member registrations a month or so ago, for the second time. The reason was to stop spam registrations. At Batters Box we have a two step registration process, you fill out a few details and then we can approve you or not. We have always been actively deleting spam registrations so our membership list doesn't get bloated. Over the past few years we would get between 50 and 70 spam applications per day. We would know they are spam usually by the registration name, either it was an incomprehensible mix of letters, numbers and symbols or it fitted a pattern where there is a name followed by say two numbers and we would have ten requests by jim10, jim 12, and so on. This was a pain in the butt but we could manage.

The affiliates went 3-1 today, with another strong performance from Dalton Pompey.  Ricky Romero pitched 5 scoreless innings, but unfortunately gave up 6 walks.

Another sweep for the affiliates who have all been playing better recently. Dwight Smith drove in the tying run and scored the winning run in a tight 2-1 win over the Phillies. Taylor Cole was again excellent. The Lugnuts trailed 4-1 headed to the bottom of the ninth and pulled out the win. Sean Nolin was strong and Darin Mastroianni supported him with a couple of doubles in the Bisons win. Mike McDade homered in his first at-bat of the year, Michael Crouse had three hits and Scott Copeland pitched seven shutout innings for the Fisher Cats. Some of the pitchers had a touch of Morrow-itis. Nolin walked four and Jairo Labourt allowed eleven base runners in four innings.

Matt Boyd pitched eight shutout innings with 12 K's as Dunedin won again. Jon Berti homered in the eleventh to give New Hampshire a big win. Tom Robson had another rough start and Lansing lost. Buffalo was rained out.

"That's chowdah! Chowdah! Say it right!"

Four games and three wins. Kendall Graveman was the standout performer, continuing his fine start to the season by going seven shutout innings. Deck McGuire wasn’t too shabby himself, pitching seven plus innings and yielding three unearned runs. Andy Burns built on his two-hit night last night by hitting his way onboard three times tonight.

The affiliates today were 3-1 highlighted by an offensive outburst from Dunedin, and a strong performance from DJ Davis in Lansing.  Dunedin won again, improving their record to 15-4.

The affiliates did the exact opposite of what they did Monday night by posting a .250 winning percentage in their four games on Tuesday. All three losses were of the one-run variety and all three were decided in the opposition's final at-bat. On the positive side, there were three quality starts turned in and none of the four starters walked a batter.