Big news in Jay land - Adam Lind has been sent down to AAA

Brett Cecil had his best start of the year in the first game of New Hampshire’s doubleheader. However, the other three games in the system didn’t go nearly so well, as late inning relievers blew leads or surrendered game-winning runs in the late innings.

Dunedin won easily behind Casey Lawrence and Marcus Knecht. Knecht had two home runs and Lawrence pitched eight innings. Lansing won a one run game, Aaron Sanchez pitched well, Justin Nicolino did OK. Las Vegas lost but Travis Snider did hit a home run. New Hampshire had a doubleheader rained out.

A perfect night on the farm for the three affiliates in action.  New Hampshire had the day off.

The Jays return to Toronto after splitting a ten game road trip; despite the .500 record the club must be a little disappointed, after blowing a game against Oakland and dropping two winnable ones against Minnesota. Meanwhile Tampa comes to town for a weird 2 game set after losing 2 of 3 at New York and Baltimore, getting Toronto for two games and Boston for two games before interleague play this weekend (they get the Braves, Toronto gets the Mets). Both teams trail Baltimore in the division, Toronto by 3 and Tampa by 1. Will somebody get closer to the O's, or will they split the series and just tread water? Find out this, and who really shot JFK*, in the Advance Scout.

*Not, you know, actually.

Three hits from both Chris Hawkins and Chris Schaeffer led to the only win on the day for the Blue Jays affiliates.

38 runs scored in four games for the affiliates. Not surprisingly, that led to a few notable performances.

Outscored 22 to 15 and out hit 39 to 27, only one Jays farm team won Friday.  Las Vegas didn’t play and Dunedin scrapped their way to a win with some decent 9 strike out pitching.  New Hampshire started their disaster early giving up 5 runs in the first inning and then got tagged for three home runs in later innings.  They didn’t recover.

Bauxite Sam posted this in Vince Horsman thread, and it seems well timed so we're going to put it up here. Note to all, see the contact us link just under logo at the top of the page for information on how to submit a pinch hit. Thanks Sam.

The Rule Four Draft or Amateur Draft or First-Year-Player Draft is around the corner and many baseball media outlets have started to ramp up their coverage of the event. The draft is for amateur high school and college players from colleges in Canada, the U.S., and Puerto Rico. On June 4, 2012 at 8pm round one will take place. Rounds two to fifteen will take place on June 5, 2012, and rounds sixteen to forty will take place the following day on June 6, 2012. As I'm sure many here are aware, much of the change in the collective bargaining agreement between players and owners focused on changing the rules around the draft. There is now a very strict limit on the bonuses teams are allowed to offer amateur players. Teams work off a "bonus pool" for picks from rounds one to ten. This bonus pool is based on draft order and number of picks. The other change and perhaps most welcome one is the advancement of the signing deadline. The deadline which used to be in August and effectively prevented newly signed players from appearing in competitive games and tormented fans for two months of will he-won't he sign has now been moved up to July 13, 2012. Hurrah for that!

This is the second part of my interview with Lugnuts pitching coach Vince Horsman.  Part one is here.

Three out of four teams lost in Thursday's action, in a slate of games which featured some outcomes that one might not have expected at all.

Okay, so, the site just deleted the entire Advance Scout that I wrote up, which, that's super annoying. Only the intro survived, and I don't have the time and inclination to write the whole thing again, so super abbreviated Advance Scout.

The Minnesota Twins are the worst team in baseball. They're last in the majors in both ERA and FIP by a healthy margin, and they're third from the bottom in the AL in wOBA, just ahead of noted offensive juggernauts Oakland and Seattle. They are 8 and 22, at least three games worse than anyone else, and they're -53 runs on the season, which is almost twice as bad as the next worst team. They are 3-13 in their last 16, and in a just concluded 9 game sequence against Anaheim (x2) and Seattle they were outscored 37-17. In the set against the Jays they're going to start two minor leaguers and two of the worst starters in baseball. So beware, for this sets up perfectly as a high expectations series that the Jays predictably blow. But never fear, the Advance Scout is here to talk you through it.

Strong starts in Triple-A and the Midwest League led to victories, with the former being a come-from-behind extra-inning affair. Meanwhile, the Fisher Cats lost in Brett Cecil’s return to the diamond and a first inning grand slam put Dunedin in a hole that Jake Marisnick and Sean Ochinko couldn’t lead the team out of

Some offensive players had big nights. Marcus Knecht had four hits and two home runs; Ryan Schimpf had two hits in one inning, one of them a home run; Anthony Gose had two hits, including a two run triple; and Kenny Wilson and Kevin Pillar each had three hits with a triple. The farm delivered two wins, one loss, and a rainout.

Full story link now available (as of 11:15 ET) -- if you see more stories to link to, add them in the comments please. As I posted this, I had just sprinted into my home office from the TV after seeing Josh Hamilton homer for the fourth time today agains the Orioles (he also doubled -- the 18 TB in one game are an AL record).

The Rangers won big, 10-3, so the O's fans gave Josh an immediate ovation. If you're gonna get trouncecd, at least watch history. And it's just the 14th four-dinger game in MLB history since 1900. The fourth one was to dead center, bounced off the top of the wall, up and to the left and just snuck over the fence.  Wow. Did I mention, wow? Four-homer games are just about exactly as rare as perfect games -- which would you rather see, Bauxites?

• The story from ESPN DFW -- Four! Hamilton slams 4 two-run HRs
• Cool trivia note: Elvis Andrus was on base as the sole baserunner for all four of Hamilton's two-run shots.
• Head's up -- new trivia challenge question within on Comment #12!

All numbers and references in this story according to the Rangers teevee booth and are welcome to be corrected and checked if anyone cares to do so. thanks to those already having posted some corrections, this lede has already been updated.