A light night on the Monday minor league scene saw the affiliates go 3-1.  The only blemish was an overtime loss in New York State.

 

The passing of the trading deadline in the BBFL saw a plethora of deals in Alomar, nothing going on in Barfield and an insurance deal by the leading Trembling Wilburys in the Carter division.

Saturday and Sunday updates are included in this MLU.  On Sunday the affiliates went 2-3, and on Saturday 2-5.   Josh Banks slipped back in his bid for a call-up, Brandon Magee also was hit hard.

Just three men in major league baseball history have gone by the initials "J.R." as their "first name." Just one of those, former Houston ace J.R. Richard was truly a star of Ewing Oil magnitude, so it's only appropriate that he played on a Texas-based ballclub. The others were J.R. House, a career .105-hitting catcher with the 2003-04 Pirates and the '06 Astros and J.R. Phillips, a .188 career hitter from 1993-99 with the Giants, Phillies, Rockies, and yes, the Astros.

So all three men named "J.R." played in Houston, where presumably plenty of Astrodome and Minute Maid photographers -- maybe even our own Named For Hank -- photographed them at work, leading to the obvious question ...

Shaun Marcum is off to a nice start in his big league career; so nice, in fact, that he is already the greatest player named "Shaun" in the history of the game. (Albeit true, his only competition, Shaun Fitzmaurice, had two singles in 13 AB in nine games as an OF with the 1966 NYM).

Of course, there have also been a fair number of players named Sean, Shawn and even Shawon, so young Mr. Marcum, with his (so far) 12 career wins and (as yet) 119 career ERA+ still has a ways to go to catch the Caseys, Chacons and Dunstons of the baseball universe.

All of which leads us to ...

I've had a few vague and disconnected thoughts this week about Aaron and Bonds - I'm not sure why - and I started looking over their careers a little...

I went and made a graphic, and ever since I've been deeply, deeply confused.

Marc Rzepczynski was the standout on a 1-5 night in the minors.

With their starting rotation finally completely intact, the Blue Jays march into the oppressive, focus-shattering, jersey-melting Kansas City heat, where the Royals have won six of their last seven. The good news is that all four games are night games. The bad news is that the forecast calls for four straight highs above 100 degrees...

There is a line between a fan's hope that dies only when his club is mathematically eliminated and what we know to be realistic chances of actually winning. After Wednesday's satisfying thrashing of the Yankees, the Jays are straddling that line. Shall we look a little closer?

It is a pitcher's week. The farm affiliates went 3-2.

So we are well past the time of this season's Midsummer Classic, headed into the heat of the pennant races and still months off from the annual awards-fest that follows the crowning of the World Series champion. But favorites are already emerging to win, for instance, the '07 Rookie of the Year awards (FWIW, Vegas says Ryan Braun in the NL and Daisuke Matsuzaka in the AL).

But that leads to an interesting question ... historically, which league produces the best Rookies of the Year? And to answer that, let's dive into a special edition of Baseball's Hall of Names ...

Jason Frasor turns 30 today.

Nobody born on Aug. 9 has (yet) been inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, though one may "percivere" into the shrine one day and another has "neon"-ed his way to consideration for the NFL Hall in Canton.

Actually, no less than 55 men born on this day have played in the major leagues, including a half dozen or so (like Frasor) still active. So presumably we will be able to cobble together a pretty decent 8/9 ballclub in this "Frasor" edition (even though Jason isn't even going to make the team!) of the Hall of Names, which we can only call ...

Three nights watching the Jays battle the Yankees. I have some random observations.

It was a slow train coming for the Chiefs, but Ryan Roberts made it all worthwhile in the end. The farm affiliates went 3-4.

I put a mini-jinx on the Senators last week as they fell 7-4 to the Hammers and allowed the Bashers to close the gap at the top of the Alomar division to 8 games. In Barfield the Lubumbashi Posse beat the Eastern Shore Birds, 7-5, and opened up the division race again, with just 2.5 games separating three teams this one should go down to the wire. In the Carter division the Trembling Wilburys are continuing to slowly but surely distance themselves from the field, only the Gremlins have a chance to catch them now.