Recently, I figured out why people buy lottery tickets.

Incredibly, this four-game series will be the Jays' third straight trip to Minnesota without facing the best pitcher in baseball, and their second straight in which they'll only have to deal with one of M and M. However, their hitters will still be challenged: they'll see two killer Bs with good K/BBs and a pair of the stingiest control pitchers around. These may not quite be the real Twins, but this is still going to be difficult.

As promised, after the recent All-Phillips family name Hall of Names treatise, we're back to examine how the first-named Philips (and Phillips, and even the Filomenos and others) of the world come together for a HoN treatment.

There have been more than 100 players in MLB history who carried the name "Phil," in some form, as a first or middle name, even as we discount the few who went by "Phil," even though it wasn't actually anywhere on the birth certificate. (We're looking at guys like you, William Franklin "Phil" Irwin and Pinson Lamar "Phil" McCullough!)

Anyway, even though the first-named Phils outnumber their middle-named counterparts by more than two-to-one, it turns out we can build rosters for both of them. Let's start at the beginning, then, and meet ...

Wow, was I wrong.

Syracuse had four hits as Josh Banks took the loss.  Auburn had four hits as Kyle Walter took the loss.  Lansing had five hits as Zach Dials pitched well and Po Keng took the loss.  New Hampshire had seven hits as Kurt Isenberg took the loss.  Dunedin had nine hits as Russ Savickas lost in relief.  A bad day on the farm, it was tough to find the three stars.

So close.  I thought he was going to get it going into the ninth.

Frank Thomas hit his 499th home run of his career in the 4th inning.

Time for a contest! Home run number 500 will come against:

1.  What pitcher
2.  What Day
3.  What Inning

Syracuse and New Hampshire were the only winners.  New Hampshire came from behind with three two run home runs while Dunedin and Auburn coughed up the leads.  Chip Cannon had a couple of the home runs for the Fisher Cats while Jesse Litsch and Lee Gronkiewicz pitched well in AAA.  Paul Philips had problems in Dunedin, John Tolisano hit his first home run as a Jay.  Brett Cecil, the Jays third pick, made a successful debut.

According to BaseballReference.com, baseball history has thus far seen 26 men with the family name "Phillips" -- that's not including the middle-named John Phillips Jenkins Sensenderfer or the first-named Phillips Steere Paine.

The list includes exactly zero Hall of Famers, not even any All-Stars, but 26 is more than a typical roster of 25 (though to be fair, two of them were "just" managers in the bigs, so we are starting at 24), so it's at least theoretically possible we will be able to "Phil" up this team. Let's see ...

Sometimes, a Hall of Names story just happens.

Yesterday, Batter's Box's own Mike Green tagged a Colorado player with the nickname Manny "Habeas" Corpas, and pretty soon, with contributions from Mike, Alex Obal and Magpie, we had an entire Hall of Names roster of players with "Latin" names -- no, not an All-Latin-American team, that'd be too easy.

Instead, this is the team team that plays pro bono until a post mortem is necessary. They "May" scream mea culpa at some point, but it will be a bona fide effort. So let's move on and start by meeting the captain of this ad hoc squad, none other than the man actually named ...

Last night was a night of several surprises on the farm. Lansing won due to production from an unexpected spot in the lineup. New Hampshire lost to a surprising degreee. The GCL Blue Jays were strangely already pinch-hitting for the team’s first-round draft choice.

And Victor Zambrano couldn’t complete four innings, gave up a bunch of hits and several walks and turned a lead into a deficit. Oh well, some things never change.

Three hours and fifty-five minutes later...

Right here.

Seriously, y'all want more? Y'all people are vultures.

I'll do my best. The Rockies are steamrolling anything in their path. This series should be a three-day slugathon. Halladay, Marcum, Jeff Francis and Rodrigo Lopez are going to sit this one out. The guys who do pitch will have their hands full.

Buster Olney is reporting that the St. Louis Cardinals have acquired LHSP Mike Maroth from the Detroit Tigers, for an as-yet-unspecified return.

Maroth is 50-62 in his seven-year career, all with Detroit, including a 5-2 mark this season and MLB's most recent 20-loss season (9-21) in 2003.

The St. Louis rotation has been riddled by injuries this year, to the point that earlier this week they signed ex-Jay Tomo Ohka. Is Maroth the (or at least an) answer?

Many were the disturbing sights seen at the ballpark last night...