The affiliates coordinated their schedules well, as just as one breaks for all-star weekend, the other schedules two double-headers, so those who follow the minors can still get their fair share of games. If that’s not enough to spark your interest, last night also featured two pitchers debuting at Double-A and New Hampshire putting on a fine ninth-inning rally. The only question is: did it succeed?

A few scattered observations from my perch in the Cheap Seats (it's not like we pay to get in, right?)

The Jays return home to face the rampaging Nationals, who are closer to their division leader than the Jays are. Led by its no-name rotation, Washington is slicing through middling AL teams like a sand wedge through sand. Can the Nats keep it up at the Dome?

Yesterday, we challenged the readers of Batter's Box to "brainstorm up a few uniquely-named ballplayers ... Maybe even put together a roster of such men."

The response was creative and inventive, and thanks in large part to the Lahman Database machinations of Bauxite John Northey, we do in fact have a full roster of such men, a result I predicted might be "well nigh impossible" to achieve. So, as I often am in baseball projections, that was way wrong -- but as Baseball's Hall of Names often is, this roster is at least quite entertaining. See for yourselves, and take time to meet (and yes, to critique) ...

We have the pitchers again this week. The names remain the same (with one exception), but next time we will have some numbers on the 2007 draftees. Meanwhile, the farm affiliates went 1-3 again last night.

McGowan's been pretty consistent lately.

Over at The Hardball Times, David Gassko has a new article up summarizing (and crunching) some of the zone rating fielding data from Baseball Info Solutions for the first ten weeks of the season.  David mentions only the leaders and trailers in his article, and there's only one Blue Jay who gets a look in, Alex Rios who is the #1 overall rightfielder in the majors.  I thought it would be worthwhile to grab the data and see how the rest of the Blue Jays have fared... many thanks to David and THT for obtaining the data and boiling down the numbers into runs above/below average.

You've probably noticed that the Jays longest winning streak this season is... ahem... three games. Is this any way to win a championship? Or even a little respect?

Yesterday afternoon after work, Gerry and I enjoyed beverages, conversation and Blue Jays at a local pub. As you might imagine, minor league matters came up more than once. Gerry posed the question: who is the Blue Jays third best prospect after Snider and Thigpen? We both threw out names and ended up throwing up our hands. We also discussed the mid-season prospect poll, and agreed that 2007 draftees should be eligible. Auburn's season starts on Tuesday, and so you can expect a poll about 2 weeks after that. I will probably use the poll results to choose the players for the Friday summaries.

The minor league affiliates went 1-3 on the evening.

I heard on ESPN tonight that Pirate RHSP Ian Snell is the first pitcher named "Ian" to ever appear in the big leagues.

Actually, he's only the second player named Ian in the game's long history. The other is Rangers' 2B Ian Kinsler, 0-for-4 against Snell, who was dominant in allowing no earned runs in a complete game win. So we had baseball's first-ever Ian vs. Ian matchup. (Alert the media!)

But that got me to thinking ... who are the players who had or have truly unique given/first names? It's a harder question than you might think.

Kyle 'X' Phillips and Kyle Yates led the way in the minors yesterday.

OK, I had a nice piece all prepared on winning streaks, and the difficulty the Jays have in ever getting hot... and then I looked at last night's starting lineup.

Hard-throwing Justin Verlander threw the first no-hitter in Comerica Park history tonight in blanking the Milwaukee Brewers, 4-0.

It was the first Tiger no-hitter since Jack Morris threw one in 1984 and the first no-hitter in Detroit since Nolan Ryan of the Angels fired one of his two 1973 no-no's at Tiger Stadium.

It was the second no-hitter of 2007, following Mark Buehrle's gem against Texas in April. Batter's Box extends its congratulations to Verlander!

Now, then ... who's next?

Dunedin opens another can of whoopass on their Yankee counterparts and there was a fantastic relief effort elsewhere on the farm.  However, it wasn't enough to tip the scales for the affliates as they fell on the wrong side of .500 by dropping 2 out of 3 last night.  

Here's one. The Phillies are four games out.