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...

It's the hitters summary this week. The farm affiliates went 6-1 last night to partially offset the sting of the game in Toronto.

Imagine Shaun Marcum with a faster fastball and a lower homer rate.

Now, imagine that guy facing Marcum as the starting pitcher for the Dodgers tonight...

Remember when the A's "stole" Bradley from the Dodgers, giving up Grade B prospect Andre Ethier? Apparently they felt so guilty about their thievery they've decided to let other teams reap the enormous rewards of having Milton Bradley on their roster. How generous of the A's. Or maybe it was because Bradley missed 117 games in the last two years and was generally mediocre when he did play. You decide.

Question for Bauxites: Is Bradley worth a roster spot? Is Elijah Dukes? I've said this before, and so have others, but if you're going to have as many issues as Bradley -- in addition to his propensity to get hurt -- you'd better be Barry Bonds. And Bradley's not Barry Bonds.

Other opinions?

The phonetically similar first-rounders Ahrens and Arencibia had similar debuts, and Ricky Romero had a (reasonably successful) rehab start in Dunedin last night. The farm affiliates went 2-5.