In a column at Baseball Prospectus yesterday, Joe Sheehan was highly critical of Jays’ General Manager J.P. Ricciardi.

I am not here to “take sides” on this, save for one of Sheehan’s statements that I will present research on below.

Jesse Litsch gains revenge on the team that gave him a rude welcome back to AA ball from Toronto two weeks ago.  Meantime, a suspended game that was well in hand from last month helped the affiliates come away with a split of their 4 games.

Well, when you're behind Tampa Bay... no manager can survive. Ask Carlos Tosca.

Intrepid reporter Rob couldn't resist a Kitchener Panthers game featuring a Ferguson Jenkins personal appearance. These days "Fergie" and "64" in the same sentence would usually suggest a bad Black-Eyed Peas cover of a Beatles' tune, but not this time. Take it away, Rob.


So how many people spent their Sunday night
a) waiting an hour for the home team's #5 hitter to bat for the first time;
b) watching 23 runs cross the plate; and
c) meeting a Hall of Famer?

No changes in the division leads this week as the front runners all hang tough. In Alomar the Bashers had a chance to re-take the top spot as they only had to face my pitiful injured gang of no-hopers, but were only to pick up a game on the Magic 9 who edged Slippery Pete. Meanwhile in the Carter division the London Tigers are looking over their shoulders at the hard charging Trembling Wilburys.

It's the strangest thing. Some of us have suspected, over the years, that Josh Towers would be much better off if he left the AL East behind and took his act to the National League.

Syracuse scored five runs in the first inning, New Hampshire scored four in the first and both teams won.  Lansing did not score in the first and lost.  Ryan Klosterman hit a grand slam, Robinzon Diaz had four hits, Josh Banks gave up back to back jacks but otherwise pitched well.

John Thomson gets blown out, the Fisher Cats win, and Lansing splits.  In the second game of their doubleheader Lansing avoided a no hitter when Chris Emanuele singled with one out in the seventh.  David Purcey has a sore elbow and will miss another start.

It's Father's Day in the U.S. and Canada, and to reiterate a story I have related a number of times here on Da Box, it was my own father who more or less created this "Hall of Names" idea back in the 1970s when we dreamed up the All-Food team.

As such, he has himself been the inspiration for a number of teams of the more than 250 that now exist in Baseball's Hall of Names, including one for his own birthday and one we collaborated on called, unfortunately, The Bad Names Bears. We've also done an All-Fathers & Sons Hall of Names entry a while back, featuring Griffeys, Bondses, Alous and the like; but for today, it's simply Happy Father's Day as we break a long-standing Hall of Names rule and meet ...

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.