Lee Sinins's daily reports are a great place to get your baseball news in digest form. There were several juicy rumours and of course some trades (both high and low impact) on the penultimate day before the "first" trading deadline. Here are the trades in distilled form:

LA gets Brad Penny, Hee Seop Choi and minor league P Bill Murphy
FLA gets Guillermo Mota, Paul Lo Duca and Juan Encarnacion

METS get Kris Benson, minor league 2B Jeff Keppinger
PIT gets Ty Wigginton, minor league P Matt Peterson, INF Jose Bautista
KCR gets mior league C Justin Huber

TBD gets minor league Ps Scott Kazmir and Jose Diaz
METS get Victor Zambrano and minor league P Bartolome Fortunato

SFG gets Ricky Ledee, minor league P Alfredo Simon
PHI gets Felix Rodriguez

PHI gets Todd Jones, minor league OF Brad Correll
CIN gets minor league P Josh Hancock and minor league SS Anderson Machado

A losing night overall down on the farm. Adam Peterson blew up good, again.

Our only goal will be the western shore.
So now you’d better stop and rebuild all your ruins,
For peace and trust can win the day

The Jays are back at square one. After being swept in Toronto, the D-Rays swept the hapless Royals, gaining 2 games in the standingsto lead the fifth place Blue Jays by 4 games.

Tampa Bay outscored Kansas City 18 to 3 over the three games. Tall lefthanded Mark Hendrickson tossed a 4-hit shutout, allowed but one unearned run. Rob Bell and 3 relievers combined on a 4-hit shutout to complete the sweep.

Josh Towers and John Halama are the scheduled starters.

Apologies once again for a rather spartan Advance Scout. I'm pulling a Joe Namath, though, and guaranteeing against the odds that the Cleveland Scout next week will be a real bang-up report.

In the meantime, enjoy the series! The Devil Rays bounced back from their lost weekend in Toronto by returning home and sweeping the hapless crew from Kansas City. The Jays are eager to smack 'em down again. Should be a good one.

A four day homestand, featuring two day games, and one of them is on a holiday!

Thanks to our own Coach and Will "The Thrill" Hill of the Jays, I had a photographic press pass to last Friday's game against the Tampa Bay Devil Rays.

In a rather dismal season for the Blue Jays, many of us have taken a keener interest in the minor leagues. As my own knowledge of Blue Jays prospects has increased, so has my interest in the context of the stats being compiled by The Future.

Is there any better kind of science?

Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, and sometimes it rains. Three wins, three losses, and two rainouts for the minor league affiliates last night.

Where we fight our parents out in the streets
To find who's right and who's wrong

A new Hall of Names today - this time, we're going with all-animal names. I won't restrict anyone in coming up with Hall of Names teams with an animal theme, but I will start us off with an all-dog-nickname team...

After only four big-league games, it’s safe to say that David Bush is more than a one-hit wonder. The rookie righthander’s 1-1 record could easily be 4-0 with a little more support from his teammates. In two of his starts, the Jays’ bats have fallen completely silent, and another time, the bullpen couldn’t hold a two run lead. One of those no-decisions was a masterpiece — eight innings of one-hit shutout. Bush took a no-hitter into the eighth before Damian Miller of the A’s singled to break it up.

Toronto’s second-round pick in the 2002 amateur draft had a tremendous college career at Wake Forest. As a junior, Bush was all-conference and MVP of the ACC Tournament, leading the Demon Deacons to the championship. He was even better as a senior, and since turning pro, has impressed everyone in the Toronto organization.

Marty Pevey, his manager in Syracuse, told reporters, "I would love to have five David Bushes."

It was a dark and stormy night. Most of the Blue Jays minor league teams had weather issues as they managed a 2-2 split with 3 rainouts and 1 rain shortened game.

Big news yesterday from New Hampshire as Finn McCool reported that Jamie Vermilyea is headed back to the bullpen with Brandon League replacing him in the rotation. In five AA starts for the Fisher Cats Jamie has a 3.14 ERA, and a perfect game, so why would the Jays move him back to the pen? I was in Binghamton to see New Hampshire last week and had the opportunity to ask Jamie about this and some other questions that were on my mind.