Month: May 2008

PADRES REUNITE SAN DIEGO GONZALEZ BROTHERS

It happened right here in Chicago at Wrigley Field, the San Diego Padres called up 29 year old Edgar Gonzalez. This all happened over the Mother’s Day weekend, Adrian Gonzalez’ older brother was called up to join the Padres. Edgar was hitting .293 with 4 homers in 82 at bats this year in Triple-A when the call came. Both brothers are extremely happy as you can tell in this story you can read here.

Both brothers played at Eastlake High School in Chula Vista, CA and both are now with their hometown San Diego Padres, but in between their careers were TOTALLY different! Both were drafted in the 2000 Amateur Draft, Adrian by the Florida Marlins with the first pick in the draft, while older brother Edgar was taken by the Tampa Bay Devil Rays in the 30th round (886th player chosen).

How did these guys drafted by Sunshine State teams make it across the country to San Diego?

Adrian was traded in 2003 by the Fish to the Texas Rangers in exchange for reliever Uegeth Urbina. As luck would have it Texas had a pretty good firstbaseman at the time, in Mark Teixeira. So the Rangers sent him packing along with pitcher Chris Young and outfielder Termel Sledge in exchange for pitcher Adam Eaton and reliever Akinori Otsuka in 2006. It didn’t take the Rangers long to see the error of their ways as Young moved into San Diego’s rotation and Adrian developed into a superstar, while both Eaton & Otsuka developed arm problems. In three years with the Padres Gonzalez has posted the following numbers; 2006: 38 2B’s, 24 HR’s, 82 RBI’s, .304, 2007: 46 2B’s, 30 HR’s, 100 RBI’s, .282, and only 52 games played thus far in 2008: 13 2B’s, 14 HR’s, 43 RBI’s, .282.

The Texas Rangers selected brother Edgar from the Devil Rays in 2003 in the Rule V Minor League Draft. Then he was again selected in the Rule V Minor League Draft in 2004 only this time by the Montreal Expos. Then in November, 2007 he signed a Minor League contract with the San Diego Padres. Edgar is not the hitter, nor the prospect, that his younger brother Adrian is. Still he was one of the last cuts in spring training. The elder Gonzalez has nearly a .300 batting average in his nine years in the minors. Edgar, here’s to a long stay in the big leagues!

Brothers, reunited, playing in the majors for their hometown team, what every boy dreams about!

ROOKIE WATCH: CARLOS GONZALEZ – OF – OAKLAND A’S

MONEY BALL keeps on rolling!!! Billy Beane has brought up one of the youngsters he acquired this past season, retooling his ballclub. The Oakland A’s don’t have alot of money to keep their established stars. So instead, they need to rely on a good farm system and the ability to bring in blue chippers from other organizations when the talent on the A’s get too overpriced for their budget.

Some of the talent they’ve jetisoned recently has been Mark Mulder, Barry Zito, Dan Haren, & Nick Swisher. Now with alot of teams, getting rid of that much talent would mean disaster. But that’s not the case with the A’s. Oakland is currently in 2nd place in the AL West with a record of 29-26. While nobody expects this team to be there at the end, it’s something they’re only 2 1/2 games behind the LA Angels of Anaheim.

The pitching staff is pretty much made over, with a rotation of Rich Harden (if his arm stays on), Justin Duchscherer (from bullpen to disabled list to the rotation), Greg Smith (a lefty prospect acquired from the D*Backs), Joe Blanton (will get his 30+ starts in), and Chad Gaudin (can work the rotation or the pen). If anybody falters, there are a couple of highly touted hurlers waiting in the wings, Gio Gonzalez (a nice lefty) & Fautino De Los Santos (a fireballing righty), both picked up from the White Sox. Huston Street is still around to close out the games, one of the best, and still young enough to stay in Oakland, for now.

The infield is made up of some veterans, the oft-injured Bobby Crosby & Eric Chavez at SS & 3B respectively, with Mark Ellis playing 2B. 1B Daric Barton & C Kurt Suzuki are two youngsters, who’ve been holding their own, but look to be good ones. Beane brought in DH Mike Sweeney from KC and brought back Frank Thomas, after Toronto cut him loose, both at bargain basement prices.

Speaking of bargains, Emil Brown has 37 RBIs for the A’s in 53 games this year. A young talented outfielder from Iowa, acquired from Chicago, is Ryan Sweeney. Then there’s Travis Buck, who batted in the .280s as a rookie, last year. A couple of other castoffs on the team are Jack Cust (who can hit the ball as far as anybody) and Rajai Davis.

After all this talk about the A’s, it’s time to talk about the man of the hour, Carlos Gonzalez. Carlos was one of the best prospects with Arizona. Gonzalez is a lefthanded hitting outfielder, with a line drive stroke. The Venezuelan youngster was hitting .293 at Sacramento when he was called up to the big club. In his first game he was two for three, with two doubles, and an RBI. This kid is a special player, he belongs. Believe it or not, the pipeline’s not dry yet as there are still a couple of players down there, power hitting firstbaseman Chris Carter (whom the Sox traded to the Diamondbacks for Carlos Quentin) & always hustling switch-hitting outfielder Aaron Cunningham.

Good Luck to the Voles on their first match of their season

The Voles playing at the Stephen A Douglas Vintage Base Ball Tournament last year

I just wanted to say “good luck” to the Vermilion Voles, our local vintage base ball team as they head down to St Louis for their first three matches of the season.

Captain Jim “Weed Eater” Knoblauch and his Voles will be facing the St Louis Perfectos on Saturday and on Sunday, will face both the New Baden Juniors and the St Louis Unions.

Good Luck and have fun!

The Vermilion Voles web page

Some photos of the Voles

Summer Plans for the Illini

Now that the Illinois baseball season is over, many of the players will be going on vacation, right?  Wrong.  Most of the returning players are off to go play in collegiate summer leagues. 

Twenty-four Illini are dispersing throughout the country and playing in a number of collegiate summer leagues out there.  Some of the Illini league favorites are among them.  The Northwoods League up north will be taking on nine of our Illini.  The Coastal Plain League in the southeast will have five. 

Some summer leagues are close to home, too.  This includes the Central Illinois Collegiate League and the Chicago Suburban Baseball League.

The Illini baseball page has a handy web page with a list of leagues and teams and where our players are headed this summer. 

Also, check out Summer Ball which is a blog dedicated to college summer leagues. 

Good Luck Illini!!

THINGS THAT MAKE YOU GO HUMMMBERTO

On May 28, 2008, Humberto Cota was suspended 50 games for failing a drug test. Humberto Cota!!! For crying out loud, MLB should be screaming from the rooftops that this is what happens when you take roids, not suspending this bum for taking them. Can you imagine how bad Cota would be without taking preformance enhancing drugs?

Cota has a .233 batting average with twelve home runs in 519 at bats, over seven years. Oh yeah, MLB, Cota is the problem! Catching him, no pun intended, will clean up the sport. Hate to see Humberto get away with this. Need to make an example of him! Ozzie Guillen was right when he asked, how come the only players suspended for roids were marginally talented hispanic ballplayers?

Note: Roid Poster Boy, Barry Bonds, hit exactly 750 more career home runs than Humberto Cota. But baseball is showing it’s serious about PED’s, you’re doing a helluva job, MLB!

Michigan hosting an NCAA Regional

Michigan has landed a #2 seed in the NCAA Regionals and will be hosting Arizona, Kentucky, and Eastern Michigan this weekend. 

You can find schedules, box scores and other info at the University of Michigan’s official Ann Arbor Regional site. 

If you’re interested, I will be doing daily write-ups and analysis for The College Baseball Blog during the Ann Arbor Regional.  I have a preview of the Ann Arbor Regional up now.

Video APBA: Look at me, I can lose long distance too

The APBA baseball league I’m in, the Illowa APBA League, is a face-to-face league. Considering that we play a 162-game schedule and that we have managers in Iowa, Illinois and Pennsylvania, we do pretty well to get all our games played.

Our schedules do play tricks on us though. When Teddy Ballgame couldn’t make it to the last IAL get-together in May, those of us scheduled to face his Chicago Champions were left to our devices to find ways to get our games played against him.

Teddy had a intriguing idea, though. Why not play using our video webcams?

Now, I’ve played APBA over the phone. And I even remember the old days when we used to send each other instructions over snail mail and play our home games solitaire. But I have to admit playing via video over Skype interested me so I thought I’d give it a try.

So Tuesday night, I fired up my Logitech webcam, connected to Skype and dialed up Teddy who was already online. Once we got the connection established over Skype, it worked pretty well. There were times that the video was a bit jolting but audio was clear as a bell.

tedd1

This new format however, didn’t help my hapless Thunderchickens. We lost all six games against Teddy and his Chicago Champions. Just look at Teddy and the superior look on his face in the screencap above. I’ll tell you if we we’re playing face-to-face…

The first night I had the cam attached to the monitor. The second night, I had it attached to the stand that came with the cam. That was in hopes I had a awesome dice roll and I could easily give him a good “in your face” view of it. Alas, we didn’t have too many good rolls I could do that with since I think we led for a total of about 2 innings for the whole six game series.

Playing APBA via webcam doesn’t replace the real thing but in a pinch, it was best alternative I’ve come across. We were able to banter back and forth and talk about the latest in baseball news, my trip to the Big Ten Tourney. He could even say hi to the wife and kids.

Great idea, Teddy. But we hope you can make the IAL weekend next time.

A BASEBALL POEM

Analysis of Baseball
by May Swenson

It’s about
the ball,
the bat,
and the mitt.
Ball hits
bat, or it
hits mitt.
Bat doesn’t
hit ball, bat
meets it.
Ball bounces
off bat, flies
air, or thuds
ground (dud)
or it
fits mitt.

Bat waits
for ball
to mate.
Ball hates
to take bat’s
bait. Ball
flirts, bat’s
late, don’t
keep the date.
Ball goes in
(thwack) to mitt,
and goes out
(thwack) back
to mitt.

Ball fits
mitt, but
not all
the time.
Sometimes
ball gets hit
(pow) when bat
meets it,
and sails
to a place
where mitt
has to quit
in disgrace.
That’s about
the bases
loaded,
about 40,000
fans exploded.

It’s about
the ball,
the bat,
the mitt,
the bases
and the fans.
It’s done
on a diamond,
and for fun.
It’s about
home, and it’s
about run.

CHICAGO PUBLIC LEAGUE CHAMP – YOUNG

This is a game I’d had every intention on attending. I’ve been asking everybody at US Cellular Field, “When’s the Public League Championship game going to be?” Nobody could tell me, I guess I should have asked Caramel Corn Mike, I’m sure he was out there behind home plate selling his caramel corn, only feet from where I’d have been standing, had I only known.

The game was May 27th at US Cellular Field, the same day as the NCAA Division III Championship was taking place in Appleton, WI. But I was in Chicago, having returned from Waupaca, WI the day before. I’ve always had strong ties to the Chicago Public League, having represented Spalding High School, back in the day, on the chess team.

This contest featured Whitney Young trying to repeat as champs versus Lake View. My girlfriend when I was in 7th grade lived next door to Lake View at Irving Park & Ashland, on the northside. Young is a magnet school on the southside, you have to be really smart to go there.

Lake View scored in the first inning when Deion Geiger singled home Carlos Ruiz with the first run of the ballgame. The lead held up until the top of the 5th when Young’s Jack Cinoman reached on an error. Valmer Jordan laid down a bunt, the pitcher field it, but his throw caromed into centerfield, sending the runners to 2nd & 3rd. A fake squeeze play was called, the pitcher balked in a run, moments later a wild pitch plated another.

Joe Frahm kept the Lake View hitters off balance all day with a steady diet of offspeed stuff was the winner for Young over tough luck loser, Geiger. Final score Whitney Young 2, Lake View 1.