Catching Up

First things first: Did anyone hear about Mark McGwire? He used steroids or something? Who knew? All along, the talking heads have wanted this guy to apologize. Now that he has apologized he is just getting a new round of scorn. On XM175 this afternoon, Casey Stern didn't think McGwire should be allowed to coach for the Cardinals. Apparently the supposed crimes he committed against baseball should prevent him from being anywhere near the game. Seriously? He did what many others did and it wasn't really discouraged by the game. Did he gain personally? Sure. His he probably given all of that gain back and then some for all of this "outrage"? You bet. My favorite writer Joe Posnanski sums up my feelings best here. After you read that, go buy his books. "The Soul of Baseball" chronicles a year plus he spent on the road with Buck O'Neil and "The Machine" about the 1975 Cincinnati Reds. The O'Neil book may be the greatest book I've ever read.

I am starting a top 50 of Houston Astros prospects here. Or you can check it out at Crawfish Boxes.... The Astros version of Twinkie Town here. The locals there passed on some information about the Astros High A stadium and that entire league. It is such a bandbox, I had to normalize the OPS for that league for future lists. I am ranking their prospects the same way I ranked the Twins.  I spoke about my top ten Twins prospects on Sethspeaks podcast here after Kevin Goldstein talked about his own top 11. John Sickels released his Top 20 Astros list here. The system is not very good, the Twins system has many more high end prospects.

Some other Twins prospect lists:
Baseball America's Top Ten. And Andrew Kneeland's response here.

Josh Johnson is working from 50 down to 1 and is at #38 currently.

Andrew Kneeland just finished his Top 50.

I stole from Seth Speaks latest post a list by Matt from Minor League Baseball Prospects. He posted a Top 40.

There are many more out there to choose from. You can do a google search, look at sites the above posters link to, or the guys I have linked on the left side of my blog.


This blog has been around 5 months now and I'm still getting my feet wet. If this is your first time here, Thank You!! The writing has been inconsistent but, here are a few highlights you might have missed:

The best of Punto. A topic driven post (I didn't have any ideas). I asked my fiance' what she wanted me to write about, she wanted Punto.

My baseball Superstitions.

My best and worst Twins memories.

That's it for now. I will finish up my next Astros prospect list shortly. I will leave you with a signature on a banner at my place of employment.

This is on a 2005 National League Champions banner in my breakroom. Pretty cool!