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Thursday, October 13, 2011

Random Notes

The Mexican League has the day off today, so clearly Pill won't be playing.  Maybe tomorrow.

The Dominican League kicks off tomorrow as well, we will be watching out for an appearance by Belt.

The Scorpions play later tonight, we will of course be keeping an eye on that game.  Going against the Salt River Rafters again.

We asked Keith Law if he thought Crawford would be ready to be an everyday big league shortstop in 2012.  He said no, and doesn't think he'll be one in 2013 either.  Prove him wrong Craw.

Law also doesn't think Brown will be ready for the bigs in 2012, noting that Brown finished 2011 in A+. There is precedence of course of players making the jump, so I'm not totally clear on why that is an automatic deal breaker.  But, especially considering the struggles that Belt and Craw had in 2011 and Sabean's comments about rushing young players too much, it's probably safe to say that Brown will not break camp with the big club - no matter how well he does in the AFL and in spring training.  Hopefully Brown will keep forcing the issue though, and we will at least see him as a September call up in 2012.

2 comments:

  1. I'm wondering what the difference is between all these winter leagues and how a player decides which one to play in in the off-season.

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  2. There are several different fall/winter leagues that are affiliated with the MLB - the Arizona Fall League, Mexican League, Dominican League, Venezuelan League and the Puerto Rican League are the main ones.

    They are all stand-alone professional leagues, with the exception of the AFL, which was created by MLB in 1992, mainly so that they could better monitor some of the top prospects.

    As for where the players play, I believe that it is sometimes up to the club and sometimes up to the player. Sometimes a player is "requested" to play winter ball by their club, sometimes they decide to play on their own.

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