blb@beerleaguebaseball.com

Newcastle’s Buster Posey demolishes Edmonton Trappers pitching in game 1 of the 3 game series played tonight, as he goes 5 for 5 with a 2 singles, a double, a triple and a homer in the 15-3 Newcastle win. Newcastle took 2 of 3 from Edmonton to run their record to 14-16, while Edmonton’s dropped to 20-10. Posey is hitting .299/.346/.453 on the season with 4 home runs.

The Payette Outlaw IPAs got dealt a tough blow in game 1 of their series vs rival Newcastle today, as they lost slugging DH Bryce Harper for the season.

Harper (pictured above in good spirits) was drilled by a fastball by Aaron Harang in the 2nd inning. The umpires felt the HBP was intentional and ejected Harang, who learned after the game that he’d been suspended an additional 7 games.

Harper finishes the year having played in only 25 games, hitting just .216/.269/.309 with 2 home runs.

Wow:

I’m a sucker for awesome defensive plays, so below are some of the top plays from the first week; which one do you think was the best?

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Nelson Cruz of Texas has been doing a lot of this:

this year as he leads the league with an insane .974 slugging percentage!

Other notes:

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Noah Syndergaard goes first overall in the 2015 prospect draft, as he’ll join the Dakota Nightstalkers.  Syndergaard joins the following players as #1 overall BLB prospect picks:

First overall prospect picks

1. 2008 – Kosuke Fukudome
2. 2009 – Dexter Fowler
3. 2010 – Stephen Strasburg
4. 2011 – Bryce Harper
5. 2012 – Matt Moore
6. 2013 – Jurickson Profar
7. 2014 – Masahiro Tanaka
8. 2015 – Noah Syndergaard

Guys,

Since the 2015 minors draft is completed, you can now trade 2016 minors draft picks. As such, I have determined the draft order of the paired picks (as always, by using the random.org website), and have created a 2016 draft results page (linked below) to start tracking the picks:

https://beerleaguebaseball.com/draft-central/draft-results-2016/

Mike

Have at it!

Guys,

As you know, each year I do an auction report card and this year is no exception (as I write this I’m about halfway through the grading). Last year as part of that I introduced the team depth charts, where I estimate each team’s Wins Above Replacement (or WAR) using the methodology I developed a few years back. The goal was to better refine the report card’s predicted standings, and as you’ll see in this year’s report card the WAR system did quite well last year in predicting things. Below is an example of what the depth charts look like; this is my team from last year (that rotation… oh the humanity!):

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