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The Herd:

There's a reason the Chicago White Sox took Lance Broadway with the 15th overall pick in the star-studded 2005 draft. A reason why they gave out a $1.6 million bonus to a player picked ahead of names such as Jacoby Ellsbury, Matt Garza and Colby Rasmus and just the fourth pitcher taken overall.

Broadway combined to go 19-16 in Triple-A for Charlotte the last two years and his numbers were largely mediocre, so he was traded to the New York Mets for catcher Ramon Castro on May 31. Since then, he has been mostly brutal in Buffalo with a 7.24 earned-run average overall — and an ugly 10.93 mark at home.

Wednesday in Coca-Cola Field, you could see what the fuss was about. Broadway came within three outs of the Bisons' second shutout in four days and finished with a seven-hitter in the Herd's 4-1 win over Scranton/Wilkes-Barre. Box score

http://www.buffalonews.com/sports/bisons/story/727954.html


Lucy:


THE WEEK THAT WAS: Between the rain and the opponents, it was a rough week for the Mets with just one win in six games with four rainouts. St. Lucie is in last place in the South, three games back of Fort Myers.

WHO'S HOT, WHO'S NOT: 3B Zach Lutz is torching league pitching. The Reading, Pa., native has 15 hits, six RBIs and two homers in his last 33 at-bats for a .455 average. ... DH Jake Eigsti has just three hits in his last 26 trips to the plate for a .115 clip.

PLAYER TO WATCH: RHP Jose De La Torre has been effective out of the Mets bullpen of late. Over three appearances totaling six innings, the Puerto Rico native has allowed only one earned run.

PERFORMANCE OF THE WEEK: Dunedin had a hard time solving RHP Scott Shaw in a 5-2 road win for the Mets. The University of Illinois product struck out seven in 5 2/3 innings, allowing two runs on six hits for his third win.

http://web.minorleaguebaseball.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20090706&content_id=5729962&vkey=news_l123&fext=.jsp&sid=l123


Clones:


WEEK IN REVIEW: The Cyclones extended their winning streak to nine by winning all seven games last week. The team remains undefeated (8-0) at home and continues to own the best record in the league (15-2).

WHO'S HOT: RF Luis Rivera paces the circuit in batting average (.417), on-base percentage (.509) and slugging percentage (.667), while his 15 RBIs are tied for second. ... 2B Matt Bouchard's 16 runs scored lead the league. Bouchard ranks second in average (.408) and fourth in slugging percentage (.592). ... LHP James Fuller threw 13 shutout innings last week to extend his streak to 19. He has a 3-0 record in three starts and is the only starting pitcher in the league with a perfect 0.00 ERA.

BEST OF THE BEST: Brooklyn pitchers have a league-best 1.93 ERA. They have also issued the fewest walks (31). ... The Cyclones have scored more runs (100) than any other team in the league. ... Brooklyn's .267 batting average ranks second in the circuit.

http://web.minorleaguebaseball.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20090707&content_id=5745046&vkey=news_l127&fext=.jsp&sid=l127

Aside from two horrible starts by Angel Cuan, the Brooklyn Cyclones pitching staff has been perfect, as Mark Cohoon, Brandon Moore, Collin McHugh and James Fuller are a combined 12-0.

Giving up five earned runs in his last start on July 6, McHugh ran into his first stumbling block of the season, but was saved by his offense and managed to stay undefeated.

The combination of Cohoon and Moore have given up only 39 hits and a paltry seven walks in 47 innings.

Fuller has also been extremely solid, walking only two hitters in 19 innings and hasn’t given up an earned run yet this season.

While the trademark of the Cyclones over the past eight plus seasons has always been it’s pitching staff, it’s doubtful anyone could have possibly predicted this team would be this good on the mound this season.

If things continue to fall this way, the ‘Clones may be able to bring home their first sole NY-Penn League Championship.

http://www.dembrooklynbums.com/2009/07/08/cyclones-pitching-staff-twirling-through-early-season


K-Port:


season. They did, however, capture two of three games at Burlington. Kingsport holds a 4-10 record, eight games behind first-place Elizabethton in the West Division.

WHO'S HOT: 1B Jeff Flagg has hits in 12 of 13 games this season. That's one reason he's batting .377. His big game was a 4-for-5 performance Saturday night at Burlington.

BUNCHED TOGETHER: RF Darrell Ceciliani, a fourth-round pick last month out of Madras, Ore., went 3-for-4 with a homer and a double in Saturday's victory at Burlington. He also scored four times. It was a rare outburst for Ceciliani, who has only four hits in his other seven outings combined.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK: "We've got guys going out there playing a full nine innings of baseball. We haven't been able to tighten it all up yet." -- Kingsport manager Mike DeFelice to the Kingsport Times-News on the team's woes in the win-loss column.

http://web.minorleaguebaseball.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20090707&content_id=5740838&vkey=news_l120&fext=.jsp&sid=l120



Saber:

Probably the greatest resource for anyone looking to study baseball using physics is Professor Alan Nathan's website. Pay special attention to his course notes on the subject - you get Powerpoint slides, Excel spreadsheets and more.The graph in the article of the flight path was generated using one of the spreadsheets available at that site.Also invaluable is Robert Adair's book, The Physics of Baseball. As an aside that only a few of you will care about - I do believe I've figured out how to parse the required data about who was playing what position from the Gameday XML data provided. I am not, however, certain of this. As of this writing, the final query to put the data all together has been running for a solid hour and likely will not be done for a while longer. If I am correct and the data checks out I will be more than happy to share it with interested parties. Colin Wyers knows exactly how much of a nerd he is. He is very interested in hearing about any other concerns you may have; you can reach him by e-mail, and he will try his best to respond in a timely fashion. He also blogs at Statistically Speaking.

http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/evaluating-defense-using-hit-f-x