Greetings from Spearfish, South Dakota - I drove up from Utah yesterday and caught a few innings of the Idaho Falls Chukars / Casper Ghosts game last night in Wyoming (yes, really) before heading north. Sorry I missed the Bucs game last night - it sounded like a good one. A few notes from around the internet today:
-P- The Post-Gazette has a short piece on what Brandon Moss is doing differently. The assumption here is that what Moss has done this year at Class AAA is different from what he's done in the majors. I'm not sure this is the case. Plugging Moss' AAA stats this year into MinorLeagueSplits.com's MLE calculator, I get that his line in Pittsburgh this year would have been .223/.278/.380. That line is roughly equivalent to the 2009 major league one that got him demoted in the first place. Now, it's possible that Moss' hitting coach knows something I don't know, and it's also possible Moss goes nuts for the rest of the season. I hope he does. But when the Post-Gazette asks "What happpened?", the answer seems to me to be pretty simple - Moss played the year in an easier league. That's pretty much it. I don't care if he led the International League in RBIs; I don't see much progress here.
-P- The Marauders won their first playoff game.
-P- Bucs 24th-round pick Justin Howard talks about his knee troubles. The article describes 2010 as a "throwaway season" for him, so it'll be interesting to see what he does next year, probably in West Virginia.
-P- Tim Williams scouts the West Virginia Power and argues that Evan Chambers is the best player on the team, noting that he does everything right except hit for average. True, but hitting for average is the skill I'd most like a hitting prospect to have. Drawing walks and hitting for power can show up later. Chambers is a really interesting player, but I'm not sure how he's going to succeed at the higher levels without making some serious changes.