battlekow

Rex Brothers' $51K-over-slot bonus from the Rockies is being approved, so I would think D'Vontrey Richardson's certainly will be soon, if hasn't been already.

And Sam Narron for Nashville.

Taylor Green went 2-4 with a double in his return from the DL. Blake Billings did not have a good night.

Oooh, there's the Rolando Pascual we know and love: seven walks in 1.2 IP. Blake Billings is pitching for Arizona.

Even if Escobar pans out perfectly, I doubt he'll be a very good leadoff option. He's just not going to walk enough, at least at first.

Chris Cody's actually "started" the suspended Nashville game. Good work so far: two strikeouts and just a walk allowed in 2.1 IP.

John Sickels saw the Wisconsin/Burlington game yesterday and thought Brett Lawrie's bat looked "much quicker" than #3-overall pick Eric Hosmer's.

Baseball America has a subscriber-only piece on Eric Arnett and how basketball helped his baseball game:

I'm a little surprised that Walla is playing CF over McKelvie.

...against Steve Garrison.

On cue, Aumont enters the game in relief.

Lawrie's walked in five straight plate appearances now.

It's not just Morrow. They also shifted Phillippe Aumont to relief, for seemingly no reason in particular. Anyway, Morrow is actually starting now for the Mariners.

Interesting; I didn't know Pena was being converted into a starter. Figures, though, that the Mariners would move their real pitching prospects to the bullpen and then Pena out of it.

Father-son Fourth Buster Olney The little big man of the house is 5 years old now, and he loves baseball -- all parts of it. He loves the hitting and the pitching, naturally, but he also likes how the scoreboard changes, likes how the momentum of each at-bat changes from pitch to pitch, likes the diving and the jumping and the running and the throwing on defense. But he'd never been to an actual game in person until Saturday, when he and I got tickets to see the Nashville Sounds play host to the perfectly named Albuquerque Isotopes, at Greer Stadium in the Music City, where the scoreboard is shaped like a guitar. He loved the kid stuff at the park, although none of his five fastballs registered on the radar gun (thankfully, a 33 mph reading from the adolescent who threw before him remained on the board, anchoring Jake's hopes that he actually does throw a decent heater that might match that of his favorite pitcher, Tim Lincecum). He bounced on one of those bouncy things for a while, but I talked him out of the trampoline-bungee cord thing. ("We gotta get ready for the game," I said, as if we really had anything to do other than find our seats). And about 10 minutes before the game was scheduled to begin, some groundskeepers lined up next to a tarp, and with other members of the front-office staff (that's how they address these manpower issues in the minors), they covered the infield -- just before it started to pour, for over an hour. "It's not raining that hard," Jake insisted, in the moments when the rain making circles on the tarp seemed to lighten. "They can still play." He was ready to go. We had a scorecard and a pen, and we had talked about writing down the lineups, and to keep him hopeful and patient, I told him that the shortstop for the Nashville Sounds -- the Triple-A affiliate of the Milwaukee Brewers -- was a really, really good young player named Alcides Escobar. "How many home runs does he have?" Jake asked, cutting to the chase. "Two or three," I said. "That's not very good," he said. "He's hitting over .300," I replied, "and he steals a lot of bases. And he's really, really good at catching the ball. That's what everyone says." I kept pumping up Escobar over the course of an hour of rain. The groundskeepers began pulling the tarp into right field, and the crowd roared and Jake clapped, his cheeks flared out by a huge grin. The mascot, Ozzie the Lion, came out, and when he held up a sign that said, "SCREAM," Jake screamed. He watched the pitchers start to warm up in the bullpens and tracked the movements of the umpires as they came out of their room beyond the center-field fence. No. 15 stood inside the home dugout. "That's Alcides Escobar," I said, and Jake locked in on him. "Dad, he steals a lot of bases," he said authoritatively. Tony Abreu led off for the Isotopes, and after taking a couple of fastballs, he chopped a ground ball past the mound and toward center field -- a clear hit, it appeared. Until Escobar dove to his left, gloved the ball, popped to his feet and gunned down Abreu by a half-step. Jake looked at me and grinned. "Escobar," he said, again, sounding out each syllable carefully. That's all he had to say. Chin-lung Hu followed Abreu in the lineup, and he topped a grounder past the mound -- with more speed and a higher bounce than Abreu -- and Escobar ranged to his left and reached down and lunged, while staying on his feet. And he got this grounder, too. His angle to throw to first was awful, and so he pirouetted 270 degrees, the way Cal Ripken used to do, and rifled a throw to first. Hu barely beat the throw, according to the umpire, who drew some ire from the little big man. "He was out!" Jake snapped. No, he was safe. But on successive plays Escobar had given a 5-year-old and many others a couple of plays to remember him by -- something that we could talk about on the drive back to the hotel, after the lightning and thunder and downpour stopped the game an hour later, and something we'll probably remember for years to come, when Escobar is making those kinds of plays in the majors. The baseball gods had bestowed good things on him, in his first time to the ballpark.

Mitch Miller called up to Brevard County?

Ah, that thread brings back such memories.

Haudricourt: The Brewers continue to negotiate with their two supplemental first-round picks from the June draft, Tennessee outfielder Kentrail Davis and Kennesaw State right-hander Kyle Heckathorn. The Brewers figured Davis and Heckathorn would take longer to sign than first-rounder Eric Arnett, a right-hander from Indiana University who was anxious to get going. Davis was a sophomore-eligible player and is represented by agent Scott Boras, renown for lengthy, tough negotiations with draft picks. "We have a good relationship with the Boras Corp.," said Brewers scouting director Bruce Seid. "We both know where we're at. We're still talking. We're not that far off. "With Heckathorn, we're doing what we can. We're still in talks. We've already signed a lot of guys. We're focusing on the four guys left in the top 10." That would include fourth-rounder Brooks Hall, a right-hander from Hanna High School in Anderson, S.C., and fifth-rounder D'Vontrey Richardson, an outfielder from Florida State. Seid has been very pleased with the play of third-rounder Josh Prince, a shortstop out of Tulane. Entering the weekend, Prince was batting .300 with 14 stolen bases in 10 games. "He's been ripping up the base paths," said Seid. "And he's a good defensive player."

Haudricourt on Jason Bourgeois and Adam Heether: As backup centerfielder Jody Gerut continues to struggle with the Brewers, club officials are paying close attention to Nashville's Jason Bourgeois. After Tony Gwynn Jr. was traded for Gerut and Chris Duffy left the club for personal reasons, Bourgeois became the everyday centerfielder for the Sounds. The speedy Bourgeois, 27, has taken advantage of the playing time. Entering the weekend, he was batting .313 with a .355 on-base percentage and 19 stolen bases, providing a nice 1-2 punch atop the lineup with shortstop Alcides Escobar (.297, 27 steals). "He has been an offensive force, a sparkplug," assistant general manager Gord Ash said of Bourgeois. "He has been a consistent hitter and he uses his speed to his advantage." Another player making an unexpected push is infielder Adam Heether, who has bounced around the organization since being selected in the 11th round of the 2003 draft. Heether entered the weekend batting .326 in 51 games with 13 doubles, eight homers and 25 RBI, with a .433 on-base percentage. A third baseman by trade, Heether, 27, has made himself more valuable by showing he also can play shortstop and second base. In that regard, Ash said some have compared Heether to Casey McGehee, who emerged from the Brewers' bench this season to be a regular contributor. "He's hitting for average; he's hitting for power," said Ash. "He has become very versatile. He's on our radar now, too."

Wow, R.J. Seidel gave up 13 hits in 3.1 innings. I'm not even mad--that's amazing.

Salome is back in the lineup after missing a couple games.

Arnett is indeed pitching tonight.

Chad Stang's bonus was $125K.

Brewster's Cody nearing the major leagues Dan Marra It was one game, three years ago, that Chris Cody will never forget. The little-known Manhattan College Jaspers were taking on the mighty Nebraska Cornhuskers in an NCAA tournament game in Lincoln, Neb., with Cody pitching against the very prominent Joba Chamberlain. Cody pitched what he regards as the highlight of his career, allowing one run over nine innings, striking out seven and walking one in Manhattan's 4-1 win. Now a new highlight could be coming for Cody. The 6-foot-1 left-hander, who starred at Brewster High before going to Manhattan, is one step away from the major leagues after recently being promoted to the Milwaukee Brewers' Triple-A team in Nashville, Tenn. Cody has to concentrate even harder when he's on the mound to keep the unavoidable thought of getting the call out of his mind. "I don't want to think about it," Cody said. "That would only screw me up. It's hard not to think about it. Who doesn't dream about putting on that big-league uniform? And I'm so close, but you have to keep in mind a lot of people make it this far and don't get there." Cody's journey began in Brewster, and continued at Manhattan, but it truly gained momentum when he beat Chamberlain in 2006. "We were going against the No. 6-ranked team in the country with a star pitcher who draws 10,000 people a game," Cody said. "Everyone knows the Cornhuskers, but outside of Riverdale no one really knows of the Jaspers. I didn't know if we really thought we had a chance that game or we didn't want to embarrass ourselves. We went in blind." Until that day, Cody didn't know if his career would continue past college. The previous season, as a junior, Cody had hopes of being selected in baseball's player draft. It didn't happen. So at the end of his senior year he didn't know what to expect. A few days later, Cody got the call that he and his 85-mph fastball would be playing summer ball in the Detroit Tigers' farm system. He was then traded to the Brewers, and quickly moved up to the Nashville Sounds after starting the season pitching for the Huntsville Stars. http://cmsimg.thejournalnews.com/apps/pbcsi.dll/bilde?Site=BH&Date=20090704&Category=SPORTS01&ArtNo=907040347&Ref=AR&Profile=1108&MaxW=550&MaxH=650&title=0

No, Pena probably won't be in Helena until 2011 at the earliest. Most July 2 prospects sign contracts for the next year (notable exception this year: Gary Sanchez with the Yankees), a precedent I assume Pena followed, so we won't see him play until 2010. The best international prospects usually draw AZL/GCL assignments in their first year, while the rest head to the DSL; the exception, before this year, was of course Brewers signees, since the Brewers didn't have a DSL team, and so guys like Hitaniel Arias and Jose Garcia were sent to the AZL to begin their careers. With Arias getting a surprising assignment to Helena to begin this year, I guess that's the same path to hope Pena follows, but don't be disappointed if he doesn't make it to Helena until mid-2011 or 2012. If it means anything, though it probably doesn't since Pena is a better prospect than either Arias or Garcia, Pena's birthday is 3/3, very close to Garcia's 3/5, while Arias was an earlier birthday for his signing period, 9/20.