battlekow

All I saw was pogo saying he had a great arm. Wvpowerblkwel said he was good afield, but I assumed he meant at RF, Gindl's regular position.http://wvpowerblkwel.u.yuku.com

I just got word from 19th-round RHP Blake Billings that he's signed and in Arizona. That means that, assuming Lawrie is going to sign, which is widely accepted as a foregone conclusion, the Brewers will have signed their first 26 picks. That's excellent.

Lorenzo Cain now has 6 XBH and 3 BB in 28 ABs for Huntsville. Great to see him adjusting so well.

They already have some games on Time Warner Sports, channel 32 in Milwaukee.

Anyone have an opinion of Gindl's defense in center?

Checking in with Eric Decker, Part I http://assets.espn.go.com/profile/i/trans/icon_report_hi.gif July 16, 2008 12:53 PM Posted by ESPN.com's Adam Rittenberg If you're short and slow like me, you're probably deeply envious of guys like Eric Decker. An athletic achievement for us is getting through 18 holes without Advil, or shoveling snow without pulling a muscle. Then there's Decker, a junior wide receiver for Minnesota who last season racked up 909 receiving yards and nine touchdowns as one of the only bright spots on a 1-11 team. After being peppered with requests from Golden Gophers baseball coaches to play for their team, Decker decided, eh, what the heck. He wound up starting 42 games in left field, hitting .329 with 28 RBI. At last month's Major League Baseball draft, the Milwaukee Brewers selected Decker in the 39th round. He had no plans to sign and didn't, wanting to gauge his skills on the gridiron this fall and help Minnesota back to respectability. NFL scouts will be watching. So will the rest of the Big Ten. Obviously jealous of über-athletes like Decker, I wanted to dislike the guy. But after chatting with him this week, I just can't do it. Here's the first part of our discussion. A lot of guys rule out playing two sports before college, and once they get there, it's usually totally out of the question. Did playing baseball go more smoothly than you thought it would, playing in the spring and now getting back into football? Eric Decker: Baseball went real well and I enjoyed it. I knew I had a little catching up to do when I got here in the summer. It took me a few weeks to get back in shape and get my weight back where I wanted it to be. Now things are off and rolling. I feel good where I'm at, and I'm definitely comfortable with the progress I've made the last three months. Can you pull it off again? ED: Definitely. My baseball experience I really enjoyed. It's kind of a different environment, different atmosphere. Going into baseball season, I expected to hopefully help the team out in certain roles. I got the opportunity to get a starting role and hit No. 2 in the batting order. I surprised myself, just how well things went. Can you use your football skills in the outfield? ED: Some of that stuff transitions over. Just baserunning a little bit, hand-eye coordination. But some things, the mentality or the attitude you have between both sports is so different. In baseball, you can't get fired up or get that emotional rush, where in football you let it bust, let it all roll out. In baseball, if you have that built up, that's when you struggle at the plate. It was something that was tough for me to handle in the first three weeks of baseball. Baseball is a lot looser atmosphere, isn't it? ED: It's so laid-back. Those guys definitely helped me get into that baseball mind-set. I was definitely struggling. I couldn't hit the curveball right away, and I was like, 'God, what the hell's going on. I don't know if this is for me.' And they were like, 'Hey, just relax, go up and do what you do.' It definitely helped. How surprised were you when you got drafted? ED: It's real exciting. It's quite an honor, just being my first year and stuff. Being drafted was also something I didn't really look into much because I told people I wasn't going to sign if they drafted me. They're calling you, 'When would you sign? How much you want?' I was like, 'You know what, don't even think about drafting me because I'm not going to sign.' Milwaukee took me and I was really grateful, but at the same time I was like, 'I told you what I was going to do, but thank you, I guess.' Do anticipate having to choose one sport at some point, or is it pretty open-ended in terms of what you do after college? ED: Definitely open-ended. I want another year to see where I'm at with both levels, see where I have more potential in what field. When that time comes, I'll decide. I love both sports and I'm definitely honored to be able to participate in both. When that time comes, I'll hopefully make the right decision. Your football and baseball coaches have compared you to Ed McCaffrey and Kirk Gibson. Which one of those do like better? ED: Growing up, I always was an Ed McCaffrey fan. Being a slot receiver and being fast and tough -- he'd catch the ball over the middle -- he was someone I always idolized. I know I'm not going to run by anybody or run a 4.3, so definitely doing the dirty work inside at the receiver position was something I looked at him for. Kirk Gibson, he's just a tough, nasty dude who was a great ballplayer. I didn't really watch him much, but everything about him definitely is what I'm trying to be. Did you expect to be elected a team captain, or was that a surprise? ED: It was a little surprising. I didn't get the opportunity to go to spring practice because I was playing baseball, but it's definitely an honor and a privilege. It's something I was looking forward to, something I wanted to reach. And we have a pretty young offense where, being a junior, I knew I was a leader. So you weren't even with the team and you get elected. That's got to be a great feeling. ED: It was really cool because coach (Tim) Brewster called me. I think it was toward the end of May, before guys took off to go home for a couple weeks in the summer, and I was still playing baseball at the time. I didn't know what was going on. I thought maybe it was just an end-of-spring-practice thing, this is what the summer's going to look like and stuff, but they elected captains and I was one of them, so that was really surprising. Does that role become even more important after the year you guys had in 2007? ED: Definitely. People look at the leadership of the team and what you can do to overcome what happened last year. I'm real excited and optimistic about this upcoming year because there were a bunch of games where we were a couple plays away from winning. Doing the right things will definitely get us over that hump. Hopefully winning some of those nonconference games will boost our confidence.

Sounds like 29th-round RHP Tommy Collier is not going to be a Brewer: link

This is the US team we're talking about. Lawrie did make the Canadian team.

SaberScouting unveils their top 5 high school prospects for next year.

Complete USA roster

A high school lefty that throws 95 and he was only going to go in the 5th round? His stature knocked him down that far, I imagine?

Joe Hamrahi of Baseball Digest Daily with a comment about and picture of Mat Gamel (h/t Right Field Bleachers) :http://blog.baseballdigestdaily.com/Gamel%20All-Star%20Futures%20Game.jpg

Offense has become a priority behind the plate Four of the first 16 players selected in the draft last month were strong-hitting catchers, underlining a recent trend emphasizing offense at that position. By Lucas Shaw, Special to The Times July 16, 2008 Brett Lawrie, at 6 feet tall, can dunk a basketball. He can also hit a baseball. When Canada's junior national team went on a spring tour of the Dominican Republic, Lawrie hit .486 with eight home runs and 24 runs batted in. The question is whether he can catch. Lawrie, an 18-year-old native of British Columbia, did not begin playing behind the plate until last summer, at the suggestion of Greg Hamilton, his national team coach. That did not deter the Milwaukee Brewers, who made Lawrie the 16th pick overall in last month's major league draft. The selection of Lawrie, whom Dodgers catcher and fellow Canadian Russell Martin calls the most athletic catcher in the game, points to a recent trend emphasizing offense at that position. Four of the first 16 players selected last month were strong-hitting catchers. And five of the six catchers at Tuesday's All-Star game were young players with impressive offensive numbers. Chad Kreuter, USC head coach and a big league catcher for 16 years, said that the typical approach was to "put a big kid that can't do anything else behind the plate." Rather than taking offense as a bonus to solid defense, Kreuter and many of his colleagues believe teams will sacrifice something on the defensive end if a player is skilled enough offensively. "Everybody wants to have as much offense at every position as you can have," said Pat Casey, head baseball coach at Oregon State. "A lot of it depends on how offensive you are at other places. Can you afford to be more defensive behind the plate?" But many in baseball say that despite the 2008 draft, and the emergence of young stars such as Joe Mauer of the Twins and rookie Geovany Soto of the Cubs -- Tuesday night's starters behind the plate -- handling pitchers and playing defense remain the most important skills for catchers. "Offense is secondary," said Angels manager Mike Scioscia, a former catcher. "The catcher is going to influence a major league game more than anyone on the field by calling 140 or 150 pitches." Added Jason LaRue, backup catcher for the St. Louis Cardinals: "I think they expected more offensive numbers out of some catchers but only a few guys can do it." In Lawrie, the Brewers see potential. "We took what we felt was the best player available," said Jack Zduriencik, vice president and special assistant to the general manager for player personnel with the Brewers. "He's played everywhere and this kid wants to be a catcher. We think he's an offensive player." Also from June's draft, Buster Posey, taken fifth overall by San Francisco, led all of college baseball in batting average while Jason Castro, drafted 10th by Houston, led the Pacific 10 Conference in hits. But the one who drew comparisons to Mauer, a former No. 1 pick, was the sixth pick, Kyle Skipworth, who, like the Twins' Mauer, is a tall, left-handed hitting catcher just out of high school. According to Jim Fleming, vice president of player personnel and scouting for the Florida Marlins, who drafted Skipworth, every team is looking for a catcher who can hit and excels behind the plate. "It's almost like getting two players at once," he said. While Skipworth's defense has been seen and evaluated, Lawrie's is still mostly unknown. Few doubt his hitting ability or athleticism, and it is the latter that many feel will help him become a great catcher. "He's got a long way to go defensively but he has the athletic ability to be a good defensive catcher," Martin said. Some, like Fleming, still believe that offense is just a bonus. Others, like Joe McIlvaine, a special assistant for the Minnesota Twins, believe there has been a shift in the game. "If you come to a manager and are trying to sell him on a catcher, the first question is not can he catch and throw, but can he hit," McIlvaine said. "It's almost the same way at every position. It is so offense oriented." The bigger question for McIlvaine or USC's Kreuter is why this shift has happened. Mike Gillespie, head coach at UC Irvine, points to a decrease in base stealing. "You just don't see the base-stealing skills among major league players you once saw," Gillespie said. "There wasn't quite a concern about the running game. People probably felt you could prioritize offense more." With fewer base stealers and pitchers delivering the ball to the plate faster every year, one attribute scouts typically seek -- arm strength -- has become less significant. Yet, most subscribe to McIlvaine's theory of shifting trends. "Without a doubt we've seen a swing in things over the years," Gillespie said. Gillespie believes that just as shortstop became a more offensive position with the rise of Alex Rodriguez and Nomar Garciaparra, so catcher has with Martin and Mauer. "I think the game in general has become offensive," said Eric Kubota, scouting director for the Oakland Athletics. Recent offensive numbers support Kubota and McIlvaine's beliefs. According to STATS LLC, 31 qualified catchers have hit over .300 since 2000, 11 more than between 1970 and 1990. With power numbers down across the major leagues this season, what McIlvaine and others are waiting to see is whether there is a swing back. "A lot of these younger guys these days put the emphasis on hitting," LaRue said. "It's starting to revert back. It is a defensive position not an offensive position."

Because he'd use it to get OJ off? You're looking for Mark Shapiro, haha.

Dunno if you're being sarcastic, but no, I don't think either Nelson or Errecart is a legitimate Major League first baseman.

Here's a picture of Lawrie taking BP with the Canadian Juniors team that I found on Flickr: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3131/2669580663_952906df8e.jpg?v=0 © Fnawzm

UW pitcher Danielle Lawrie, brother Brett both poised for Beijing Olympics By JON NAITO P-I REPORTER LANGLEY, B.C. -- The lawn needed mowing. It had grown shaggy, the sun had finally smiled, and there was a teenage boy with no other commitment, and so the job was his. Though he was no fan of such a chore, Brett Lawrie did not argue as he plugged white buds into his ears, cranked his iPod and headed out into the crisp afternoon. "We love him, but he can drive you crazy," said Brett's dad, Russ, a stout man and former rugby player with hands as big as oven mitts. Cheryl, Russ' wife of 30 years and Brett's mother, was on her way to an appointment. She chided Brett about doing a proper job, but Brett just kept his head down and feet moving, the music and roar of the mower shouting down his mother's instructions. It did not matter to his parents that sometime in August Brett will most likely be a millionaire, and if he so chooses, pay someone to trim the lawn. In this household, there are no free passes. Brett is 6 feet and 200 pounds of lean muscle. He has a 46-inch vertical leap. He has the discerning eye of a modeling agency and quick wrists and an aggressive approach, the tools that seduce baseball men. The Milwaukee Brewers took him with the 16th pick in this year's June draft -- the highest a Canadian position player has ever been drafted -- and they will pay him handsomely to catch or play left field or third base, but really just to hit the seams off a baseball. But Brett Lawrie will not begin his pro career until the fall. In the interim, he will join his parents and sister an ocean away, where Danielle Lawrie, three years Brett's senior and an All-American at Washington, will try to pitch Canada to a softball medal at the Olympic Games in Beijing, and Brett, one of the youngest baseball players in Canada's national team history, will try to win a medal of his own. When asked to explain how a family from a rural suburb of Vancouver can produce two elite athletes, so young and accomplished, the response is not one of feigned surprise, but phrased in the confident, matter-of-fact manner that colors this family's approach to everything. "They were always the best at what they did," Russ said. "That's not me blowing smoke. They were those people. In baseball, Brett was the best player on every team we've been on. No question. He is the best player in Canada; the proof is there itself -- he was a first-round draft pick. Growing up, Danielle was always the one. She started pitching at 12, and within three months people said she was going to be something big. "I think with athletes, it's something you can pick up on right away. You just know. You can see it's different than anyone else. Both of them were different all the way through." Bobe owns the circle No one in her family calls Danielle Lawrie by her given name. She is Bobe (pronounced Bowb), a name bestowed by a young Brett, who could not pronounce his sister's name and called her Bobo, which got shortened along the way to Bobe. Bobe and Brettski were competitive in the most extreme sense. Nothing was exempt from a contest -- from leaping to touch the ceiling in the basement to shooting baskets with table scraps and napkins and answering trivia to avoid washing dishes. The siblings left no competitive opportunity unturned. "We wanted to beat each other so bad at everything," Danielle said recently by phone from Chicago, where she was touring with the Canadian national team. "I mean, nothing was off limits. But it was just always how it was with us. We were raised to compete." It is a measure of pride for Russ that both his children embraced an unyielding desire to win at everything they tried. That comes from Russ, who acknowledged that he pushed his children hard. Brett and Danielle, however, soaked it up, their drive and ambition apparent from an early age. Danielle took up softball only after she was cut from a local baseball team as a child for having the temerity of being a girl. She was furious that she had been cut, though she was better than many of the boys who made the team, and so poured all her energy into other sports. As an undersized, 5-foot-7 power forward, she led Brookswood Secondary to a pair of provincial basketball championships as a tenacious post scorer and rebounding machine who backed down from nobody. "She has the tendency to intimidate," Cheryl said. In softball, she rose quickly through the junior ranks and made the senior national team at 18. The summer before her freshman season at the UW, Lawrie started against the powerhouse U.S. national team, defeating them 2-1, ending a three-year winning streak for the Americans and giving Canada its first victory over its neighbor. "She is fearless," said UW coach Heather Tarr, who made Danielle her first recruit when she was named coach in 2005. "She has all the physical tools, can make all the pitches, but it's her presence on the mound, her confidence and cool that separates her." Or, as her father puts it: "Make no doubt about it, the circle is hers." At the UW, she quickly ascended to the role of staff ace, and after two seasons is second on the school's all-time strikeout list (844). During her sophomore season in 2007, Danielle won 31 games, broke her own UW season record with 457 strikeouts, tossed 11 shutouts, had 25 double-figure strikeout games, and threw a no-hitter against DePaul in the Women's College World Series. She took a redshirt year in 2008 to tour with Team Canada as it prepared for the Olympics, and will return to the Huskies for her junior season in the fall. Heady stuff for a 21-year-old, but Danielle has little time for reflection. She has only one goal in mind this summer -- to win gold, never mind that the American juggernaut stands in her way. "I always want to win," she said. "I expect to. There is no point being out there if you're going to doubt yourself. It doesn't matter who's at the plate, they still have to beat you. I'm not going to concede anything to anyone." Russ and Cheryl The Lawrie children were shaped, athletically at least, by their father. Russ, 53, was a talented athlete himself, playing rugby, baseball and basketball while growing up in nearby Burnaby. He once tore an Achilles tendon playing H-O-R-S-E against Brett, yet recalls not the immense pain of the injury but that he finished the game. A bear of a man at 5 feet 10 with a broad face and slight mustache, he loves to talk. Russ is a storyteller, and is either in sales or construction or both, though it becomes clear that what he loves to do most is talk about his kids. He can tick off their accomplishments with ease and precision and is not shy about touting their achievements. He does so in a tone that straddles the line between pride and bluster, one he avoids crossing because of the obvious joy on his face and in his voice each time he recounts them. He and Cheryl met in high school. She was the manager of the track team, and took a shine to him, pursued him, and that was that. They've been together since. Cheryl, also 53, was not an athlete, but takes no less joy and played no less a part in her children's success than Russ. While Russ was the one who took them to the park for workouts after work and coached Brett's Little League team, Cheryl was always in the picture, making sure that no matter what avenue her children followed, they would not do it halfway. "If our kids did a great job we told them they did a great job," Cheryl said. "If they struggled with something, we talked with them on the way home. It's not a big deal, but you have to understand that now you have to work hard this week so you won't do that again. They had no problem talking about what they'd done." The basement in their four-bedroom, split-level home is dedicated entirely to their children. Memorabilia and pictures blanket the walls, and the living room has a strange duality -- it feels homey and lived-in, and yet has museum-like detachment with all its nostalgia. "We look at each other sometimes and wonder what are we going to do when they're not here?" Cheryl said. Brettski on deck Soon the house will be empty. Brett will rejoin Canada's junior national team for the world junior championships in Edmonton, and then join his sister in Beijing as a member of the Olympic team. Like his sister, he has precocity, a confidence that is unerring. He is more self-assured than many men twice his age. "We noticed that about him when we started scouting him," said Jack Zduriencik, the Brewers' vice president in charge of player personnel. "He is certainly very physically mature for someone his age, and we think he has the ability to become a successful player, but it's his makeup that we liked the most. He really believes in his ability, and that translates at the plate." Brett has played for the junior national team for three years, and it was in that capacity this spring that his stock began to soar among major league scouts. In games in Florida in extended spring training, he was 21-for-30 and had 14 extra-base hits. In a tour of the Dominican Republic, he hit .486 with eight home runs and 24 runs batted in. He went from a probable third-round selection before the spring to one of the most buzzed about players in the draft. Scouts noticed his build, his athleticism, his power potential and his aggressiveness at the plate. They loved that he had grown up using wood bats. They did not worry about what position he would play; he has played second base, third base, left field and catcher. He wants to catch full-time, believing that is his quickest route to the majors, and has spent time with Los Angeles Dodgers catcher Russell Martin, a fellow Canadian. "A year-and-half," he said of his expected stay in the minors. "I trust myself. I know what I can do. I think people have seen what I can do." His longtime coach on the junior national team, Greg Hamilton, is also the man who selected the Canadian Olympic team. Hamilton has seen Brett's progression through the junior ranks, and raves about his future. "He just has natural ability at the plate," Hamilton said. "But what he loves most is to compete, and he knows how to win. I think that certainly comes across, and I think that's something teams took into account when they were looking at drafting him." Brett has committed to attend Arizona State, but said he would sign with Milwaukee in August. The family would not comment on a desired signing bonus, but last year's 16th pick, Kevin Ahrens, received a $1.44 million bonus from Toronto. Until he leaves for his national team commitments, he continues to train and plays the occasional game for his longtime select team, the Langley Blaze. In one recent game, Brett slugged a home run to tie the game and hit another in extra innings to win it. One of the homers hit a new sport-utility vehicle in the parking lot. "(The owner) said, 'Well, I should at least get your autograph,' " Cheryl recalled. Minutes later, after the family watched Tiger Woods win the U.S. Open, Brett excused himself to change clothes. The lawn still needed mowing. http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/dayart/20080715/450canadians_picture.jpgAndy Rogers / P-I Russ Lawrie of Langley, B.C., snaps a photo of son Brett, a touted major league draft pick, and daughter Danielle, a record-setting UW softball pitcher.

We talked about that recently.

And they each committed an error, plus Frederickson added three wild pitches, just for kicks.

There will be quite the coterie of intriguing young starters at Helena once Jake Odorizzi moves up and joins Nieves, Cody Adams, and Trey Watten, along with the eternally frustrating Dominican contingent of Rolando Pascual, Wily Peralta, and Santo Manzanillo. Maybe having Nick Tyson along to give them sage advice (e.g. "Try not to give up two hits per inning in full season ball") will help out.

When I interviewed him, Odorizzi indicated that the plan was to move him up to Helena after he got acclimated, and it does indeed look like he's acclimatin' just fine.

Komatsu was BA's Pioneer League Prospect of the Day:

I just wanted to point this out because I know X ellence really wanted the Brewers to draft this "rocket armed monster". Dominguez Smacks Three Homers In Cape Game We've got a couple of summer league notes from last week to pass along. On Wednesday, Louisville third baseman Chris Dominguez joined Frank Thomas as the only players ever to hit three home runs in a game with wood bats in the Cape Cod League. Dominguez blasted three homers for the Hyannis Mets in a 6-4 win over Falmouth, driving in five runs in the process and boosting his league-leading homer total to six. He's added two more since, giving him eight homers for the summer-three more than second-place Connor Powers. Dominguez was a fifth-round pick of the Rockies this June as a draft-eligible sophomore, and his homer binge only increases the chances that Colorado will make a push to sign him before the Aug. 15 deadline. Of course, Dominguez's power has never been in doubt-he's been one of the nation's premier power hitters for the last two years at Louisville. Dominguez has continued to strike out in bushels this summer-he has 28 whiffs and six walks in 90 at-bats-but he is batting a very respectable .278 and leading the league with a .611 slugging percentage and 14 extra-base hits.

I can easily see Gindl having another similarly solid-but-not-great season at Brevard next year and then exploding at Huntsville in 2010.

The first 15 picks of the first round are protected (which is why the Brewers got second-round choices from Cordero and Linebrink, not first-rounders), but the Yankees almost certainly will finish in the top half of MLB and thus have a pick between 16-30, so in your hypothetical scenario the Brewers would get the Yankees' first-round pick, two supplemental picks, and the Yankees' second-round pick--I think. I'm not sure what would happen if the signing team had a protected first-round choice; can anyone answer that?