After spending all of one day with the PCL’s New Orleans Zephyrs, OF Daniel Murphy (above) was promoted to the parent New York Mets earlier today, and is 1-2 with a run scored thus far in tonight’s game against Houston. From the New York Daily News’ Adam Rubin :
Murphy may be the best pure hitter in the Mets™ minor-league system, even surpassing Fernando Martinez.
Marlon Anderson will land on the DL with continued hamstring woes.
The other prospects Minaya mentioned: teenage phenom Fernando Martinez (who is being treated cautiously with a recurrence of right hamstring trouble that has sidelined him about 10 days), Double-A closer Eddie Kunz and starting pitcher Bobby Parnell, and lefthander Jon Niese, who recently was promoted to New Orleans.
Along with the fantastic claim Manny Ramirez all but begged the Red Sox to renege on Thursday’s trade with the Dodgers (that would’ve been a fun one to explain to the Commissioner’s office), the Globe’s Gordon Edes reports there was far from universal sentiment within Boston’s front office that dumping Manny was the right move.
If John W. Henry had cast the deciding vote, RamÃrez might not have been frolicking in Chavez Ravine last night. Henry, whose life has been defined by his mastery of numbers, was unconvinced the Sox would be better off without those generated by RamÃrez’s bat. But in the end, Henry elected to give his support to Epstein and his baseball operations staff.
His people believed they had no choice but to trade a player who was bent not on forcing the Sox to pick up his $20 million option for 2009, as many thought, but, in their view, was willing to do anything – including laying down on the job – to achieve the opposite outcome: becoming a free agent with no strings attached.
LaTroy Hawkins>Billy Wagner?
Of course Valverde still might be another story.
Thanks Billy Wagner and Aaron Heilman for helping keep a undeserving Phillies in first place.
Oh, I dunno Chuck, the Phillies are thoroughly deserving of first place. If Blanton and Myers pitch the way they each have in their last two starts, it is even theirs to lose (as it was six weeks ago). But it’s hard to imagine the combination of good-enough pitching and streaky offense getting them any farther than they got last year.
Jason,
I may be sounding like cur after a Phillies win facilitated by a strong outing by Blanton and a Mets loss facilitated by Wagner but I am pissed about the top ninth where the Phillies were clinging to a 1 run lead with Pujols and the red-hot Ludwick due up in the bottom of the inning and watching both fleet highly skilled baserunners/swipers Rollins and Victorino wildly hacking at pitches way out of the strike zone rather than trying to get on base by hook or crook and manufacture another run. I am happy with the overall decent Phillies pitching but am getting weary of the pheast-or-phamine streaky hitting and poor situational ABs…. Anyway, jury is still out on Myers and as far as the Phillies, I will consider their first place status deserved when they actually win a series against a team other than Atlanta or Washington.
Oh, I don’t disagree with you about who the Phillies really are (especially the top of the order). They don’t hit good pitching. But nobody in the division seems interested in deserving it.
They beat the Cardinals tonight — that looks deserving to me.
If they can take the series I’ll be quite happy, but 1 of 3 against good teams has been the trend since mid-June. “Deserved” is all relative though. IIRC the 2006 Cardinals had a worse record than the non-playoff Phillies that year.