Three teams are set to dominate the first day of the 2011 amateur draft. The Tampa Bay Rays, San Diego Padres, and Toronto Blue Jays will all make multiple picks during the first and supplemental round during the evening of Monday, June 6.

The picks, which will feature 60 names called in total on Day 1, will break down like this for the three clubs:
TB – 24, 31, 32, 38, 41, 42, 52, 56, 59, 60
SD – 10, 25, 48, 54, 58
TOR – 21, 35, 46, 53, 57

The supplemental first round will consist of 27 picks. Tampa Bay, San Diego, and Toronto will account for more than half of that total with 14 selections combined. The end of the day will be pretty boring for the other 27 clubs; eight of the final nine picks will be made by the Rays, the Padres, or the Jays – (picks 52-60 with Minnesota being the only other club to get in on the fun).

All three organizations clearly have an excellent opportunity to infuse talent into their ranks – assuming the organizations don’t cheap out on some of their picks. However, history will tell us that a bountiful draft does not always mean you’re in for future riches. The 2007 draft is an excellent lesson in not counting your chickens before they’re hatched. Four clubs had multiple picks in the first and supplemental round, including Texas, San Francisco, as well as our good friends in San Diego and Toronto.

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Quick, guess which team’s pitching staff has the lowest HR/FB rate in baseball. Okay, the subject probably gives away the answer, but even if it didn’t, the smart guess would have been San Francisco. After all, they’ve been dominating this category for the last decade.

We spent a decent amount of time this winter talking about the Giants ability to prevent home runs. It started off talking about Matt Cain, moved on to a broader discussion, and then shifted towards looking at whether Dave Righetti might be the key to understanding why San Francisco continues to keep the ball in the park better than any other team in baseball. While we don’t have a concrete answer yet, as more data piles up, three oft-cited factors are seeing their potential influences diminished – the pitchers themselves, sample size of the data, and park factors.

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This is a day for remembering.

This edition of One Night Only is celebrating Memorial Day, and is, as the French say (after translating the expression into English), “very brief.”

Nevertheless, please find Pitcher and Team NERD scores for every one of today’s games after the jump.

Please also find that Rodrigo Lopez — despite the fact that he’s making his Cub debut — receives only a NERD of 5 (instead of 10, as season debuts usually receive).

“Because he’s Rodrigo Lopez,” is the answer to the question you needn’t actually ask.

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A few weeks ago, with his team streaking back into contention, Tampa Bay manager Joe Maddon tweeted about a key to his team’s success:

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If, during Spring Training, you predicted Aaron Crow would make the Kansas City Royals 25 man roster, it’s likely people would have laughed at you. After all, he was coming off a poor season at Double A; in which he posted a 5.66 ERA and a less than spectacular 4.74 xFIP. If, once he made the team, you predicted he would be the Royals best reliever two months into the season, people would have had you committed to an institution. Well, we’re two months into the season and it looks like you should be the newest member of Mensa. Aaron Crow has already far surpassed expectations in his rookie season. Can he continue his dominance going forward, or does his current performance scream small sample size fluke?
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I wrote a post yesterday on Lookout Landing concerning Luis Rodriguez and his perception as that of a “battler” at the plate. I had seen and heard that adjective tossed about for him quite often and decided to try to come up with a reasonable definition for the term as I interpreted it and then check to see if Rodriguez did in fact deserve the praise. I also wanted to see if others agreed with what I came up with for a formula equivalent of battling and nobody seemed to object, so I am willing now to subject it to another audience for feedback.

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Episode Seventy-Six
In which every day is Friday.

Headlines
Loose Ends — Hella Tied!
Buster Posey — Considered Closely!
The Reds Rotation — Demystified!
Various Young Pitchers — Mentioned Briefly!

Featuring
Justin Merry, Reasonable Gentleman
Eno Sarris, Left Coaster

Finally, you can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio on the flip-flop. (Approximately 55 min play time.)

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On Sunday, Jay Buente was the starting pitcher who ended up on the losing end of James Shields’ masterpiece against the Marlins. Now, Buente will have his check issued by the same organization as Shields. Buente, 27, made his starting debut this past weekend against the Rays. Following his poor outing (3IP, 4 R, 3 ER, 3 BB, 1K, 18 BF) he was designated for assignment by Florida and claimed by the same Tampa Bay team that roughed him up three days earlier.

A few weeks ago, I mentioned Buente as a possible alternative to Javier Vazquez in the Marlins’ rotation. Instead of replacing Vazquez, Buente followed him in the spot that opened up as a result Josh Johnson’s injury. Although the Marlins said he would take another turn through the rotation, he was quickly replaced on the roster by reliever Steve Cishek. With Johnson on track to return on June 1, Buente’s time appeared limited in any event.

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Since starting the season 11-2, the Colorado Rockies are just 13-23. They are a Major League worst 7-17 in May, and haven’t won more than two in a row since the 11-2 start. In 21 of those past 36 games, they have scored three runs or less. Last night’s loss dropped the team below .500 for the first time since they were 0-1. The team has responded with a series of personnel and lineup changes that show more than a hint of panic, even though at this stage, that is still not warranted.

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“Time waits for no man.” ~ Age-old aphorism or, alternatively, Jasper Fforde.

Getting old sucks. Regardless of what we do, we can’t stop our bodies from aging and slowing down. Muscles get weaker, it gets harder to get in shape, and our reflexes slowly fail us. Time cares nothing for our fond remembrances or youthful delusions; in the words of Joe Posnanski, age is undefeated.

It can be difficult enough to accept that we’re slowly getting older and losing our physical skills, but in some ways, it’s more painful to watch your favorite athletes age. These guys are supposed to be living gods: chiseled, millionaire athletes that are impervious to many of the daily cares and concerns that plague us. In my mind, that’s a large part of what gives sports their charm – they’re a form of escapism from the rest of the world. Athletes aren’t supposed to be like the rest of us; kids grow up believing that they exist in their own world, where their largest concern is the batting slump they’re in right now and their team’s position in the standings. We can watch the game at night and escape from our lives, being pulled into baseball’s universe instead.

Or at least, that’s what I think baseball starts out as when we’re young. When we grow up, we find out that this delusion isn’t true; baseball players are people, too, each with their own flaws, and some of them are jerks (or just plain stupid). And hey, baseball players get old, too… even the really, really good ones. But still, even though we realize this, I think everyone feels a punch in the gut when they watch one of their favorite player’s struggle toward the end of their career. We root for our favorites to stay eternally young, so that way we don’t have to be reminded that we’re getting old, too, and that we know what it feels like to fail.

But anyway, enough with that digression: I’m here to talk about the Yankees, and no, not Derek Jeter or Jorge Posada. While both players have dominated the tabloid headlines this year, there’s one player whose decline is hiding in the background: Alex Rodriguez.

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