Minors and Majors - April 21st
April 21st, 2007
Today on my Major League Basball show, Minors and Majors, I was joined by two red-hot prospects. College-pitcher Adam Mills and AAA First Baseman Micah Hoffpauir both took time out of their busy Saturday morning schedules to join me.
Mills was one of a dozen or so college players named to the “College Player of the Year Watch List” this past week. The watch list is a compilation of some of the nation’s finest players, who will all garner attention and ultimately votes as the “Player of the Year” in college baseball. The fourth-year starter at the University of North Carolina - Charlotte has been remarkable this season, pitching to an ERA less than one.
Entering his start this weekend Mills, who is 9-1 through 12-starts in 2007, had tossed five consecutive complete games. The 22-year-old right-hander has registered 111 strikeouts in just 93 innings of work. His numbers look like they are right out of a video game, something I mentioned while talking to him on Saturday. He’ll be drafted this summer, which means he could be eating-innings for your favorite team’s minor-league system a year from now.
Hoffpauir is a first-baseman with a ton of pop, who is currenlty leading the AAA PCL in home runs and RBI. He is swinging a sweet stick to start 2007, having posted a .415 batting average through two-plus weeks of baseball. The 27-year-old is a skilled and proficient hitter, would even have success with the Chicago Cubs right now, but the problem is that there isn’t a spot for him in Chicago’s lineup. The best way for the power-hitting infielder to make the majors might be as a corner-outfielder, a spot that Hoffpauir told me he played a lot of this past spring, while training with the Cubbies.
In addition to catching up with Mills and Hoffpauir, I also talked about the re-hab outings of Chien Ming Wang and Randy Johnson, and speculated that Brandon Morrow might get the chance to make his innaugural Major League start this coming week in Seattle. Morrow, the 5th-overall draft-choice a year ago, made the Mariners against all odds this spring, and could be asked to replace Fellix Hernandez in Seattle’s rotation for the next couple of weeks.
Jarrod Saltalamachia, the top prospect in the Atlanta Braves’ minor-league system, was named the show’s “Prospect Worth Watching.” Oakland Athletics’ Right Fielder Travis Buck, who drove in five-runs on Friday night, was named the hitter of the night. Tim Hudson, Atlanta’s best starter out of the gate in 2007, was named our pitcher of the night from Friday, a night in which Hudson pitched 8 scoreless innings en route to lowering his season era to 0.62.
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Minors and Majors airs each weekend on MLB Home Plate, XM 175. It can be heard nationally every Saturday morning on XM channel 175 from 8a.m. to 10a.m. eastern, and again when it’s re-played on XM Sports Nation (ch. 144), at 10a.m. eatern on Sunday.