Final Roster

Tomorrow will be our last day of spring training and with a day left the management set our final rosters for the low a and high a affiliates. Before we went out to the field they made their final roster adjustments and when we gathered around for our meeting for the day we were told to take a deep breath because we had endured all of the releases. As we were standing there listening to our field coordinator talk about how hard his job was I thought about what a difficult thing it would be to have to tell someone that they weren’t going to be able to continue to follow their dreams with the organization. In the long run most everyone will have to face being told that they got released. A couple days ago the Marlins released a player who hit 40 plus homeruns last year. That’s the business of baseball though; organizations are always looking out for the best product to put on the field to represent the ownership.

Today was a pretty interesting day for me also. Right before we headed outside, the high a first baseman was called in to see the farm director. He came back to the locker room with a look on his face reminiscent of someone who had just seen a ghost, it wasn’t a good sign. He told everyone what they had told him and part of what they said was that I was going to be playing first base this year. I had thought that I would play over there every once in awhile but I quickly realized that I would be playing over there a lot more than I had originally thought. Before today there had only been one game that I had played over at first base this spring, another reason why it was such a surprise to me. If you haven’t picked up on it yet I will be starting this year with the Jupiter Hammerheads, our high a affiliate.

Our team, on paper, looks as if it should be a pretty solid team. We have prospects who are 19 and we have vets who are 28. We’re carrying 6 outfielders, which is almost unheard of, but a few guys are also able to play some other positions, myself included. Only one of our starting pitchers from Greensboro made the jump to high a and a handful of relievers were with him. All together I will be playing with around 8 guys that I played with last year.

The league that I will be playing in, the Florida State League, has the reputation of being one of the toughest leagues in minor league baseball for hitters. It’s a combination of the pitching getting better and the ballparks are big and the ball doesn’t fly well in Florida in the middle of summer. I think that most organizations look at the league as a make or break league. A lot of guys have made their careers in this league. The common opinion is that if you can hit in the Florida State League then you can hit in the big leagues. I look at it as a win-win situation. Nobody expects hitters to put up great numbers and if you do then it looks that much better. I’m looking forward to the year; I’m going to take what they give me and try not to give any at bats away.

The FSL is also one of the best leagues in terms of travel. Every team is in Florida so there won’t be any 14 hour trips like you experience in most every other league. We also play all of our games in nice ballparks, all of which are spring training homes to various teams. The one downside that everyone talks about is the lack of fans at the games. I don’t really see that as a big deal though, I can remember some cold mid-week games back at Missouri where we would be able to count 15 or so people sitting in the stands. When it comes down to it baseball is a game of a bunch of head to head matchups and during those matchups nothing else should matter.

I have a few more stories for you guys later this week. I just wanted to let everyone know what I would be doing this summer. I would love for everyone out there to come down to south Florida and take a vacation and in the meantime you could catch a Hammerheads game!

“If I’m going to do something, I do it spectacularly or I don’t do it at all.”
-Al-Waleed bin Talal