Teams are Announced – 10am first pitch Monday

Our banquet on Sunday evening is probably one of the most anticipated as we get to find out who we get to play with for the week. This can be a lot of fun and tradition for me is to feel really good about the team that I am playing with for the week. It is very interesting to see how the teams come together and who gets drafted and where (not that we know – but you can piece together enough information to gather it up). So without further ado here are the team names and coaches for the week (just a note – camp director Stan Dickman decided it would be best to just do a 8 team camp – the downside, 15 guys per team….that’s a lot…the upside if injuries or sickness curtails a team probably  more wiggle room to deal with). While I am not 100% happy with the change – I fully understand the thought process behind it –

Team Name & Pro Staff –

#1 – Rat Poison – Phil Roof & Matthew LeCroy

#2 – End Before Dawn – Stu Cliborn, J.C. Romero & Tommy Watkins

#3 – Sandbaggers – Milt Cuyler, Toby Gardenhire & Dick Stigman

#4 – Last Calls – Glen Perkins, Devin Smeltzer & Juan Berenger

#5 – Junk – Kent Hrbek & Tim Laudner

#6 – Rocks and Cows – Al Newman, Juan Rincon & Gene Larkin

#7 – Game 7 – Frank Viola & Jeff Reardon

#8 – How’s Your Tomatoes – Bill “Soup” Campbell, Steve Braun, & Gary Allenson

I was drafted by the combo of Viola/Reardon (again) and our roster looks real good – we have plenty of pitching (I count 5 pitchers on the squad and that doesn’t include a few others who can throw strikes) – we have a solid catcher and just need to find a couple of other guys to go behind the dish for a few innings here and there and we should be OK. We have a couple young guys with legs to roam the outfield as well – it’s a good mix. The main factor will be can we hit enough to keep the batting order moving so we can get more than 1 AB per game – it’s going to be rough to get more than 2 plate appearances but we will see how it goes and enjoy the fact we won’t have to play every inning in the field with a good rotation.

I generally make some predictions and figure out how things will look – but I think I like the following teams:

Rat Poison (mostly for the name….hopefully some people get the reference), Game 7 (I always have to pick my team, pitching, defense, veterans….has the making of a good team), How’s Your Tomatoes (Pitching looks real good and solid up and down lineup), Sandbaggers (they look good, will they have deep enough pitching?), End Before Dawn (Pitching looks thin, but might have the best combo of top 5 players in camp)

Teams that might need some help:

Last Calls (there was a reason they named the team this), Rocks & Cows (Newman usually does a good job drafting but I don’t see a lot of pitching on this team), Junk (Hrbie and Lauds named the team this for a reason)

We will see if I am remotely close to how much I liked the teams today or at the end of the week. We kick off camp tomorrow with 2 games -- so we will see how things go, it's baseball and anything can happen!!   10am first pitch in the morning and 1pm will be the afternoon game!

Take 2 and go to right.

~~ "You can observe a lot just by watching." - Yogi Berra ~~