Baseball

With the sixth pick in the 2011 Major League Baseball Amateur Draft, the Washington Nationals select …

…Taylor Jungmann?

Maybe.

While it is way too early to be making this kind of prediction, I’m going to anyway. And really, it does make a lot of sense.

If the Mets want to retain their shortstop past the 2011 season, they may have to start negotiating soon.

Jose Reyes, who will become a free agent for the first time in his career at the end of this season, addressed the issue at a Citi Field Kids charity event on Wednesday.

"I don't want to talk about my contract during the season," Reyes said. "I want to focus on doing my thing, trying to help this team win a lot of ballgames."

HTMS Minor League Baseball Report

Pittsburgh

The Pittsburgh Pirates have announced the passing of first-round draft choice Chico Morales.

The hot stove is starting to cool, as we are less than a month from pitchers and catchers reporting. So, let’s stoke that fire a bit with more prospect talk. This series on prospects will cover a wide range of players as well as positions. We’ll cover sleepers and even some of the more obvious stars of the future.

Another way of asking this question is have the moves Jim Hendry made in the offseason improved the team and have the moves their division rivals made improved those teams more?

On the latter score, though the Brewers have improved their pitching, they have done so at the expense of their rather suspect defense. On balance, they remain a very flawed team. Let's remember they had CC Sabathia for the better part of a year and they lost.

Our 2011 fantasy baseball projections will be released one-by-one until the top 100 players have been revealed. These rankings consider past achievements, current performance and expected future results based on standard 5×5 H2H settings.

Our fourth stop on the 30 in 30 is the Milwaukee Brewers.

Due to my schedule preventing me from writing yesterday, I'll be making up for it by covering two teams today. Consider it a 2-for-...Wednesday? Something like that.

The brew crew finished the 2010 season one game ahead of the Astros, two games ahead of the Cubs and nine games back of the Cardinals.

This past fall, I spoke to my little brother far more often than I normally do.  He’s away at college, I work and we live on opposite coasts, so our schedules rarely seem to match.  

Courtesy of Yankees 'n More

Turns out GM Brian Cashman meant what he said a few days ago when declaring he would not be giving up the New York Yankees' No. 1 pick for any of the players remaining on the free-agent market.

He just didn't bother to check first with ownership, and they held a differing view.

In what’s quickly becoming an offseason of highly intellectual signings, the New York Mets have struck again inking Chris Young to a one-year deal, pending a physical.