Monthly Archives: March 2010

All of Atlanta’s minor league players are officially due in spring camp today — though most were already there. Minor league games start next week. The players who will make up the 2010 Mississippi Braves’ roster are scattered about the Kissimmee, Fla., complex and will be until the end of the month. Many decisions are yet to be made by Braves brass. That means it’s still open season for speculation on who’s coming to Pearl. Not much has changed since the previous post on this subject, but just to refresh: Pencil in Benji Johnson at catcher, Freddie Freeman at first base, Travis Jones at second, Brandon Hicks at shortstop and Donell Linares at third. The four outfielders likely will be Willie Cabrera, Concepcion Rodriguez, Cody Johnson and Antoan Richardson, the latter a free agent pickup. Another free agent addition, Orlando Mercado, could be the second catcher. Reserve infielders … who knows? If Freeman makes the Triple-A club, Gerardo Rodriguez looks to be in line for first base. If Hicks moves up, there is no obvious candidate at short. Projecting a pitching staff is always tough. Rotation candidates include Mike Minor (last year’s top draft pick), Kyle Cofield, Tim Gustafson, Erik Cordier, Brandon Beachy and Jacob Thompson. Cory Gearrin is the likely closer. Thomas Palica and Michael Broadway are bullpen possibilities. There are always some surprises when the roster is revealed.

Desmond Jennings, the former Itawamba Community College two-sport star, was a longshot to make Tampa Bay’s opening day roster when spring camp opened. After a couple of injury setbacks, Rays manager Joe Maddon conceded on Thursday that Jennings would open the season at Triple-A Durham. A highly touted outfield prospect, Jennings was hit by a pitch early in camp and then injured a wrist, which will sideline him until next week. “A lot disappointing,” he told mlb.com. Sure it is, but his time will come. Oh yes, his time will come.

They played through the raindrops Tuesday night — a benefit of the artificial surface at Smith-Wills Stadium — and Mississippi College beat Belhaven 3-2 in a Maloney Trophy Series game. MC and Belhaven are both 2-1 in the small college round-robin series. Millsaps is 0-2 (with a makeup date yet to be set against MC). Terrell Prescott was brilliant (5 innings, 1 hit, 0 runs) on the mound for the Choctaws on Tuesday, and Bo Bell rang up his fifth home run. MC is now 13-1.

Connor Powers was drafted in the 11th round last June by the Los Angeles Dodgers but elected to return to Mississippi State for his senior year. If he has serious pro aspirations, that might have been a risky decision. But State fans couldn’t be happier to see Powers back at first base, especially after the show he put on in the BankFirst Challenge in Starkville over the weekend. In four games, Powers hit three homers and drove in 15 runs. Mississippi College’s Bo Bell had a nice weekend, as well, going 6-for-15 with five RBIs and five runs scored as the Choctaws (11-1) swept three games at Schreiner. … The best pitching performance likely came from a freshman at Jones County Junior College. Andrew Pierce, a 6-foot-2, 165-pound right-hander, threw a no-hitter at Mississippi Delta on Saturday in a 4-0, seven-inning victory. Pierce, from Stringer, was perfect threw six, hit a batter to start the seventh but got a double play behind him and ended up facing the minimum 21 batters. The Bobcats are 15-1. … Belhaven honored Hill Denson for his 1,000th career coaching win on Saturday, then swept Spring Hill to move to 9-2 in the Gulf Coast Athletic Conference, good for first place. … The resiliency award goes to Delta State, which lost two games in the last inning against West Florida on Saturday but bounced back to win 7-3 on Sunday. A Chris Escobar grand slam was the highlight.

Mississippi College will take the field on Friday as a nationally ranked team. The Choctaws are No. 25 in the first d3baseball.com poll. Led by preseason All-America pick Bo Bell (.323, three homers, nine RBIs) and Tyler Seaman (3-0, 1.96) — the son of former Jackson Met Kim Seaman — the Choctaws are 8-1. They play Schreiner at Kerrville, Texas, this weekend. … Belhaven will honor Hill Denson for his 1,000th career victory prior to Saturday’s 1 p.m. game against Spring Hill at Smith-Wills Stadium. … Kudos to Tougaloo for getting its first win of the season on Wednesday at Mississippi Valley State, a Division I program. Now the Bulldogs can take some swagger into their next Gulf Coast Athletic Conference series, at Loyola of New Orleans this weekend, and shoot for that first-ever conference win (see previous post).

It certainly appears that the Atlanta Braves are leaning toward giving Jason Heyward the right field job to start the season. The former Mississippi Brave, playing right and hitting third, looked like he belonged in Monday’s spring training opener, which was televised by MLB Network. Heyward went 1-for-1 with two walks and stole a base (third, no less). Four other 2009 M-Braves played on Monday: Freddie Freeman, Brandon Hicks, Matt Young and Cody Johnson. The others from last year’s club who are in the big league camp are catcher J.C. Boscan and pitchers Kyle Cofield, Lee Hyde, Craig Kimbrel, Jeff Lyman, Stephen Marek, Jose Ortegano and Jonny Venters. All told, there are 27 former M-Braves among the 58 players in Atlanta’s major league camp, 14 of them pitchers. There is also one former Jackson General: Billy Wagner.

A lot of things went wrong for Mississippi State during a lost weekend at Dudy Noble Field. Southeastern Louisiana, which had lost nine straight games against State and never won a three-game series from an SEC school, swept the Bulldogs. Lions coach Jay Artigues, a Belhaven product and former Pearl River Community College coach, has his club off to a best-ever 7-0 start. But, of course, the bigger story was what happened to the Dogs. In Game 1, they couldn’t score and lost 4-1 when the Lions scored three in the ninth. In Game 2, they made five errors and fell 8-5. And in Game 3, four pitchers were knocked around for 15 hits in a 6-5 defeat. You don’t make too much of a non-conference series in February, but still … this was a shock to the system of State fans.