Mormon Baseball

Archive for the ‘Transactions’ Category

Figuring out where all those who played in the major leagues last year (as I detailed in yesterday’s post) have moved is relatively easy compared to figuring out what has happened to those who passed through the minors last year. This is true for several reasons:

• There are more places where they could have gone — including both foreign and independent leagues
• The minor league records online aren’t as accurate as the major league records
• Its early, and not all the decisions have been made about where players will be, and the final decisions depend on the results of spring training.

There are probably other reasons as well. I must admit that I’m not that experienced in pulling together this information — I’ve only been at this for a few years.

But, despite these problems, I have produced a list of Mormons in the minors, foreign leagues and independent leagues:

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This April we begin the month looking forward to what comes from 12 men and a few more. We will watch what they do and say, perhaps learning some lessons from them. We may disagree and perhaps even be disappointed in what they do. But we will watch, and what we see will inform how we see the next six months. One of these men has already made a strong statement this week, raising our expectations for this year. Will our expectations be met?

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With spring training beginning this past weekend, we should probably look at which Mormon players are with which teams, including the minor league players who have been invited to play in the early games. I hope to begin weekly updates of player stats on Monday.

Several recent changes have led to changes in this list. First, I was told of a couple of minor league players who are Mormon, Nik Turley and Boone Whiting, and Turley made spring training for the Yankees this year. In addition, the Marlins signed Mitch Talbot to a minor league deal, bringing him back from Korea and several other players have been traded or landed on other teams, including Brandon Lyon and Elliot Johnson.

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There is significantly less movement before spring training among minor league players. After the minor league seasons end, players who haven’t performed well enough are released, but otherwise not much changes. I imagine this is because where each player is in an organization is decided on a top-down fashion: first the organization decides who is on the major league squad, then who makes the AAA squad, then the AA squad, etc. As a result, the roster of each team in the organization can only be finalized as evaluations are made during spring training. [Of course, this is largely an ongoing process throughout the year, but decisions on where players start the season culminate in spring training.]

As a result, for Mormon players few changes have been made so far. A few have been released or have become free agents. And in the process of reviewing this information, I discovered that one player, Brandon Duckworth, moved to the Japanese league after he was released by the Red Sox last summer.

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I’ve neglected following the transactions and changing status of the Mormon players for the past several months — a bit of a vacation, I suppose. But with spring training rapidly approaching, I thought I should get the status up to date and start following where everyone is. Today’s update only includes the players who played in the Majors last year.

There are still a couple of players who have played in the majors in previous years whose status is uncertain—Kyle Farnsworth and Brandon Lyon both had strong enough years in 2012 that I think they are likely to be picked up by someone.

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