Minor League Ball Gameday, July 7

Good morning prospect watchers. I hope your weekend has gone well. On to baseball.

***Yesterday's Minor League Ball Gameday thread.

***Ian Desmond Prospect Retrospective tomorrow. Also something on Ross Stripling finally.

***There has been a lot of vitriol and ill-natured snark lately in the daily threads. I am monitoring the situation and not taking sides at this stage, other than to say that getting into a manhood-measuring contest on a minor league baseball discussion board is pretty pointless. There's also sophisticated trolling conducted by some posters that seems designed to get a rise out of people, also pointless from my perspective. You are all adults, though perhaps of different maturity levels, but try to be part of the solution, not the problem.

***The Philadelphia Phillies promoted first baseman Darin Ruf to the major league roster yesterday, replacing injured veteran slugger Ryan Howard. As you likely recall, Ruf had a phenomenal 2012 season (.317/.408/.620, 38 homers) for Double-A Reading and also hit well late in the major league season (.333/.351/.727 in 12 games for the Phillies). He hasn't been nearly as potent this year, hitting .266/.344/.408 with seven homers for Triple-A Lehigh Valley, his wRC+ dropping from an outstanding 180 to just 105 this season. He turns 27 this month so it isn't like he has a lot of growth room left as a prospect. Contact has been the biggest problem in Triple-A: he's whiffed 87 times in 304 at-bats, his K% rising from 17.5 last year to 24.9% this year.

***Texas Rangers prospect C.J. Edwards had a strong start for Low-A Hickory Friday night, fanning 10 in 5.2 innings, allowing two runs on six hits and one walk. This gives him a 1.98 ERA with a 108/30 K/BB in 81.2 innings on the season, allowing a mere 56 hits and a .190 average. He has yet to give up a home run in his professional career spanning 149 innings. Edwards was a 48th round pick in 2011 from high school in Prosperity, South Carolina. Extremely raw when drafted, he's taken to pro ball better than anyone could have hoped, showing a solid command of a low-to-mid-90s fastball, a cutter, and a changeup.

***St. Louis Cardinals prospect Tyrell Jenkins pitched to just one hitter yesterday for High-A Palm Beach before being removed from the game, supposedly due to an elbow issue though details are sparse. Earlier in the year he was having shoulder problems. We'll track it. UPDATE: Jenkins has been placed on the disabled list this afternoon with a shoulder injury, so it wasn't the elbow after all.

***Chicago Cubs prospect Javier Baez hit a two-thousand foot home run in his first Double-A contest for Tennessee. He went 0-for-3 with a strikeout after that.

****Today's minor league baseball schedule