Minor League Ball Gameday, Friday, July 15th, 2016

Good afternoon everyone and welcome to the Minor League Ball Gameday thread for Friday, July 15th. The player spreadsheets are temporarily unavailable but daily discussion of prospect happenings and baseball news will continue in the comments section as usual.

Some items on the agenda for today:

****Toronto Blue Jays pitcher Jordan Romano threw five no-hit innings yesterday for Low-A Lansing, part of a six-inning combined team no-hitter. Unfortunately he lost the game by a 1-0 score to the Peoria Chiefs.

****Austin Yamada at Beyond the Boxscore has 10 trivia facts from the first half of the MLB season.

****The big news in prospect-land yesterday of course was the trade of Anderson Espinosa from the Boston Red Sox to the San Diego Padres for lefty Drew Pomeranz. Although I'm high on Espinosa and rank him as one of the top pitching prospects in the game, I think the trade makes sense for the Red Sox. Espinosa won't be ready for at least two years and more probably three or four. He may be an elite pitching prospect but he's still a pitcher; his arm could fall off at any time. It's a win-now move for Boston but there's nothing wrong with that and their farm system remains robust.

As for the Padres, as good as Pomeranz has been this year he wasn't likely to be a part of San Diego's next good team and Espinosa may be. Perhaps they could have gotten a different prospect package with someone closer to the majors, but maybe not. If there isn't such an offer on the table, and you believe in Espinosa, you pull the trigger. It's a calculated risk but he would likely have been a top five pick in the 2016 draft, so it is reasonable to view this as trading Pomeranz for a first round pick.

****At Fangraphs, Carson Cistulli looks at his weekly Fringe Five prospects.