Minor League Ball Gameday, Wednesday, April 5th

Good afternoon everyone and welcome to the Minor League Ball Gameday discussion thread for Wednesday, April 5th. The minor league baseball season gets started tomorrow and that will be the main focus of the Gameday feature going forward, but here are some additional baseball headlines to keep you occupied while your boss isn’t looking this afternoon.

****MLB Scoreboard

****Beyond the Boxscore’s Daily Recap of Major League Action will be a must-read each day.

****Minor League Baseball Fan Guide from Milb.com

****Lots of attention being paid this morning to Joey Gallo’s monster home run for the Texas Rangers off Cleveland Indians right-hander Carlos Carrasco: 443 feet with record-setting exit velocity. Someone needs to invent a time machine so we can go back and see what Babe Ruth’s exit velocity was.

****It didn’t get as much attention but Miguel Sano’s home run for the Minnesota Twins on Opening Day was a blast, too. It won’t embed properly for me but click here for the link. Footage starts at 10 seconds.

****New York Yankees prospect Gleyber Torres will play multiple infield positions for Double-A Trenton. Seems like a good plan to me.

****Eight minor league players were suspended for using various illegal substances by MLB yesterday.

****Dave Cameron at Fangraphs explains the spike in velocity readings so far this year. The reason is MLB’s switch from PITCHF/x to Statcast to measure velocity. The methodologies are slightly different and Statcast numbers will be a bit higher (about one MPH) than the numbers we are used to seeing.