Good morning everyone and welcome to the Thursday, March 24th edition of Minor League Ball daily notes, with links and tidbits from around the world of MLB prospects and the minor leagues.
****Colorado Rockies rookie starter Jon Gray left Tuesday's spring training game in the first inning with an abdominal strain. An MRI confirmed the diagnosis but no timetable has yet been set for his return. Gray was having a decent spring on the surface with a 3.86 ERA in 11.2 innings and a good chance for a rotation spot, although his K/BB ratio was poor at 6/8.
****In other Rockies news, Bryan Kilpatrick at Purple Row reviewed Colorado's off-season moves.
****Caitlin Rogers at Pinstripe Alley looks at worst-case season scenarios for the New York Yankees involving injuries and aging veterans.
****Carl Triano at Beyond the Boxscore compares Chris Sale and Clayton Kershaw. Sale compares favorably. Also at BtB, Jen Mac Ramos looks at the career of Rafael Soriano. We'll be doing our own retrospective on Soriano later this week.
****Ben Badler at Baseball America looks at which teams signed the greatest number of players from the international market in 2015. Key fact: four of the top five teams in number of players signed were under penalty provisions for exceeding their bonus pools in 2014.
****Jeff Dahn at Perfectgame.org discusses Cubs shortstop Addison Russell preparing for his second year in the major leagues.
****It isn't a surprise that the Nationals sent top pitching prospect Lucas Giolito down to the minors yesterday. Giolito will certainly be up later this year. As he told the Washington Post, "It’s cool, but you don’t want to be a prospect. You want to be a big leaguer.". That's the right attitude.