Nationals Farm Authority

I’ve added a few new links to the blogroll on the lefthand side.

• Perfect Game Crosschecker - PGCC is an invaluable resource for information on college, JuCo, and high school baseball. It’s a subscription service for much of the information but there are enough free articles to make it worth checking it out. Among the guys who write there are Allan Simpson, the guy who started Baseball America; and Patrick Ebert, who also contributes at the fantastic brewerfan.net, an amazing resource for draft-related information.
• The College Baseball Blog - Exhaustive and up-to-date coverage of the happenings around college baseball.
• Saber-Scouting.com - A new site on the web. It’s a combination of sabermetrics and scouting. One of the contributors there is Frankie Piliere who provided Nationals coverage for Scout.com.

DC Wire at the Washington Post has the news …

D.C. Wire just learned about at least one little piece of that puzzle. We got an invite in the mail announcing a new four-game high school baseball series that will be held at Nationals Park in Southeast on May 31.

Let’s hope this is another step by the Lerners in working with the local baseball community. They have played an exhibition game against Georgetown and christened Nationals Park with a game between George Washington University and St. Joseph’s University. By developing a relationship with the local high school baseball community, Nationals Park can ideally serve as consistent site for prep baseball going forward.

Also from the posting …

The day-long series of games will feature contests between two top public school teams, two private school teams and a championship between the winner of each game. There also will be an all-star game featuring two players from every high school — public, private and charter — in the city. 

There were no specifics about the teams involved but folks who stop by here should hold out hope that St John’s College High School from Washington DC is one of the participants. The Cadets were ranked #15 in the US by Baseball America for the week of March 31, and two of the Cadets, LHP Scott Silverstein and OF LJ Hoes, are considered among the top high schoolers in this year’s draft. Silverstein is committed to the University of Virginia while Hoes has committed to the University of North Carolina.

The Nationals can use this as an opportunity to scout players for the future, be it the 2008 draft or beyond.

Most folks are aware of baseball-reference.com, an amazing resource for fans of major league baseball looking for statistics. Well, the guys at BBR have outdone themselves, today introducing minor.baseball-reference.com. The site has historical statistical information for the minor leagues back to 1992. Some examples:

• Nationals/Expos affiliates history
• Sortable batting statistics
• Sortable pitching statistics

A huge tip of the cap to Sean Forman and his crew at BBR.

Michael Walsh of the Potomac Nationals discusses the prevalence of Nats blogs. Included are thoughts from Todd Jacobson, MissChatter (AKA Cathy Taylor), and yours truly.

Sorry about the light posting, but until the minor leaguers show up (reportedly this weekend), things will be quiet. In the interim, Jeff Sackmann at the Hardball Times ranks the top minor league organizations. Guess who is #30?

Barry Svrluga took a look at the motley assortment of irregulars that comprise the Nationals blog world.