And I mean MAJOR. The roster posted on the Lynx website has gone from about 10 guys to 40 sometime in the last week or so. I’ll blog more on some of the names in the near future, but a couple jumped out at me. First, Travis Minix is still listed as a Phillies prospect - according to Baseball America, he’s a minor league free agent. I may have missed him resigning with the Phils. From Scout.com:

Last season, the Phillies didn’t have their bullpen completely settled coming into camp. The same is true this season. So, will this be the year that Travis Minix can break through and win a spot with the major league club? If he does, it will be a bit of a surprise, since he’s not being talked about as a candidate for a bullpen job.
A veteran reliever with eight minor league seasons under his belt, Minix has a career ERA of 2.91 in the pros. His Triple-A ERA is only slightly higher at 3.08 in all or parts of three seasons, covering 76 appearances. He has a strong walks-to-strikeouts ratio, a career record of 27-19 and consistently holds opponents to averages around the .220 mark. So why hasn’t Minix gotten a shot at the majors?

This story isn’t “subscriber only content” - so you can read the rest here.

The other guy I’ll note today was Joseph Bisenius. I blogged about his prospects in December and November. In my December post I noted, “One of the guys left on the pitching roster, Joe Bisenius may stick, but his prospects look sufficiently promising that he may not (how’s that for definitive?)…” It seems that Pat Gillick falls into the “sufficiently promising” camp -

The second mention of an unknown commodity focused on the bullpen. When asked which player had the best chance to emerge this spring, Gillick flatly said Joe Bisenius.

Bisenius, pronounced BYE-senius, had a breakout year in 2006 and impressed scouts this fall. The former 12th-round pick out of Oklahoma City University didn’t generate much buzz before the season, but after a few Double-A appearances, the Phillies knew they were sitting on something hot. The right-hander’s fastball tops 94-95 mph, but his bread-and-butter pitch is a nasty, late-breaking curve.

From beerleaguer’s breakdown of a radio interview given by Pat Gillick last week.

I blogged about Brian way back in September, and it’s time for an update.

From scout.com:

Originally a 31st round draft pick of the San Francisco Giants, Burres worked his way through the minor leagues to earn a spot on their 40-man roster. Prior to the 2006 season, however, the Giants passed Burres through waivers to clear some roster space. The Orioles claimed him and he was a pleasant surprise in Ottawa, putting up solid numbers in 26 starts.

DOB: 04/08/81 Height: 6-1 Weight: 165 B/T: L/L

Brian Burres’s age 25 season::
Level IP ERA K/9 BB/9 HR/9
AAA 139.0 3.76 7.1 3.7 0.91
IL AVG. — 3.80 6.9 3.2 0.76

Scouting

Burres works with a fastball that mostly sits in the 86-88 MPH range, sometimes a few ticks higher. Though the velocity is merely adequate for a left-hander, the pitch has good downward movement and helped him achieve a 1.01 GO/AO ratio. He also works with a solid breaking ball and changeup. The changeup is the better of the two pitches, but both are perfectly usable in the long run.

Burres had an interesting platoon split, in that the southpaw was much more effective against right-handers. Some of that can be chalked up to sample size, since Burres didn’t face many left-handers despite a significant workload. Much of it, however, has to do with Burres’s well regarded pitchability. He had no problem working off of his changeup to righties, or working backwards as you’ll hear scouts say. Burres has a slender build, but it has not hurt his durability.

Outlook

Burres will be given a chance to make the team out of spring training and, entering his age 26 season, his spot on the 40-man roster might be in jeopardy if he is sent back to Norfolk. He has an outside chance of eventually becoming a back-of-the-rotation starter, but the Orioles will be looking at him as a long reliever. Obviously, his splits indicate that he would make a poor choice as a LOOGY, but it‘s not like Sam Perlozzo has shown much of a tendency to pay attention to things like that (so far). The acquisition of Jamie Walker means Burres will have to beat out the injury-riddled John Parrish and Kurt Birkins, but he should at least provide insurance for the big league bullpen while putting up good numbers in the pitcher-friendly Norfolk Stadium.

This comes as a bit of a relief - fan favorite, Howie Clark, has been signed by the San Diego Padres according to Baseball America. I blogged about Howie here (the Junior Lynx Clinic) back in September. Nice to see that he’s secured a job for another season. I’ll have to look at some of the left coast blogs to see what his prospects of making the Padres are (or, as is more likely, what the “speculation” is). You can watch a little bit of Howie “in action” at the end of the Junior Lynx Clinic video which appears in the “Instant Replay” section of the blog on the right.

Oh sure, PhuturePhillies is breaking down the importance of 07 for Kyle Kendrick, and has sailed past 10,000 hits in less than a month. And over at beerleaguer, they’ve got all the news on the Chase Utley signing and a preview of the 2007 season, but do they have a picture of my daughter in her brother’s Lynx toque?

{Shhhh…. Don’t tell Zechariah….}

Or a video of Lynx Stadium, shot in January while riding a bike? Damn straight they don’t. Clearly I can’t compete on the analysis side - but while I was at a 67’s game today, I gave this some more thought. As much thought as you can give to something while surrounded by fifteen 10 year old boys in the birthday section. With all due respect to Dave Gross, my afternoon was more like something out of “Lord of the Flies” than his experience last Friday night (I’ll swear a heard a conch shell between the second and third period). Am I going too fast for anyone?

Where was I? Right. Clearly, this is a layman’s type of blog - all I have to offer are blood, sweat and tears. Okay, that was a little over the top - all I have to offer are photos, the occasional video, and stolen analysis. It is what it is. But once April rolls around - homefield advantage swings to ottawalynx.blospot.com (I can’t even take credit for the “homefield advantage” thing - that belongs to RD.)

Rats.

The internet is truly an amazing place/tool. Using www.archive.org I was able to pull some old Lynx websites out of the vault. This link corresponds with the screenshot (ed: Just figured out how to capture a screen image - can you tell?) taken above. Some of the lynx, er… links are no longer active (Oh come on - that’s gold!), but there’s a transcript of a Q+A with Kyle Bostwick that still works. The parts of the page that work give a nice snapshot of the club six years ago. Of the pages that were archived (that I looked at) this one seemed to be the most functional.

Some days are just tougher than others. Which isn’t to say that there isn’t anything to blog about - quite the opposite, lots of news and stories are out there. Since the advent of phuturephillies, I’ve really begun to question the value of my own blog - do people want to read stuff I’ve just “cut and pasted” until April? Any feedback would be appreciated.

Onward and upward - how many days until Opening Day?

Do you get the feeling Chris Coste has had enough of people questioning his ability?

“I had absolutely no idea what to expect, coming into this season,” Coste said. “I did think I was in a pretty good spot.”

Of course, the catcher spot isn’t his real concern now, anyway. It looks as if he’ll need another strong spring: “I hope a .472 average will be good enough to make the team this time.”
(Entire article can be found here)

Most of the pundits believe that the Phillies will carry three catchers - including ESPN who’ve actually placed Coste ahead of Ruiz in their depth chart.

*** UPDATE ***

From over at beerleaguer:

When asked about the catching situation, Gillick restated his confidence in Carlos Ruiz and Rod Barajas, indicating Ruiz is here to stay. Meanwhile, it seems Coste has dropped out of the catching mix entirely; Gillick even went so far as to restate Jayson Werth’s ability to catch.

This came from a radio interview given by Pat Gillick yesterday. Here’s a link to the podcast where you can hear the entire interview.

I’ve been following Mike Costanzo’s contributions to PhillyBaseballNews this off-season (see here and here). Mike’s most recent contribution came in yesterday:

With the end of the football season, I’ve started to really get anxious to head to Florida. I’ll head to Clearwter in mid-February and start getting ready. I won’t be in the major league camp this spring, but that’s okay. No matter which camp I’m in or what I’m doing, spring training is all about getting ready for the season and I’m looking forward to it. I’ve been doing a lot of work this winter and I’m in great shape heading toward spring. I’ve been hitting, fielding and throwing just about every day, but nothing replaces getting outside and starting to get ready for another season. I’m looking forward to Double-A ball this summer in Reading. It’s a big step and I’ve worked hard to get there.

The prospect rankings are starting to come out. Baseball America didn’t even have me in their top ten, which was a little surprising. I thought I would be in there, especially since I was sixth on their list last season. I don’t pay a whole lot of attention to rankings like that, because it’s something that you can’t control. All I can do is go out and play hard and see what happens, so in some ways, not getting on a prospect list just serves to motivate me even more.

Coincidentally (?) phuturephillies.com broke down the stats in his profile of Mike Costanzo yesterday also.

Pilfered entirely from the Lynx website and reprinted with permission….

Take Me Out to the Ball Game
01/16/2007 3:56 PM ET
MLB.com

Houses, townhouses, apartments, rooms to rent.if you know of a place for rent
from April to September, send the information to Riley Denver, Director of Media and Public Relations, at denver@ottawalynx.com. You can also fax information to 613-747-5969 or send it to 300 Coventry Rd., Ottawa, ON K1K4P5.

I was pleasantly surprised by the level of local baseball coaching at Zak’s Winter Ball training camp - I believe one of the coaches is from the East Nepean Baseball Association, home of the 2006 Canadian Junior Little League champs.

Late last season, one of the Lynx staff members suggested that I should take a look at CollegeBaseballConnect a local company that helps connect “young players with American college baseball programs and scholarship opportunities.

College Baseball Connect grew out of the personal experience of a Canadian father, enduring first hand the trials and tribulations of finding the right baseball program for his son. Hard work and hundreds of cold calls later paid off for us. “

It looked really interesting, but at 9 years old, notwithstanding his clear God given talent, we figured Zak was a little too young to take advantage of the services offered. I recently discovered the President of the company is a former Lynx employee.