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Posey is Second Straight CCBL Alum MVP

San Francisco’s Buster Posey was named National League MVP today. The former Y-D Red Sox standout is the second straight Cape Cod Baseball League alumnus to earn NL MVP honors, after Ryan Braun won it last year.

Posey, 25, played in the Cape League just five years ago, shining for Y-D in 2006 and 2007, but has rocketed to stardom with the Giants. In this his fourth MLB season, he hit .336 with 24 homers and led the Giants to the World Championship.

If my research is right, this MVP honor is the eighth won by a former Cape Leaguer. Before Braun last year, Jeff Kent (Cotuit ’88) was the last to win. Mo Vaughn (Wareham ’87 & ’88) won in 1995. Frank Thomas (Orleans ’88) and Jeff Bagwell (Chatham ’88) both won in 1994, with Thomas also winning in 1993. Interstingly, Kent, Vaughn, Thomas and Bagwell all played on the Cape in 1988. Must have been a heck of a year.

Thurman Munson (Chatham ’67) rounds out the list. He won in 1976.

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Next Three All-Star Games Already Set

The Cape League announced today that it has already determined the host sites for the next three All-Star Games.

Next summer’s game will be played at Y-D’s Red Wilson Field, which last hosted an ASG in 2006.

The 2014 game will be played in Bourne, and it’ll be the first time the Braves have ever hosted. That’s kind of amazing.

In 2015, the game will head to Wareham.

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Orleans Takes on Harwich Tonight

TeamLogo_Harwich2003.jpgfirebird1.jpgUPDATE: This game has been postponed to Thursday at 7 p.m. because of rain on the Cape.

The first real marquee match-up of the season gets underway at 7 p.m. tonight when Orleans visits Harwich at Whitehouse Field. The teams have already met once this year, in the fourth game of the season, but that was before we really had a good feel for who they were.

Now we have about as strong a feeling as you can have at this early point that they’re the best teams in the league.

Orleans beat Harwich 5-4 in the first meeting, a day after their first loss of the season. More than a week later, that’s still the only loss for the Firebirds, who are 9-1 and have caught fire offensively in recent games. The Firebirds have scored eight, eight, 14 and seven runs in their last four games.

For Harwich, that loss to Orleans was its second of the season, but the Mariners haven’t lost since. They’ve been incredibly impressive with the bats, smashing a league-best 18 home runs. Amazingly, only four teams in the last two years have hit more than 18 home runs for an entire season. At this rate, the Mariners are on pace for 79 home runs, which would smash the Cape League record of 59. Ultimately, I don’t think they’ll smash it, but they could approach it.

It all adds up to a great match-up, and that’s not even touching on the pitching. LSU standout Aaron Nola is scheduled to make his second start for the Mariners. He struck out 10 and allowed two hits in five shutout innings last time. Orleans will go with Dartmouth veteran Kyle Hunter who gave up three hits and just two unearned runs in his first outing.

It’s funny. Sometimes the Cape League can be short on storylines at this point in the season, when nobody has separated themselves and nobody has really stood out as a team.

These two teams have stood out in a major, major way. It should be fun tonight.

If you can’t get out there, remember to click the Game Day link above for all your live coverage needs.

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Happy Opening Day

The first official day of summer is still six days away, but for you and me, summer really begins today. The 2012 Cape Cod Baseball League season opens tonight with a full slate of games.

Your schedule:

Hyannis at Cotuit, 5 p.m.
Falmouth at Y-D, 5 p.m.
Bourne at Harwich, 7 p.m.
Brewster at Orleans, 7 p.m.
Chatham at Wareham, 7 p.m.

If you’re catching a game tonight, enjoy it. Work calls so I probably won’t be, but in the meantime, I’ll be rolling through the last three early looks here on rightfieldfog.com. If you need your Cape League fix, keep checking back.

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Wrapping Up The Draft

mlb-logo.jpgThe 2012 Major League Baseball Draft is in the books and, as always, plenty of names from Cape League summers had their names called. The league will have the official number for all 40 rounds at some point (I’ll let them count), but we know at this point that the first round was full of Cape Leaguers. Twelve of 31 picks — and 12 of 14 collegiate players — selected in the first round spent some amount of time on the Cape. Some just made cameos, like Mark Appel, Mike Zunino and Kevin Gausman, but there were also some Cape League veterans like Andrew Heaney, Kyle Zimmer and Victor Roache.

The 12 players in the first round was up significantly from the last two years. Eight went last year and only six the year before. Twelve was the most in the first round since the banner year of 2008, when 14 CCBL’ers were picked, including future Major Leaguers Buster Posey, Gordon Beckham and Justin Smoak.

Zunino, who played briefly with Y-D last summer, was drafted third overall, the highest for a Cape Leaguer since 2009, when Dustin Ackley went second. Mark Appel, who also played for Y-D, was in the running for the top overall pick but dropped to eighth. He would have been the first Cape Leaguer to go 1-1 since Luke Hochevar in 2006.

Here’s the first-round list:

3 – Mike Zunino – Y-D ’11 – Seattle
4 – Kevin Gausman – Harwich ’11 – Baltimore
5 – Kyle Zimmer – Cotuit ’11 – Kansas City
8 – Mark Appel – Y-D ’11 – Pittsburgh
9 – Andrew Heaney – Falmouth ’11 – Miami
20 – Chris Stratton – Harwich ’11 – San Francisco
22 – Marcus Stroman – Orleans ’10 & ’11 – Toronto
23 – James Ramsey – Y-D ’11 – St. Louis
24 – Deven Marrero – Cotuit ’10 & ’11 – Boston
25 – Richie Shaffer – Chatham ’11 – Tampa Bay
28 – Victor Roache – Cotuit ’11 – Milwaukee
31 – Brian Johnson – Y-D ’11 – Boston

Eight other former Cape Leaguers were selected in the supplemental first round, bringing the total to 20 of 60 picks. Reigning MVP Travis Jankowski went in the supplemental round, 44th overall to San Diego.

A few other notes on the draft:

  • Y-D had four first-round picks, just as they did in 2008, when they were coming off the 2007 CCBL championship. The difference this time was that only one of the four was a real mainstay. — James Ramsey. Brian Johnson, Mark Appel and Mike Zunino only made brief stops.

  • It was interesting to see trends develop in this the first draft since the new draft rules were introduced. The one that stood out the most was that several teams opted to take college seniors and easy signs in the fourth-to-10th round range in an effort to save money and be sure they could sign those picks. Baseball America has a good rundown of the situation.

  • The new signing deadline is July 13, so we won’t know for sure how the new rules affect how much talent gets to college fields, but people are speculating that the new rules will end up being good for college baseball. Teams just aren’t going to be able to sign players away from college with out-of-slot deals like they used to.

  • In recent years, quite a few college juniors came to the Cape to improve their draft stock. That may not be as common now because of the earlier signing deadline, but those guys are typically late additions to rosters anyway, so we’ll have to see how it plays out.

  • One big-name junior who is already on a roster is NCAA batting champ Raph Rhymes of LSU, who’s slated for Cotuit. I thought Rhymes would go relatively early but he didn’t get picked until the 30th round by the Yankees. Rhymes has said that he plans to return to school, which probably means he plans to play on the Cape as well. Junior teammate Mason Katz, who played for Y-D last summer, wasn’t drafted at all, so I wouldn’t be surprised to see him pop up on a Cape roster soon.

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    First Look at Team USA

    USA Baseball has posted its first roster update of the season. It includes seven players who are on Cape League rosters, including San Diego slugger Kris Bryant, NC State freshman ace Carlos Rodon and Ole Miss star Bobby Wahl.

    The list:

    Kris Bryant – San Diego – Chatham
    Austin Cousino – Kentucky – Hyannis
    Carlos Rodon – NC State – Harwich
    Ryne Stanek – Arkansas – Bourne
    Trea Turner – NC State – Y-D
    Bobby Wahl – Ole Miss – Cotuit
    Trevor Williams – Arizona State – Orleans

    It’s nice to see that, so far, no one team is getting hit harder than another. I would really like to see Rodon, though. He was a 16th-round draft pick last year and is lighting up this spring, posting an 8-0 record and 108 strikeouts.

    Team USA will continue to update its roster in the next few weeks so we’ll keep an eye on it.

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    All-Star Game Headed to Harwich

    The league announced yesterday that the 2012 Cape Cod Baseball League All-Star Game will be played at Harwich’s Whitehouse Field on Saturday, July 28. It’ll be the first All-Star Game held on the Cape since 2008. The game was held at Fenway Park each of the last three years, but the league and the Red Sox couldn’t reconcile the schedule to make it work this year. The Red Sox will, however, have a “Cape League Day,” for their July 22 game, which will include the preliminary round of the CCBL’s home run derby.

    I never had a strong opinion either way about having the game at Fenway. I think it helped the game gain a little more exposure, but it also took it away from some of the diehards who watch all summer. The flip side will be true with it back on the Cape, but either way, it’ll still be a great day of baseball. It always is.

    The Mariners, defending Cape League champs, were chosen as All-Star hosts by a vote of the Cape League Executive Committee. It’ll be the first All-Star game in Harwich since 2002. Former Major Leaguer and current Japanese League star Matt Murton won the home run derby that year, while the West won the game 4-1

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    Rosters Galore

    Rosters for 2012 have been popping up on team web sites for a while now. This week, the league put out its early list of every roster. You can see the full rosters here (PDF).

    We have about four months to get to know these names. For now, a few that caught my eye: reigning ACC Freshman of the Year Colin Moran and reigning CCBL Pitcher of the Year Ryan Eades returning to Bourne; Vanderbilt freshman Tyler Beede, a first-round pick in 2011, coming to Cotuit; and San Diego sophomore Dylan Covey, the 14th pick in the 2010 draft, slated for Orleans.