Cleveland Sports Forum

Salcedo's introduction to professional baseball didn't start until 2010 when the Braves signed him as a free agent.

2010: DSL Braves
2010: Rome (Sally League)
Total 77 games

2011: Rome (Sally League)
Total 132 games

2012: Lynchburg (Carolina League)
Total 102 game (so far this season)

I've cut Salcedo a little slack here. Very little experince but holding his own in Lynchburg.

In his first full season last year with Rome:
Considering our minor league options at present, I'd have to believe that Salcedo would be ranked pretty high on our prospect list.

CINCINNATI --
Reds fans and partners made it official Friday. The $20,000 goal set by Marty Brennaman earlier this week was met, and the Hall of Fame Reds broadcaster was set to shave his head on the field after Friday night's game with the Pirates.

Through online donations and contributing groups to the "Shave Marty" campaign, Brennaman will be holding up his end of a pledge he made with the Reds earlier this season. If the club won 10 games in a row, Brennaman would lose his hair.

The Reds did just that from July 19-29.

"I never dreamed when I said what I said on the radio last Sunday in Denver that it would go viral, which it has," Brennaman said. "It's ridiculous. A guy is getting his hair cut, what are we talking about here? And raising a lot of money in the process for the [Reds] Community Fund, so it's not all bad."

The grand total of the donations raised will be announced during the postgame activities.

Brennaman said he plans on growing his hair back out to its usually fluffy state, unless the look fits him well.

"I plan on [growing it], unless I like it," Brennaman said. "Then so help me God."

I wish the mlb package that I pay $180 for on Time Warner would let me watch the postgame shows. But, noooooooooo, they have someone watching every game, and as soon as they go to commercial at the end of the game, I get a "Goodnight!" screen.

I never ante'd up for either Comcast or MLBTV this year.

Hall of Fame broadcaster Marty Brennaman has head shaved, raises over $50,000 for charity

http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/mlb-big-l ... --mlb.html

Our Edward Salcedo is Ronny Rodriguez. Also age 20 in High A Carolina League.

Batting 273 with not many walks (14) and an OBA of 308. 67 strikeouts are several ticks better than his rate in 2011. Plenty of power: 16 doubles, 3 triples and 12 homers. Result is a SLG of 438. OPS totals 746.

Not a basestealer, he's 6 of 10 this year.
I posted a long writeup on him from Baseball America about a week ago.

Defense is again erratic though plenty of natural talent. 27 errors

And our current teenage SS with lots of offensive upside is Dorsyss Paulino, age 17, with an OPS over 1000 in Arizona summer league. Very laudatory piece on him from BA posted in Minor Matters a day or two ago.

Ryan Ludwick comes through in the clutch for the Reds again! He now is tied with Pujols for the most RBIs since the AS break!

Remind me why we got rid of Ludwick.

He was FA, and we let him walk.
What I didn't know was this:
Traded as part of a 3-team trade by the St. Louis Cardinals to the San Diego Padres. The San Diego Padres sent Corey Kluber to the Cleveland Indians. The San Diego Padres sent Nick Greenwood (minors) to the St. Louis Cardinals. The Cleveland Indians sent Jake Westbrook to the St. Louis Cardinals.

Ludwick had a long series of injuries before and while he was with Tribe. They gave him a good chance I thought and DFA's him rather reluctantly.

In that 3-way trade Ludwick neither came from nor went to the Indians. Our deal was Westphal for Kluber.

Sox will now explore waiver deals

Williams says club not done trying to improve roster, and Friday signed Wise to Triple-A deal

By Dave van Dyck, Chicago Tribune reporter

Saying he is determined "not to mess with the chemistry we have on and off the field," White Sox general manager Ken Williams said Friday he nonetheless would be looking for help through a complicated waiver trade.

"It's a mistake to sit in this chair and not feel like there's one more move to make," he said. "So I will constantly challenge our staff to find that one more move.

"Sometimes the difference-maker is an impact player, sometimes it's a (smaller move). … The best way I can put it is that we're always looking for that one more move."

The waiver process, Williams said, "is an interesting game that's played, in making a decision to claim or not to claim, block or not to block. It can get very tricky.

"The fortunate thing when you're on top of your division is you're darn near last in the claiming order. So it helps (keep) me from doing something stupid."

Copyright © 2012, Chicago Tribune

Reds broadcaster Marty Brennaman's new haircut 'not bad'

By Rory Glynn, Cincinnati Enquirer

UPDATE, 3:50 p.m. Sunday:

Actor and Reds fan Charlie Sheen, in town for the weekend series between the Reds and Pirates, has pledged to donate $50,000 to the team's Community Fund, matching the amount broadcaster Marty Brennaman raised for charity in return for having his head shaved on the field.

"The City of Cincinnati has opened its arms to me so graciously and I'm compelled to give something back," Sheen said in a statement released by the Reds. "If this contribution points one kid in the right direction, then we've done our job."

The pledge came after Sheen asked a reporter before Friday's game, "How could I donate to that?" Said Brennaman: "It's one of the more memorable nights I've spent at the ballpark. It went off very nicely and we raised a lot of money, and that was the big thing."

10:26 p.m., Saturday: If the man in Marty Brennaman's mirror was light on hair Saturday, Brennaman couldn't be unhappy with what he saw.

Marty Brennaman, the Hall of Fame broadcaster of the Reds, had his head shaved to raise money for charitiy.

A day after agreeing to have his head shorn -- keeping a vow he'd made if the Cincinnati Reds won 10 straight games -- and having it done on the field at Great American Ball Park -- keeping another vow if enough money was raised for the Reds Community Fund -- Brennaman flashed his usual bright smile beneath a newly bald head and said everything turned out just fine.

"My daughter was very concerned," Brennaman said before the game. "She thought I was depressed about losing my hair. But my only emotion was curiosity.

"I was wondering how my head would look bald. if you have a certain shape about your head that's conducive to being bald, it lessens the concern. At the end of the day it's not that bad. It's not as bad as I thought it would be."

While Brennaman may have hoped for not bad, he made sure Friday's vibe was all good.

Wearing an "I'm Still Me" t-shirt in support of the Dragonfly Foundation, a Mason non-profit for children with cancer or blood disorders, the Hall of Fame broadcaster planted a grandfatherly kiss on the heads of three of the foundation's children.

On Saturday, the group's Facebook page said, "Donations are coming in!! Lots made in honor of @MartyBrennaman!"

Brennaman had promised the haircut would be public if $20,000 could be raised for the Reds Community Fund; more than $50,000 was brought in.

Still, baseball clubhouses being baseball clubhouses, Brennaman was in for some good-natured ribbing Saturday.

"Excuse me sir, can I help you?" pitcher Mat Latos called out when Brennaman walked in.

Manager Dusty Baker looked at the media throng for his pregame interview session, which included Brennaman, and asked, "Anybody seen Marty?"

Nobody laughed harder than Brennaman, who countered, "A guy texted me and said, you know who you look like? I said, who? He said, Dusty."

Contributing: Associated Press

Is Skinner still in baseball? Last I heard he was bouncing around the low Minors.

Skinner returns to Buffalo as Knights' skipper

By Mike Harrington

News Sports Reporter

Updated: July 22, 2012, 12:16 AM

Be it manager, bench coach or third-base coach, Joel Skinner just wants to work. He's a baseball lifer at 51 and the former Bisons player and skipper is thoroughly enjoying his initial season as the manager of the first-place Charlotte Knights.

Charlotte is leading the International League in team ERA at 3.15 under veteran pitching coach Richard Dotson and the parent Chicago White Sox won a 14-inning game last week in Kansas City by using eight rookie pitchers, an all-time record.

"It's really neat to see," Skinner said before Saturday's game in Coca-Cola Field. "The thing last week with eight rookie pitchers shows where this organization is going, too. It's really cool. At this level, you try to preach to prepare yourself if an opportunity comes. There's been guys going up with positive influence on outcomes of ballgames and it's always refreshing for the whole group."

Skinner took over in Charlotte at the request of former Indians teammate and longtime friend Buddy Bell, who now runs the Chicago farm system. Skinner was the bench coach last year in Oakland, but was released at the end of the season as manager Bob Melvin had taken over midway through the season from Bob Geren.

"I understood," Skinner said. "Being the bench coach is kind of a relationship-type thing so from the standpoint that Melvin wanted his own people, I had no problem with that."

Skinner directed the Bisons to an 86-59 record and North Division championship in 2000, earning minor-league manager of the year honors from Baseball America. Depleted by callups, the Bisons were first-round losers to Scranton/Wilkes-Barre in the IL playoffs.

He was in Cleveland from 2001-2008, serving as the third-base coach for the '07 Tribe that got within one win of the World Series, and managed Double-A Akron in 2009.

"I said to [Indians GM Chris Antonetti] that we ask players at times to go back to the minor leagues so why is it any different for a staff member to do it, even though I spent nine or 10 quality good years in Cleveland? But I had gone all through their system already, I like to work and I enjoy what I do. So from that standpoint, it was a fit and then Oakland opened up with a major-league opportunity."

Skinner had spent more than 20 years with the Indians before making the move last year and said it was a thrill to see the team grow to its 2007 division title.

"It's all about the players and it always will be," he said. "It was great to see young players like Jake Westbrook and Grady Sizemore and [Travis] Hafner mature and move up whether we got them in trades or whatever and become what they became."

A guy like Victor Martinez was really the poster child of that whole era coming through [Class A] Kinston and Akron and Buffalo. That's what you look back at when you're a staff member."

1st-place Charlotte Knights persist despite perpetual moves

Frequent roster changes are a fact of life for the players, coaches and teams of the International League. The Charlotte Knights haven’t been an exception to that this season. But the Chicago White Sox’s Class AAA franchise has managed to keep winning despite nearing the 100 roster moves this season.

“Roster changes are kind of par for the course when it comes to Triple-A baseball,” Knights manager Joel Skinner said. “But we’ve got a group of players that, for the most part, have gone through this before and understand the situation.” The Knights have made 97 roster moves through Friday, including having had 11 players called up by the White Sox. That’s close to the number of transactions (92) made by Charlotte at this point last season.

There’s one difference, however. In 2011, Charlotte was 52-54 at this point of the season; this year, the Knights are 61-47 and have a comfortable lead in the South division over Norfolk.