Did anyone see the Travis Hafner bomb yesterday? ESPN’s HR tracker had this thing at 481 feet. He hit it out to right field, so it automatically looks even bigger than that since the fence is so much closer there than in center. Anyway, video here… you can’t see the ball land, all you can see is people in the last row of seats turning around to look behind them.

2006 seems like forever ago, eh Travy? 42 HR, .308 avg, 100 runs, 117 RBI… all in only 129 games! He is off to a solid start this year with 2 round trippers in 6 games. His HR/FB rate is 25%! While throwing that stat out after 6 games is more for comical effect than validity, if he can slog through 130 or 140 games this year, maintain his current fly ball rate (45%) and duplicate his HR/FB rate from last year (14.4%) we could be looking at 25-30 HR and a half way decent average. Not a horrible early season gamble on someone owned in 9% of Yahoo! leagues. After all, that type of thinking worked out pretty good for Berkman owners last year, right?

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Aside from Bobby Valentine taking his disdain for Curt Schilling to the media and making things worse in a radio interview this past week, the first true sign that there was a new sheriff in town has come by Valentine saying about Kevin Youkilis he not "into the game" as much as he used to be. People are going to try to bash Valentine for throwing one of his guys under the bus, but frankly I agree with him. Look at Youk's numbers the last couple of seasons. Nonetheless it appears Dustin Pedroia (the face of the franchise) isn't happy. "I don't really know what Bobby's trying to do, but that's not the way we do things here. Maybe that stuff works in Japan." Pedroia told The Boston Globe. Youkilis is out of today's game with groin soreness. 

Although Red Sox manager Bobby Valentine said that the term surgery has not been tossed around, Jacoby Ellsbury was placed on the DL yesterday and it could be a while before we see him again. Dr. Christopher Geary, head of Tufts Medical School in Boston, said that Ellsbury should miss anywhere from six to eight weeks - minimum. That timeframe would have him back in the Red Sox lineup between May 26th and June 9th, but as the doc said this is a minimum amount of time. 

Ellsbury of course is no stranger to seeing a minimum timeframe of an injury become a maximum timeframe. Two seasons ago he was criticized by media and at least one teammatefor his inability to come back from what turned out to be a broken rib on a collision with Adrian Beltre. Obviously this is a completely different injury, but nonetheless the team and Ellsbury will be receiving their share of questions from the media comparing the two scenarios. As Alex Speier points out in his article, the way this injury happened is very similar to what happened with Derek Jeter a few seasons ago in Toronto. Jeter took six weeks to recover and had a great season too. Time will tell how this one plays out.

For now though, Carl Crawford would appear to be the one player that gains the most from this whole turn of events. Crawford will start playing extended spring training games very shortly as a DH and make his way up from there. He would have likely been the Red Sox number six hitter if he were healthy out of the gates, but now could figure in as the team's leadoff hitter when he is ready. Here are some more weekend notes: 

New this evening on Twitter is that Brian Wilson's MRI on his elbow showed structural damage.  He is in the process of getting a second opinion, but the outlook is bleak.  If he undergoes Tommy John sugery, the likely outcome, he'll miss the remainder of the 2012 season.  Who will take over closing duties in San Francisco?

Hey all! Things are pretty busy here in the McMillen household as we are getting ready to welcome a baby girl into our family in 4 days, so I have a lot of work to do. With that in mind, I may not have the time to get a full Daily Notes in for you, but we can look at the probable pitching match ups for today and tomorrow, and make a couple of recommendations for Beat The Streak.

I'm up to an 8 game streak with Chipper Jones and Matt Kemp pulling through for me last night. Tonight it's another DD using Josh Hamilton vs. Nick Blackburn and Carlos Gonzalez vs. Josh Collmenter. The leader is up to a 21 game streak...hoping that falls apart soon or else I won't have to worry about reaching 57 games.

It was a quiet day in baseball yesterday, quiet as in there were only nine games. In those nine games though, there was plenty going on. As I was perusing the box scores from last night I saw that the Angels and Twins scored a combined 19 runs at Target Field. "Josh Willingham had to have done something there..." Sure enough, home run number four. Easily turning in the best profit so far this year, when do you think about selling? Who are other guys that have gotten off to a hot streak compared to where they were drafted? 

Josh Willingham -  In 6 games he has 4 HR's, is batting .409 and has a hit in every game. The absolute best part about his early season HR binge is that three of his HR's (one in each of the last three games) have all been at Target Field. I said it before the season started and I'll say it again, Willingham has a history of hitting HR's in ballparks that pitcher friendly. He has so much power that it doesn't matter where he is playing. The AVG is going to come down, and he probably isn't going to hit 50 bombs this year, but I don't see any reason to "sell high" right now. Yes, I am obtaining him in a trade at the moment, but he isn't the main piece and I have always been a Willingham fan. Picking him up is business as usual for me anyway.

The first two weeks of a baseball season are the toughest to get through. If a player starts off slow how long a leash do you give him on your roster? It's a lot easier if the guy is a veteran and has a history of slow starts (Teixeira and Tulowitzki come to mind), but what about younger players? At what point does potential get thrown out the window? We've heard the cliches, the baseball season is a marathon, or, don't panic it's early. This is something I struggle with every year. When gambling on draft day with player, how early is too early to cut the cord on someone (even temporarily) when you drafted the player based on potential? A few guys I'm struggling with...

Drew Stubbs - After 6 games this year, Stubbs is batting .200 with 3 runs scored. He has three 0-for's on the year, and walked twice. He has only 5 K's so far, so he is well below pace on that from where he was last year. He was batting leadoff, scoring runs last year and stealing bases. He's batting 7th this year, has no steals and certainly isn't on a pace for 90 runs. I knew going in that he would have a low average, hit league average for HR's but I was expecting him to get those steals too. Outfielders are a dime a dozen, but guys that can hit 15 HR's and steal 40 bases aren't.

The pitchers have largely stolen the show the last couple of days.  Stellar pitching performances could be found at all levels of the minors on Tuesday and Wednesday.
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