Congratulations to this weeks selection of our F&D Pro Player of the Week.

I’m delighted to report for all of our loyal subscribers that we had plenty of players to consider for our Aussie PRO PLAYER OF THE WEEK on this occasion. This, of course, means that we have had plenty of Australian professionals who are performing very well lately with the only downside being our difficulty in who to nominate for the top award and also for honourable mention.

We’ll start this week by briefly listing a few of those who narrowly missed special mention and who might have earned a nomination in other weeks. Relief pitchers PHIL STOCKMAN, ADAM BRIGHT and BRENDAN WISE each added two or three more scoreless outings to lower their respective ERA’s, while DANIEL BERG has returned strongly from a spell on the DL with a .308 average last week, including a home run.

Ahead of them this week for ‘Honourable Mention” are hitters LUKE HUGHES (.500 AVG), JOEL NAUGHTON (.875 SLG) and ADAM MORRISSEY (.750 SLG), along with SHANE LINDSAY who struck out nine in a brilliant seven inning scoreless winning start.

You might well ask who could possibly have topped these guys? This time we couldn’t split two pitchers for the top award due to the quite outstanding efforts of GRANT BALFOUR who racked up three saves from another four scoreless appearances over this past week and DREW NAYLOR (AGAIN!) who just shaded Lindsay with his nine inning complete game victory that produced just two hits and a 1/12 walk versus strike out ratio… WOW! The guys must be nudging for promotion and, in Balfour’s case; his scoreless season so far has reinforced his status as a player who should be a bona fide major league pitcher.

This week's nominations are:

Congratulations to this weeks selection of our F&D Pro Player of the Week.

Before we get into the nominations this week, we felt that it was time to provide a special mention for a couple of Australia’s recent major league pitchers who are on the verge of making it back to ‘The Show’ with some very consistent form at ‘AAA’ level. While the specialist relievers will rarely have a large enough sample to feature in our PRO PLAYER OF THE WEEK awards we will mention GRANT BALFOUR who is 1-0, 0.00ERA in six appearances and 10.0 innings with the Tampa Bay Rays’ ‘AAA’ Durham Bulls. Similarly, PHIL STOCKMAN who does get an “Honourable Mention” this week, but his season record of 1-0, 1.93ERA from ten games and 19.1 innings with Atlanta's ‘AAA’ Richmond Braves is also quite outstanding.

I’m afraid that we are going to disappoint those subscribers who’d prefer us to name just one award winner again this week with another three-way split… and, we’d challenge anyone to suggest that any of these guys should be excluded! If we had been forced to select one it would have to be TRENT OELTJEN for the third successive week with his .529 batting average that speaks for itself. However, we simply couldn’t leave out LUKE HUGHES with his .448 average and his .724 slugging percentage from quite a few more at bats. And, what about the week enjoyed by pitcher DREW NAYLOR who owned a 1-0, 1.80ERA record over two starts, with 17 strike outs from 15.0 innings? We think you should all agree that these lads are truly worthy nominations this week.

However, there were also some very good performances that we will acknowledge among our “Honourable Mentions” as a number of Australian players are enjoying very promising starts to the 2008 professional season in the USA, not to mention our SIX major league performers so far this year! Evergreen ADAM MORRISSEY keeps reminding people in professional ranks that he carries a dangerous bat, while NSW pitcher MATT WILLIAMS had one of his best weeks as a professional. Victorian star DANIEL BERG is making steady progress after returning from the DL recently, while JOEL NAUGHTON had almost identical numbers to Berg. Well done to all of those mentioned!

This week's nominations are:

Congratulations to this weeks selection of our F&D Pro Player of the Week.

We should start by CONGRATULATING Victorian infielder BRAD HARMAN for becoming the 26th Australian to reach the US major leagues with the Philadelphia Phillies during this past week... good on you Brad!

This occasion has reminded us about one of the unfortunate realities associated with trying to select a PRO PLAYER OF THE WEEK when we once again have multiple contenders among the pitchers, but these have only been able to appear in one start during the selection period. We just have to accept that these types of selections may be quite unfair to starting pitchers in particular and simply try to do our best. 

However, in order to provide some recognition for starting pitchers, we have included our best performer in the main nomination, along with a couple of hitters that we simply could not split. It may not please everyone that we refuse to narrow down this award to one player, but we will make no apology for seeking to acknowledge Australian baseballers who deserve special recognition... we just don't think that the number of "joint winners" is an issue!

This week we could not split hitters TRENT OELTJEN (.467) and JOEL NAUGHTON (.462), while we also felt that starting pitcher SHANE LINDSAY (1-0, 0.00ERA from 6.0IP with 9 strike outs) was outstanding. Our extra congratulations to Trent Oeltjen for sharing the award in successive weeks and he should be close to cracking the big leagues!

Mainly due to his marvellous strike out ratio, we picked Lindsay ahead of other pitchers that deserve special mention; DREW NAYLOR (1-0, 0.00ERA from 6.0IP with 6 strike outs), DAVID WELCH (1-0, 1.29ERA from 7.0IP) and SCOTT MITCHINSON (1-0, 1.50ERA from 6.0IP). Our other "Honourable Mention" goes to another one of last week's winners; LUKE HUGHES who batted .375 with 9-24 plus four home runs and eight RBI's... he would have won again most weeks!!

This week's nominations are:

Congratulations to this weeks selection of our F&D Pro Player of the Week.

Firstly, our apologies that our PRO PLAYER OF THE WEEK has been a little late on this occasion.

Before we start, we must commiserate with our first winner of the season PETER MOYLAN who is facing season ending "Tommy John surgery" on his elbow. We certainly hope that we didn't "jinx" Pete and that we have not started a disturbing trend for Australian players in 2008. 

This week we refuse to split TRENT OELTJEN (Arizona Diamondbacks 'AAA') and LUKE HUGHES (Minnesota Twins 'AA') for the award. Oeltjen's 8-15 hitting was quite brilliant, but Hughes' 10-23 featured more power and from more at bats.

RICHARD THOMPSON is pushing for a recall to the majors since being assigned to the Los Angeles Angels 'AAA' recently, while his 'AA' Angels club mate MICHAEL COLLINS and Colorado Rockies 'AA' pitcher ADAM BRIGHT were also worthy of special mention this week.

This week's nominations are:

Congratulations to this weeks selection of our F&D Pro Player of the Week.

Welcome to season 2008, and the resumption of our PRO PLAYER OF THE WEEK.

The season has just started of course, and only a few players have had enough starts to be considered.

In the Majors, Braves' reliever Peter MOYLAN was, once again, the outstanding performer. His seven game ERA of 1.59 and a great save in his last outing, puts him head and shoulders above all other contenders. New Padre Justin HUBER
had a fine .500 batting average, but too few at bats to be considered this time.

Pitchers Adam BRIGHT (Tulsa Drillers AA) had five outings with one win and 0.00ERA, while David WELCH (Huntsville Stars AA) had  two starts for two wins and 1.64ERA over 11 innings. The only batter to hit above .300 with more than 20 at bats was Michael COLLINS (Arkansas Travellers AA) with .308 from 26 at bats.

Congratulations to Peter MOYLAN on being this season's first PRO PLAYER OF THE WEEK. Having dominated the award last season, 'Big Pete' looks capable of doing so again this year and we will make no apology if he does!

This week's nominations are: