Jun 25th, 2009
Flowers, Viciedo Named to Futures Game Rosters
By Dan Santaromita
A pair of Barons were selected to play in the Futures Game July 12, 2009 at Busch Stadium in St. Louis.
Catcher Tyler Flowers is on the U.S. Team roster and third baseman Dayan Viciedo is on the World Team roster. Flowers, 23, is hitting .281 with 27 extra base hits and 38 RBI. He leads the Southern League with a .433 on-base percentage and is second in slugging (.522), OPS (.956) and walks (48). Flowers is clearly a top hitting prospect, but whether or not he can stay at catcher remains to be seen. A wider audience will be able to see Flowers behind the plate a bit during the Futures Game. The full U.S. roster can be seen here.
Viciedo, 20, is in his first year of Minor League Baseball. He is hitting .279 with 6 HR. Dayan ranks fifth in the league with 43 RBI and tied for fifth in hits with 78. He has shown solid improvement month by month. Viciedo hit just .234 with a putrid .543 OPS in April. He hit .293 in May, but patience and power still were not present. In June, Dayan has hit .299 with 8 walks and 8 strikeouts in 87 at-bats. Clearly, he is coming around and further improvement seems likely considering his age and circumstances. See the World roster here.
Former Sox prospect Chris Carter will be representing the A’s on the U.S. roster.
Previous White Sox representatives in the Futures Game
2008: Clayton Richard and Chris Getz, U.S.
2007: Fautino De Los Santos, World
2006: Josh Fields, U.S.
2005: Chris Young, U.S. (Bobby Jenks was named to the U.S., but got promoted to the Majors before the game.)
2004: Arnie Munoz, World
2003: Neal Cotts, U.S.
2002: Joe Borchard, U.S. and Edwin Almonte, World
2001: Joe Borchard, U.S.
2000: Mark Buehrle, U.S. and Aaron Myette, World (Jon Garland was called up to the Majors and Buehrle took his spot on the roster.)
1999: Aaron Myette, World and Kip Wells, U.S.
DLS was the last person I was really excited for to see in the Futures Game. I always like Getz and Richard was solid but this time we are going to have two guys with legitimate all star potential in the game. Should be fun to see and as always I’ll be glued to the event. I wonder who I’ll get to see next year since I plan on attending the event (Anaheim Stadium).
I guess this means that neither one will compete in the home run derby at Rickwood.
That stinks. They’d have been fun to see in a HR derby.
Why don’t they have a Futures Game HR Derby? Seems like an obvious thing to do when the players are already there. Grab 4 or so guys on the rosters. Fans would love it.
That would be pretty damn cool.