A beautiful day here at AT&T Park in San Francisco, site of today’s Futures Game. Matt Tolbert is here, wearing No. 4 for the U.S. Team. It sounds like the jersey he was issued had Tigers logos instead of Twins logos, but they were working on getting that fixed.

Matt Garza will be missed. The rosters are fairly thin this year. I was looking forward to seeing Tigers outfield prospect Cameron Maybin, but he has a shoulder injury and will miss a couple weeks. Justin Upton and Evan Longoria will share the spotlight, holding down the No. 2 and No. 3 spots in the U.S. Team batting order.

Tolbert is not in the starting lineup, but here’s guessing manager Dave Winfield will get him in there sometime.

Update: Tolbert, a do-everything infielder in the Denny Hocking mold, entered the game at first base in the fourth inning. He is due up first in the bottom of the sixth. … Tolbert just struck out on a 96-mph fastball from Franklin Morales, a lefthander from the Rockies’ organization. Note, the Twins logo was visible on Tolbert’s sleeve. … Tolbert was waiting on deck when the U.S. Team made its final out in a 7-2 loss.

World Team lineup: Michael Saunders CF, Chin-Lung Hu SS, Wladimir Balentien RF, Joey Votto 1B, Max Ramirez DH, German Duran 2B, Robinson Diaz C, Carlos Gonzalez LF, Freddy Sandoval 3B. RHP Rick Vanden Hurk.

U.S. Team lineup: Jacoby Ellsbury LF, Justin Upton CF, Evan Longoria 3B, Ian Stewart DH, Steven Pearce 1B, Brent Lillibridge SS, Jay Bruce RF, Chris Coghlan 2B, Bryan Anderson C. RHP Jeff Niemann.

AT&T Park. Scheduled first pitch: 11:05 p.m. (Central).

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 8th, 2007 at 2:24 pm and is filed under Around MLB. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.