PiTY PoTY

Yes, it’s time for our weekly "PiTY PoTY" … and there were so many choices this week it was a tough one to narrow down. Needless to say, within nanoseconds of my e-mailing my choices to Jonathan (it was my turn to choose) he teased me about not giving enough love to HIS choices for the week. But he teases because he cares, right? … Right?

So … for this week’s Player of the Week I went with Tucson Sidewinders (Diamondbacks) first baseman Chris Carter, who not only batted .577 in 26 at-bats but now has a 15-game hitting streak dating back to opening day … add to that his finishing the regular 2006 campaign 7-for-13 with hits in his last three games, and that gives him an active 18-gamer going …

On the season he’s hitting .444 (my lucky number) and his last six games have been multi-hit games … one thing that’s interesting though is he has no home runs and five RBIs so far, whereas last year he had 19-97. I’m sure the power will come …

On the pitching side, our Pitcher of the Week is Brett Smith of the Trenton Thunder (Yankees) in the Double-A Eastern League. This past Saturday, he tossed seven innings of no-hit ball to lead the team to the win over the Binghamton Mets to lower his season ERA to 1.56. In an earlier start this week he’d gone 5 1/3 innings of four-hit shutout ball with seven strikeouts.

A second-round pick in 2004, Smith reached his pitch limit after seven and had no problems with handing the ball over to the pen with the no-hitter on the line.

So tune into the show today and hear who the runners-up were!

And I’m off on the road again tomorrow, heading up to Scranton/Wilkes-Barre face the Ottawa Lynx (going to see Philip Hughes pitch tomorrow!) and then back down to Reading to see the R-Phils host the Harrisburg Senators.