[BirdWatcher]

A couple of great veteran players having excellent seasons got bad news this past week.

Pittsburgh right fielder Matt Van der Heyden, an almost sure future Hall of Famer, is hampered by a strained triceps and will likely be out of action until at least early August.



Meanwhile, San Francisco's Mike Shervey, who came to the Velocity in an off-season trade after spending eight very successful seasons as a member of the San Antonio Keys, was on pace for a 7+ WAR season in San Fran and helping to propel them back to the top of the MGL West standings thus far. It is a bad time to lose the slugging corner infielder (not that there would be a good time) with the red-hot Denver Brewers having closed the gap in the race to just 1/2 game.



Washington's dynamic 27-year old right fielder, Myon-ki Choi, has extended his consecutive games hitting streak to 25 now and Washington has just over-taken Jacksonville (as of yesterday) for first place in the SJL East.



In Denver, Jerry Lillie, rookie right fielder, who has now been given the nickname Hammer by the Brewers faithful (apparently there is an oblique Lillehammer joke in there somewhere), earned MGL Player of the Week honors for his recent heroics.



In a season that is featuring some impressive performances from young hitters (someday we do need to give some attention to Houston's Atsushi Matsuda, whose exploits have been somewhat lost in the crush of rookie slugging news), the Brewers certainly have two of the young power hitters putting together great seasons, in Hammer and Basher.