A Lefthanded Pitching Prospect and a 14-year old Soccer Phenom.

Way back near the beginning of Eisenberg Sports(6/2/03), just before the baseball draft, I did a story on James Madison pitcher Kurt Isenberg. With left-handed college pitchers being such a desired item, especially by the Moneyball crowd, it figured that Isenberg would go high. Sure enough, he landed with Billy Beane disciple JP Ricciardi in Toronto in the second round. Some time has passed now, and I thought I would catch up on how young Kurt was doing.

Isenberg is currently pitching for the Auburn Doubledays in the New York - Penn League, and I'm pleased to report he is doing fine. Kurt is 4-2 with a 1.98 ERA, on a team that has a 3.42 ERA. He has pitched 41 innings and struck out 43, with only 11 walks. He has given up only 27 hits, and only one homerun.

Meanwhile, Isenberg's team isn't doing badly, either. Their record stands at 43-12. The Doubledays actually come close to me, visiting Lowell at the end of the month for a weekend series. Maybe I'll get lucky and find a ticket for Isenberg's game.


The Premier League opens next week, and there's a good chance that Manchester United's starting netminder will be Tim Howard. Howard joins Kasey Keller of Tottenham Hotspurs and Brad Friedel of Blackburn Rovers in the group of Awesome American Goalies Playing In England. But if you want to keep your eye on one American, watch out for Freddy Adu. He's 14 years old, originally from Ghana, and will lead the USA under-17 team in the World Championships in Finland beginning on August 13th. Meanwhile, the team is preparing for this tournament by playing several matches in England. In three contests, Adu has five goals, including a goal and an assist in a 2-1 win over Manchester United's under-17 team, and a hat trick against Blackburn's under-18s. In three wins, Freddy has 5 of the team's 7 goals.

With USA goalies always among the world's elite, and young forwards like Adu, Landon Donovan, and DeMarcus Beasley on the rise, we Americans are poised to do some serious damage in the 2010 World Cup.

BAP Scores:

Boston 9 Anaheim 3 from Tim at Musings From RSN


BAP - Bos .875, Ana .514
OPS - Bos 1.155, Ana .686
I'm not surprised that the Angels aren't going back to the playoffs, but I didn't think they would fall apart like this. They were over .500 and playing well going into the break, and i thought they'd make a little run.

New York 7 Texas 5 From Jeremy at NYU
BAP - NY .813, Tex .770
OPS - NY .813 Tex .657

From Wednesday
Texas 5 New York 4
BAP - Tex .868, NY .649
OPS - Tex .687, NY .779
A win for BAP.

Tomorrow and Sunday I'll get caught up on the some of the games missed over the last two days. In the meantime, these are the standings in Contest II:

BAP 6-0
OPS 5-1

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