Baseball In The daytime: 17 August 2009

The deadline for signing your draft picks is 10 p.m. Mountain tonight, and in my mind's eye I can see Scott Boras in his war room plotting the overthrow of baseball as we know it.

Seriously, I hope Strasburg signs. The Nats need help, and the Royals don't need the fireballing righty matriculating in independent ball for a year so they can pick him up in 2010 (see Crow, Aaron). Make it happen, Boras.

Your lone day game, after the jump...

Arizona @ Atlanta, 2:05 Last year MLB waited on the edge of its collective seat for the call-up of Max Scherzer, Arizona's No. 1 prospect and one of the best arms in the minors. He's been in the bigs for just over a calendar year now, and the results have been mixed. He strikes out a lot of guys, but he also doesn't win much and doesn't go deep into games. You could blame both on the woeful D'Bags, who offer little in the way of run support and prefer to baby their prized asset.

This year's big midseason pitching addition was Tommy Hanson, whom the Braves kept down on the farm until they could squeeze another season out of his service time prior to arbitration. Cheap bastards, those Braves. He's been solid out of the gate, quite the opposite of Scherzer actually. His K numbers have been disappointing, but he's assembled a nice 7-2 record while averaging over six innings an outing. The two kids meet today at Turner Field, and it promises to be humid. Insert clever quip here and Play Ball!