With Nelson Figueroa Joining Phillies, An Even Dozen Independent Grads in Majors

There were a number of late disappointments to be sure, but 11 former Independent Baseball players were on Opening Day major league rosters, and the number will climb to 12 since Philadelphia claimed Nelson Figueroa from the New York Mets. Who are the others?

Brothers J. D. Drew (St. Paul, MN) of Boston and Stephen Drew (Camden, NJ) represent the position players climbing from Independent ranks to the majors.  The other nine are pitchers—the Oakland trio of Craig Breslow (New Jersey Jackals, Little Falls), Edwar Ramirez (Pensacola, FL and Edinburg, TX) and Brad Ziegler (Schaumburg), the Fort Worth, TX (American Association) duo of Max Scherzer (Detroit) and Luke Hochevar (Kansas City), Houston’sTim Byrdak (Gary, IN, and Joliet, IL, Northern League),  Brendan Donnelly (Ohio Valley, Frontier League, and Nashua, NH, Atlantic League) with Pittsburgh, George Sherrill (Winnipeg, Canada, Sioux Falls, SD and Evansville, IN (Frontier) with the Los Angeles Dodgers and Randy Williams (Edinburg) with the Chicago White Sox.

The Axe Falls Hard

The list of players given their outright release while organizations were trimming to both major and minor league roster limits always is staggering.  One whopper to these eyes was Mike Rivera (Atlantic City, NJ, Atlantic League) since it was barely 48 hours earlier when he was being mentioned to catch the New York Yankees’ opener if Jorge Posada and Francisco Cervelli did not recover from injuries.  Rivera struggled at the plate this spring (3-for-18, including two doubles), but he is a .244 lifetime major leaguer.

Charlton Jimerson, the 2009 Atlantic League batting champion (.335 at Newark, NJ and formerly with Sioux City, IA, American Association) did not make it with Minnesota, and Jermaine Van Buren’s comeback effort with Florida ended.  He had made it to the major leagues after playing for Fort Worth, TX when it was in the Central League.