Hello Baseball Fans,

Greetings from Scottsdale, Ariz.  My name is Brian Bogusevic and I’m the Houston Astros’ representative for the Arizona Fall League MLB Blog.  I guess I’ll start by introducing myself to all of you. I am an outfielder in the Astros’ farm system and finished the 2008 season with the Double-A Corpus Christi Hooks. My road to the AFL has been an eventful one. I was drafted in 2005 as a pitcher.  After two and a half seasons on the mound, I was converted to the outfield in July. I’ve really enjoyed being a position player thus far, but the conversion is still very much a work in progress.

That about sums me up. Now on to the Fall League. We have been out here in Scottsdale for about a week now. We reported here on Oct. 1, and got to work almost immediately.  The first few days consisted of practices, moving in to apartments, and meeting new people.  Our team is the Scottsdale Scorpions and it is made up of players from the Astros, Red Sox, Pirates, Angels and Giants. With so many guys coming from so many different places, it’s a ton of new names and faces. Some guys I recognize from playing against in the past, and some are total strangers. That is one of the great things about professional baseball. There is never a shortage of new people to meet.

Tonight was our first game. Unfortunately we lost, 9-3.  From just one game, I can see that the level of competition out here is very high. All of the pitchers who threw had really good stuff, and the hitters had very advanced approaches and consistently made hard contact. I didn’t play tonight, but hopefully I’ll get the chance to measure myself against the competition tomorrow.  

That’s it for now. I’ll be writing again soon. Hopefully my next entry will be filled with much more baseball and not so many formalities.  

Until next time,

Brian Bogusevic