John Baird

Righthander John Baird led the Great Lakes League with a 0.97 ERA last summer, but that figure ballooned to 6.44 in his first season at Cincinnati. Baird, who began his college career at Dayton and then spent a season at Birmingham-Southern before that program dropped out of NCAA Division I, still shows a lively low-90s fastball but has trouble controlling it. His slider wasn't as good as it was last summer and he quickly lost his confidence. Baird's best outing of the year was a complete-game win over Connecticut, which attracted a lot of scouts to his next start against Villanova--in which he hit the first three batters of the game.