If your birthday is August 12th...

 ...you share it with Ian Happ, the Cubs centerfielder, who has reclaimed his job after spending most of 2019 in the minors. So far this 60-game season, the U of Cincinnati product is hitting close to .300 and reaching base more than 40 percent of the time. 

Chris Owings, the utilityman is in his first Colorado season, after spending most of the last decade with the Diamondbacks.

Jose Tabata is a poster child for a "can't miss" prospect who missed. Highly touted as he rose through the Yankees farm system, he came to the Pirates as the key piece in a 2008 deal for Damaso Marte and Xavier Nady. But after a promising 2010 Pittsburgh debut, he failed to hold onto a regular job. After a 2015 mid-season trade to the Dodgers, he was sent to the minors, and never made it back to the show.

Michel Hernandez, who caught 45 major leagues games over three seasons with the Yankees and Rays. He's back with the Yankee organization, as a minor league catching instructor. Odds are that he'll be part of the team grooming top prospect Jasson Dominguez.

And we remember:

Bob Buhl, who won 166 games in a 15-season career mainly with the Braves and Cubs -- who swapped him to the Phillies along with fellow greybeard Larry Jackson in April of '66 for Ferguson Jenkins, in one of the worst trades of that or any decade.

Fred Hutchinson pitched 10 seasons for the Tigers, just before and after World War II. He later managed in Detroit and St. Louis, before hitting the jackpot with the Reds, whom he led to the 1961 National League pennant. Lung cancer forced him to step down during the 1964 season. Fred died that November. His name lives on Seattle's Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, established by his brother, a prominent Washington State physician.


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