Illini Iceman

Watkins may turn out to be a fairly useful bench guy.

Soler reminds me of Manny when he used to hit balls and I would think "easy fly out" and the ball would just carry 400 feet.

The fact that MLB and the umpire union has allowed Joe West to be a crappy umpire for at least the last decade is an embarrassment to the game. That ball was clearly inside but if Castillo had even looked at him the wrong way he probably would have tossed him and been a complete ass about it.

I think I am going to puke.

The reason they would be expanding to Seattle and Vegas would be to increase geographic coverage and they aren't going to do that and then at the same time completely abandon the southeastern USA.

I thought the point was they hoped to turn some of these guys around after giving the Cubs pitching experts time to work with them. I do not see how it is vital to get them in the major league rotation today. In Turner's case, I'd like to see him start the rest of the year so the staff has a better opportunity to evaluate him and work with him. I have to think it's better for both him and the staff to work on things on a regular schedule as opposed to getting 2 innings a week out of the pen. If Jackson is the one that should be kicked out of the rotation, so be it. I don't care too much about Doubront and Strailey, because I don't see either one as particularly important for the future. I think Bosio and the rest know the best way to handle it. In some cases it is better to get the mechanics worked out in side sessions instead of throwing guys into games where they may fall back to bad habits.

I would say it is worth a try to see if he can be a reliever. He throws 96 mph as a starter so maybe he could add a few mph to that in relief and be pretty good. Not sure how much he would embrace the change, however, and if he isn't committed to doing it most likely it wouldn't be successful.

I don't necessarily see the Castillo connection. Looks like Dbacks put in a waiver claim on him and Theo and Jed probably knocked each other over racing to the phone to work out a trade. He seemed like a pretty likely DFA so any kind of live body in return is a win.

lol, yes very sad that the difference in viewership between these two things was less than one percent of the population of the us nevermind that ratings numbers are flawed at best and arguably entirely useless Come on...that's not how advertisers look at ratings. And yes, they're probably flawed, but do you really find it that hard to believe that people in the US are that much more into the NFL than hockey? in no way was i debating the relative popularity of the two sports. that said, even if we're pretending that ratings numbers are ample support for that claim, there are two problems here: 1) the hall of fame game comes after a scarcity of live nfl action and football fans are likely to tune in just to see something after seeing nothing for months. compare that with game 5 of the scf, which comes after 93% or so of nhl fans have their rooting interests eliminated 2) the hof game was on a sunday night; game 5 of the scf on a friday night. sunday is the day of the week with the most viewership, friday is the day of the week with the lowest so not only does that comparison rely on statistically suspect rating numbers, it ignores context entirely Do they have a way measure how many of the people watching the HOF game actually fell asleep on their couch half way through the first quarter?

Still need to clear a 40 man spot since they are taking Fujikawa off the 60 day DL. DFA Rusin - there is probably a 50/50 chance he actually gets through waivers and Doubront makes him pretty redundant anyway as a LH starter / swing guy. Logan Watkins probably could make it through as well.

Ricky should tell him to just head to the clubhouse and keep on walking.

Nate's last appearance before the inevitable DFA.

You can make any shirt you want on MLB.com.

Chuck him in the pen, let Bosio work with him a ton and figure out the mess in Spring Training. Not worried about the pen messing him up more. Go ahead and DFA Rusin while you are at it to clear the spot.

right on it

Well he gets a AAA pitcher so he should be comfortable.

HERE WE GO!

Why did he pinch run for Coghlan?

He will.

This is just fear.

If only we had someone at AAA to bring up in case Starlin needs some down time...

Can he pitch?

The only thing worse than Schierholtz being on the team is that they keep playing him.

Certainly. They just weren't as noteworthy. Has there ever been another noteworthy golfer who has had as many injuries as Tiger Woods? Would dying from cancer count? Would dying in a plane crash count? If Payne Stewart were a hockey player he would have played through it.

You don't remember Theo having dinner with Zambrano and then promptly trading him away? I'm just saying, they will have a short leash on the guy if he mopes around complaining to media. The fact that he also sucked as a pitcher at that point probably had quite a bit of influence on the decision as well.