davell

Might have been Callis on Twitter today, when asked about this group of arms, compared Appel to Cole, but said he'd have taken Cole. Then mentioned Wacha, Gasman and Zimmer as more in the Barnes and Gray class than a Bauer. Just goes to show how strong last year's class was.

I don't think he'd have gotten THAT much on the open market honestly.

Bulls are 43-14 right now and have Knicks and Miami at home, followed by Detroit on the road and Washington at home on a back to back. Then it's Charlotte and Miami on a back to back on the road. Then, it's Dallas at home, followed by Indiana on the road and Cleveland at home in another back to back to end the season. Miami is 40-15 right now and get Boston at home, followed by us on the road. Come home for Charlotte as the 2nd half of a back to back. Then, they get the Knicks and the Nets on the road as a back to back. They come home for Toronto and us, again on a back to back. Followed by Washington and Houston, at home, again back to back. They finish the year with the Celtics and Wizards on the road. My hope here, is they split with us and lose once or twice more. Boston and the Knicks seem like the best bets here. With our 9 games left, total "pie in the sky" for me is 7-2. That's splitting with Miami and losing to one of Dallas or Indiana. If Rose misses more time, that record's chances of happening clearly evaporates and probably costs us the top seed. But, tonight is a must win, with or without Rose. Lose this game and the Heat are in the driver's seat, in my mind. And while I don't have a lot of hope to beat them to begin with, I think our chances are damn near zero, if we don't have home court.

If Votto's deal is going to come back to haunt them, this one is going to put them six feet under.

My guess is so he'll have to acquire some plate discipline. He'll be pitched around with the pitcher due up next. I like it a lot myself.

Directly behind Ozzie, while he's giving his interview are at least a dozen liquor bottles.

If the rotation pitches well, Castro takes a step forward, Stewart and LaHair hit OK and Brett and Rizzo come up and do well......We may not be bad enough to get a high draft pick.

If LaHair is decent, then maybe he can play LF? If not, he could net us something solid possibly from an AL team.

Volstad deserves to be in the rotation. My guess is we're going to see him, Shark, AND Wood in it by the end of the year. And it's not going to surprise me if we're all happy we go into 2013 with all 3 of them in it either.

Well, we're going to see some of the rest of our pen today. My guess is Volstad goes 5, unless he really breezes thru the 5th.

Well, he did get a K. He just gave up 7 hits, 6 runs, and 4 walks as well, in his 1 plus inning of superbly pitched baseball.

If Gamel was our 1B, Starlin would have 80 errors.

Sooooooo, who had Barney hitting our first HR?

Pretty sure Concepcion is starting the year on the 7 day DL, staying in EXST, so he can build up some arm strength. Since he got such a late start this spring.

I didn't mean to pick for Andy, by the way. Not sure if he had PM'd that same selection or not, but Curry was just my vote.

If we're autopicking here, I think the Panthers will go DE or CB here. Not a WR good enough to differentiate between now and their next pick. Dennard or Hosey are solid values hete, but my vote would go to Vinny Curry.

This is why Theo has it right: The draft is the 2 most important days of the baseball calendar year.

Yeah, I think Beliveau will get an early callup. I hope we use a ton of these guys just to try and find 3 or 4 that look like they'll stick for the future. Use the whole year as an audition process basically.

Keith Law said Shark's stuff looked pretty electric to him.

Is Lin supposed to be back in time for the 1st round?

With the signings of Hayden and Willhite, the miss of Okoye, I see the Bears probably going D Line with 2 of their top 3 picks, with WR being the other. Probably sign a Steinbach type as O Line depth and draft another developmental guy late. It'd be great if we could get McNeill cheap, on a "prove you're healthy" type deal though.

Vitters is in the linep, so I guess yesterday was just a really quick day off, or he was sick. Good to see anyway.

If the WGN deal runs out in 2014, hopefully we renegotiate with Comcast, to get our big deal then. I don't want to wait til 2019 to get our own network. We're big enough right now to be able to sign large deals as it is. That's obvious. Yeah, I'm pissed we didn't get Cespedes. No doubt. We BETTER get Soler. And we BETTER get him before July 2nd, so we're not penalized for spending. And at this point, I'm legit worried he won't even be eligible by then. It's certainly too early to call Cespedes a supetstar, but the returns are pointing that way. He wanted a 4 year deal, or an 8 year deal. He should have been a Cub, one deal or the other. And we'll never know what we offered on Darvish' posting fee, but there would be a TON of excitement right now, if we had those 2. No doubt. But Cespedes is the bigger miss of the two.

I really don't see us getting much for Demp, unless he has damn near a career season. Even then, I think it'd take us eating a ton of cash to get a couple of borderline top 10 guys from an average system. And if he has THAT type of year, Garza pitches well, and one of the other group does too, we probably won't even be out of the race. Unless the pen is truly as wretched as it's looked so far. Which may be the case obviously.

OK, the first time is just a mistake, but twice? Lol. Too sunny outside to be posting from my phone, I guess. Extend him, unless we get HUGE return basically.