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Brandon Guyer takes 2 deep tonight, including the game-winner in the 9th. Peoria wins 6-5. And Tennessee had an 8-2 lead with 2 outs in the 9th, and now it's 8-8.

No. No plus power bats yet.

Melville was taken by the Royals.

What?! Did Lou even look at the match-ups? Reed Johnson is terrible against right-handers, and Billingsly is a very good right-hander. 8 at-bats is not usually enough to bench a player, especially when your other option is pretty terrible.

Tony Thomas is already 2/3 with a home run, a triple, and a walk as Daytona leads 13-1 in the 5th. Peoria is tied at 1 in the 3rd. Marquez Smith with another home run. Tennessee is up 4-2 in the 4th. Veal: 4 IP, 3 H, 2 ER, 3 BB, 6 K Colvin has a sacrifice fly and a walk so far.

I'm glad to see that he must have some pop in his bat. He has to in order to have a slugging average that is double his batting average, especially since he reportedly has barely average speed.

So Ryan Theriot 2.0 No, Theriot wasn't a top 70 draft prospect. So a rich man's Ryan Theriot? Small, athletic, bad SS He's not small (6 foot 3, 210 pounds). To compare, that's 2 inches taller and 5 pounds heavier than DeRosa. He's got a good arm, unlike Theriot, and he has more power than Theriot does now, plus a little bit of added power potential in the future. There are much better comps for Flaherty than Ryan Theriot.

I definitely agree with the DeRosa (as he is now) comp over Theriot. Here's a video of him (warning: some of the shots are either some bad camera angles or some plays that really aren't that impressive, but overall it's a pretty good look at him). http://video.aol.com/video-detail/ryan-flaherty-highlight-reel-vanderbilt-baseball/299056095

The Cubs could use a BP arm after the year that they trust so they don't go out and sign any relievers to large contracts to fill their holes (Howry, Eyre, Wood, and Lieber are all free agents after this season currently pitching in the bullpen). I still would likely want him to begin as a starter, but if he is ticketed as a reliever, he could definitely fill a need for the major league team very quickly. I agree with you on Lou though. I'm worried about him accepting a reliever that struggles mightily with his control. Thankfully, most of his relievers on the major league level who have had control issues in the past (Marmol and Wood especially) have really toned that down in the bullpen.

With the Cubs drafting him last year, I have a feeling they thought and still think he can be a starter, and that's what they'll try to use him as. Then they know he has that value as a reliever just in case being a starter flames out.

What's this guy's ceiling? His numbers look really good so far, especially for only recently turning 19, but the Top 10 prospects thread is the first I've heard of him. There's been a lot of conflicting reports (as is often the case for young international players) but most seem to think his ceiling is pretty high. The Cubs gave him a 525,000 signing bonus last year when they signed him, which is a pretty big bonus.

Bailey is doing quite well so far in his first start, although he is trailing due to an error. 4 IP, 1 H, 1 R, 0 ER, 0 BB, 0 K Philly up 1-0 after 4. Cardinals up 2-0 on a Glaus 2 run blast.

Maybe a little bit, but part of that is that he gives up so few ground balls, and fly balls turn into outs most of the time. Hill has also shown an ability in the majors to sustain a pretty low BABIP. It's the tradeoff for the fact that with so many fly balls hit, Hill's going to have more than an average number of homeruns hit against him.

My guess is that it will take at least 3 starts from now for Hill to come back to the majors. This start today will continue to build up his arm strength, along with hopefully show better control (if he gets hit somewhat hard, I think that's ok for this start as long as he's not wild). Then when his arm is conditioned, if he has two effective decent control starts after that, I think the Cubs will bring him up. 1 bad results start will push the timetable back 1 start. 1 really bad control night pushes the timetable back 2 starts in my mind.

Seriously? I doubt that's true. Everything Lou has done this season suggests that he wants to win today's game, and not think about tomorrow. I think it was a little bit of both, but mostly concentrating on possible scenarios that might happen today. Lou probably thought that if he brought in Eyre and 1 or 2 of the left-handers ended up reaching against Eyre, he would then have to pull him for Marmol anyway when the Kouzmanaff/Greene/Huber part of the lineup came in. He knows he didn't have a full crew down in the bullpen, and was looking at a possible extra inning game, and so he didn't really want to use 2 relievers in 1 inning. Starting the inning with Marmol is ok, but with looking at a possible extra inning game Marmol can only pitch to so many batters, and starting him with 2 tough left-handers when it's not necessary is not using Marmol at his best. So he left Lilly in for exactly 2 batters. I'm not even sure that if Lilly had gotten the first two batters out that Lou would have left him in for Kouzmanoff. Maybe, but I have a feeling that no matter what happened with Giles and Gonzalez, Marmol was pitching to Kouzmanoff. Lou ended up saving his pieces for deeper in the game, which is sort of uncharacteristic for him. Normally, he is criticized for burning his pieces too early and not preparing for extra innings. Today, he gambled a little bit so he could save some for extras, and the Cubs got burned. I don't think it was a terrible gamble though. Lou knew that the Cubs were unlikely to score off Bell/Hoffman, and that they would have to go 10/11/12 tonight to win. Lilly hadn't given up a hit in almost 2 innings. It just didn't work out tonight.

I think the best thing we got out of this game was a virtual off day for the bullpen. Marmol was the only one who pitched, and he only threw 8 pitches. That was something the bullpen sorely needed. Some nights you're just not going to hit. I'm not really upset at all. The Padres pitchers, especially Maddux and Hoffman, were really good tonight (Bell was good as well, but I thought he was more hittable than Maddux and Hoffman were...the Cubs just didn't take advantage).

Fontenot, Soriano, and Theriot are all 0-1 against Hoffman. Lee though is 5 of 12 with a HR and 2 2B's.

Fontenot is in the game as well.

Good catch Giles. DeRosa will likely be replaced by Fontenot now with Eyre coming in.

Yeah, I think Lilly has to go at least 3, probably 4 tonight at the mininum no matter what his performance is. The bullpen just doesn't have enough innings in it right now. Hart and Lilly could probably go between 2-3 innings each tonight. Those are probably our closest to long relief.

I just tried a few different games. Some of them I can open fine, and some of them will just go to the black outside white inside and then stop, and others will just stop at a black screen.

Corey Patterson is 0/3 tonight on a total of 5 pitches. Brett Myers has a no-hitter through 6, and Volquez is shutting out the Phillies through 5.

I take that phrase to mean someone like Pie. None of the others are on the level of "very good". Cedeno and Murton probably come closest, but they're not close enough.

I probably disagree with that ranking for a 5x5 league. Swisher's likely to have a big edge on Fukudome in HR's. That much is pretty much a given, especially when Swisher comes out of his slump. Fukudome though is likely to beat him in AVG. Swisher's best AVG year is .262. Regression to the mean will happen with his .202 BA so far, but I don't see him as likely sustaining a .290-.300 BA for the rest of the year like Fukudome likely will. Fukudome also will beat him in SB's by a little bit. Kosuke has 5 this year. Swisher has 5 for his career. As far as runs and RBI's, Swisher is probably the better run producer, but Kosuke is in the better lineup. I'd give runs to Kosuke, and RBI's is either a push or maybe a slight edge to Swisher. In a 5x5 league, I wouldn't take Swisher over Fukudome right now. On neutral teams they'd probably be very close by the end of the year, but when accounting for the difference in lineups, Kosuke has to be the pick. Plus Swisher is batting 7th and 8th right now and also getting days off more than normal. Who knows how long Guillen will take to move him up even if he starts hitting well.

That's the entire point though...the Cubs aren't going to do that. I'm just curious if this is a way to more closely simulate moving him down. Lou's on record stating that he wouldn't bat the pitcher 8th, so the Cubs aren't doing that, either. Studies have shown that it's a good idea, though. True. But it's one of those tiny insignificant ways to increase run production. I've seen people claim a 2-3 run difference over the course of the season. With that small of a difference in a big market like Chicago, it's really not worth the distraction to your team when you get called out on it everytime it doesn't work since it's unconventional. Plus the argument has been made that you'll get a very slight decrease in innings out of your starting pitchers using this format, and the Cubs need every inning out of their starters that they can get.