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Kyle Reynolds singles in the winning run for Tennessee as they win 9-8 in 11. Colvin finished 1-3 with 2 walks, a sac fly, and a strikeout.

Billingsley is up to 98 pitches after 5.

I know Dempster is going to get the green light on a steal attempt soon, but I certainly hope it's not while he's standing on 2nd base. He'd be thrown out by 20 feet at 3rd.

Some of both. He's probably an .800-.850 OPS type of player who will feast on fastballs and hanging breaking balls and also walk a good amount. On the other side, breaking balls will hurt him, and he'll strike out a good amount of the time. I think we got spoiled by the Soto we saw in September and April, but Soto will still end up being a quality major league ballplayer. I don't think anyone expected him even a month ago to remain the best hitter on the team all year long.

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.