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Unfortunately, probably not. Sampson is not a wild pitcher at all. His highest walk total in the major leagues is 4, and his walk rate in his 150 major league innings is right around 2 per 9 innings. And that walk rate was really high for him compared to his 1.37 walks per 9 innings in the minors. So the Cubs should still be patient, but they are likely going to have to hit the ball well today. Sampson isn't going to give them much free, but thankfully he has shown himself around the league as somebody who is pretty easy to get a hit off of. I don't think the Cubs have had much success off of him though.

They have a GM with less incentive to play it safe than just about any other. Not from what Bruce was intimating during Spring Training that Hendry was very likely here to stay for at least 2009 and probably longer due to the ownership situation.

From Lou's quotes, in his mind it's all for Soriano's benefit why he's making the switch.

Kendall didn't catch Fukudome stealing. That may be what it went down in the book as, but that's not even close to what happened. Overall, I agree with your argument. Of course, I believed that a large part of the Cubs problems in throwing runners out was their pitchers, and I still believe that's the case. Kendall is still going to be one of the worst catchers in the league at throwing runners out, but he isn't an automatic extra base as it was at times last year.

From all I've heard about the proposal, I think there's still one exception that the defense can't catch the offensive player in the air to hold them up and then essentially carry them out of bounds. They can knock them out though in the air, and it definitely will change some offenses in the red zone. I don't think it will matter much between the 20's.

Good. It's a lot harder to get Theriot either down in the lineup or out of the lineup if he's batting leadoff, where Lou feels he doesn't have many options. Lou has plenty of guys he likes in the 2 spot, so if Theriot is bad for another couple of weeks (I realize he wasn't bad today, but his combined 2 games are) it will be much easier to move him to either the bottom of the lineup or the bench. I wonder if Soriano complained to make Lou do it this soon? I was wondering if he would after seeing his comments about needing to make a big adjustment to handle hitting with runners on base more often. At the rate Lou is going, Soriano and Fukudome will likely be the 1-2 hitters by the end of April. Of course, that all depends on one of the bottom of the order hitters proving to Lou that they can protect Ramirez.

The forceout rule was a Cardinals game? Isn't that a relatively frequent call? A friend of mine hates that one and will be happy. I think it's probably a good thing to overturn. It tended to get called once or twice a week, so frequent but not likely in any particular game. Most of the time it didn't generate much controversy, even if most fans didn't particularly like it. There was a game earlier in the year though where on the last play of the game under the rules a forceout should have been called in the end zone, but it wasn't. That caused the team to lose the game. It generated a lot of buzz, and I'm not surprised that the forceout rule came into question the year after that particular game. The NFL is a very reactionary league on many of their rules.

Does that mean an incidental facemask will be no penalty or will be a 15-yarder also? 15 yards. it's another blow against defenses across the league. i'm surprised they haven't made it only 5 yards to get a first down yet (with 7 downs to do it) That's not true. If a person grabs the face mask and lets go, there will be no penalty called anymore. The 15 yarder is still only reserved for the same things that it was before. It's interesting to see how many of the others were based off of one game. The direct snap from center thing was from that Bears game last year. The field goal was from the Browns game. The forceout rule was a Cardinals game? I know a lot of football fans who never even knew you couldn't defer in the NFL. I've always wondered why they didn't change that before now. There's no reason not to add just a little bit of extra strategy in the game with no real detriment.

I would love the hire of Tom Crean. I was one of those who doubted that he would be interested in the job. As for Summit, I think she'd be pretty good as Tennessee men's basketball coach. I doubt she'd do well at any other big school. And I'm pretty sure she's said that she'd never be interested in Tennessee's job, and if she's not interested in that one she's certainly not going to take any other men's job.

Interesting quote from Fukudome:

Agree, gives sheets his due. I was impressed by him. Lee with a one year exception is a poor starter. We looked like this at the beginning of last year. I am psyched about Fukudome. Once Lou gets the line-up fixed things will run smooth. Anxious to see Johnson at leadoff Lee has been great in April each of the last 3 years.

The Bears received 3 7th round compensatory picks today.

It sounds like he's fine and is supposed to make his next start. He says he knows that he needs to drink more water before starts, but he never seems to do it considering he leaves multiple games a year due to cramping.

Thanks, that makes more sense. If it's 0-0 after 1 inning would they continue it the next day even though they haven't played 4.5 innings? No. Any games stopped before 4.5 innings (or 5 if the visiting team is ahead) are completely erased and started again.

So how stupid is the NFL? I mean, Broncos-Raiders on Monday Night? I realize that it's a rivalry and all but the Chargers-Broncos (since they obviously want a West Coast game) would have been a heck of a lot better than Denver-Oakland. The NFL wants to save the Chargers-Broncos game for a better time slot. They aren't going to put a great game in a slot that starts at 10:15 at night on the East Coast. It hasn't really been a good matchup any of the 3 years they've had this late game.

Aramis has been up and down in the early parts of seasons. He was good in 04, below average for him in 05, bad in 06, and good again last year. So there really isn't any consistent pattern that shows that he'll be good or bad this April. Theriot will be playing everyday, but that just means that he'll replace the numbers of Theriot/Izturis/Cedeno from last year. Since all of them were terrible last year, Theriot being terrible doesn't hurt the Cubs any more than last year. As far as CF, remember that Pie had 170 terrible at-bats last year that really cut into CF production. Even if he's bad this year, he should be better than his production last year, so CF can't be that much worse than last year. Floyd/Murton turns into Fukudome, and that probably is a slight to decent upgrade. Finally, the C production this year should be better than the mess of last year, even if Soto doesn't meet expectations.

Games are continued when the game is either tied, or if the road team has taken the lead during the inning that the game was stopped in. They become the final score (after 4 1/2 or 5 innings) when they are rained out in other situations. For example, the Cubs game against the Pirates last year was continued the next day because the Cubs had scored runs in the top of the inning to take the lead. If the Cubs hadn't managed to tie the game before the rain came, even if they were still batting, it would have been a final and a Pirates victory.

As far as the first bolded quote, who are you talking about? As far as the second bolded quote, they were a league average offense last year. What makes you think the Cubs offense would be worse this year?

I think the biggest thing to come out of this game is Z. The last 2 years have had such terrible starts for him that it's been hard to recover. If he has managed to bypass some of that, then he could have a season that is closer to 04/05 than 06/07 (although they were all good). Fukudome is also nice to see, although most hitters are going to have a day like this sometime during the season, and everyone knew that Fukudome would be at least average. It will take longer to find out if he's pretty good or very good. The others don't strike me much either way. Some looked good, and some looked bad, but it's just one game. The opinions that I held before the season I still hold and probably will for at least another couple weeks.

I think you may have missed a few at-bats :D Lee pitches by at-bat: 5, 6, 1, 5, 2.

Strike 2 (at the knees slightly inside fastball) was the pitch that Pie was constantly taking for strike 3 last year though. It may look inside, but if the umpires are consistently calling it you simply have to adjust. That doesn't mean I'm concerned yet. I'll give him the time to adjust first.

Xavier has 3 key seniors leaving and has a good but not great recruiting class coming in. Miller's value will never be higher than it is now. If he ever wants to leave Xavier, this is the time to do it. And there are definite benefits to leaving a non-major conference and taking a job at a major school. I wouldn't blame Miller if he didn't want to come to Indiana right now, but he definitely should seriously consider it. If he turns it down, he may never get an opportunity like that again.

So he's repeatedly shown he's only willing to put his worst hitters in 37.5% of potential lineup spots? Well, it's somewhat counterintuitive to say that a player belongs at either the very top of the lineup or the bottom of the lineup. Everybody says that Lou can just put Pie and Theriot 7 and 8. It is quite meaningful to point out that Lou won't put those two back to back very often because neither one fits his mold of what a 7 hitter is supposed to be.

I have no idea. Lou has so many strange ideas to go along with his right ideas that it's hard to tell why he does things sometime. I guess he thinks Fukudome is effective protection behind Ramirez against right-handers, but not against left-handers? It looks like if he stays with that lineup (Johnson-Fukudome-Lee-Ramirez-Soriano-DeRosa-Soto-Theriot) that the lineup against left-handers will be set. Against right-handers, I feel that the key to getting a good lineup will be Pie. If Pie hits, Lou will feel more comfortable with him and move him up in the lineup. That will open up the 8 spot for Theriot (and Lou has repeatedly shown that he only wants to have hitters like Theriot 1, 2, or 8 if he can possibly help it). If Theriot then leaves the top of the order, Fukudome becomes the natural fit to replace him. Then the only question becomes if Soto or DeRosa are hitting well enough to protect Ramirez in Lou's mind, or if he will then move Soriano down and bring somebody else up to the 2 spot. If Pie doesn't hit, my guess is that the lineup against right-handers will not change significantly. I think Lou has a definite priority list when making his lineup. Put Lee and Ramirez 3 and 4. Then put your worst hitter 8th. In Lou's mind, that's Pie. Now, put all other non-power players in the 1-2 spot. That's Theriot. Then, the 5th spot is next to be filled with your best protection for you great hitter in the 4 spot, and Lou thinks the best person for that is Fukudome . After that, you fill in the other 3 spots with whoever is left. I really think that's the priority in how Lou fills out his lineup card on a normal basis.

From what it sounds like, the Cubs wouldn't have pursued A-Rod no matter their cash reserves. It was a position problem rather than lack of available cash. Now you can say that's a horrible move to not consider moving him back to SS, and you'd at least have a pretty good case. I just don't think the Soriano signing and the lack of interest in A-Rod had anything to do with one another.