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Yup-that's why I hope Soriano is in center and Pie in right this year. From his minor league numbers, it would seem that Pie might be just as bad against left-handers as Jones is-so I'd like options that can replace him on those days when he does come up for good.

It's quite the battle right now to see who can get lower-Hill's ERA or Cedeno's batting average.

That's really just like Theriot was last year. He was mostly great on the basepaths, but he did things that make you wonder what he was thinking as well. That's the second simply mental baserunning blunder of the year by Theriot (the one against the Reds the first week as well).

My grandma isn't busy this afternoon, I'm sure she'd be able to swing by and play short for a few innings too. Also, why is he hitting in FRONT of Pie??? Pie had a 649 OPS against LHP in the minor leagues last year. There at least probably isn't that much difference right now between Cedeno and Pie when batting against LHP. As far as Cedeno at all, they seem to think that when a LHP takes the mound is a good day to rest Izturis. As for Blanco, 20 AB's against a pitcher is simply not enough to rest Barrett when Blanco just started on Tuesday. Is Cedeno the only other option at SS? Apparently yes. They are the only two to get any time there during the regular season, and there are no signs of that changing at the moment.

My grandma isn't busy this afternoon, I'm sure she'd be able to swing by and play short for a few innings too. Also, why is he hitting in FRONT of Pie??? Pie had a 649 OPS against LHP in the minor leagues last year. There at least probably isn't that much difference right now between Cedeno and Pie when batting against LHP. As far as Cedeno at all, they seem to think that when a LHP takes the mound is a good day to rest Izturis. As for Blanco, 20 AB's against a pitcher is simply not enough to rest Barrett when Blanco just started on Tuesday.

I'm really hoping that he can prove me wrong and have a decent night at the plate tonight. I would agree-I don't care which SS steps up right now at all, I just hope 1 of them will and become somewhat decent offensively.

This is interesting. This is the second time the Cubs have faced a left-hander. This time though they put DeRosa in RF instead of Theriot, which they told DeRosa they weren't going to do. It probably is the best defensive alignment though. Also, very interesting that 2 of the 3 starts that Cedeno has at SS are against LHP.

Go to mlb.com and their standings page. You'll be able to look up the standings by date all the way back to the 2002 season.

Saints give offer sheet out to Jason David: http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070419/SPORTS03/704190569/1247/SPORTS It's a 4 year deal, not sure on the money yet but it's supposed to be the largest offer sheet signed during this offseason. My bet is the Colts don't match-they will take the 4th round pick and look in to break two new corners in. They do have options though-their starting corners would then be Marlin Jackson and Kelvin Hayden, who were their top 2 picks 2 years ago, and their 3rd corner would be Tim Jennings, who was their 2nd round pick a year ago. So they do have talent waiting in the wings, but they will desperately need depth. They do have 7 picks between the 3rd-5th round with the David 4th round pick, so that should be quite helpful. Edit: I'm hearing now that the numbers are 4 years, 15.4 million dollars. Good luck with that one NO-you better hope some of that is a poison pill, but considering that it's front-loaded that's probably not too much of the case.

That's one thing that I don't think this team will have a problem with. I see 3 guys who have a good chance of being in the game (taking into account starts, position, and ability to keep up this pace). Soriano is not one of them, although that's not as much trepidation about his start as the simple fact that he's an OF, and it's extremely hard to make it at that position.

It depends on the down and distance. On plays where the run can be considered a big threat, it probably is harder to find receivers with the shotgun because it does take away many running plays. My guess is the Bears will only use the shotgun on 2nd and long or 3rd and long, where the run threat is mostly absent anyway. When that happens, it is much easier to find receivers from the shotgun, and the Bears could still run an effective draw play with their 3rd down back out of the shotgun.

BTW, hopefully the batter/pitcher matchups will be wrong today, because the Cubs hitters have been terrible against Redman in the past. Of those with 10+ at-bats Blanco has the most at-bats and been the best hitter against Redman, but I doubt he plays today Lee has had a very good OBP, but absolutely no XBH in 19 AB's Floyd hasn't been terrible, but he hasn't been good either Aramis, Jacque, and Barrett have been terrible Those with less than 10 at-bats (of course, these have almost no value): DeRosa has 2 2B's in 7 AB's Murton 0-4, Izturis 0-2 On the other side, there is almost no data-the most any Braves hitter has had is 3 AB's against Hill, (Jones 0-3, Diaz-2 for 3 with a 2B)-nothing to base anything on there.

Just to nitpick this one part, I'm not sure how shotgun remedies this. The shotgun snap is something that would be a far more difficult snap to handle. It'd be like someone having trouble driving an automatic, so we put them in a stick shift instead... I'm speaking strictly as far as handling the snap here... I'm not really sure that's true. Is it easier to catch a ball tossed to you or to complete a Center/QB exchange? To be honest, I'm not sure. Most of his fumbles in the QB/Center exchange seem to be timing issues and not "grasping the ball" issues. He either pulls away too early, or the ball hits has hands and he closes them late. I don't think shotgun snaps would be hard to handle unless they are bad. Admittidly, that was kind of a reach. You wouldn't think taking a snap from center, a form of a handoff, would be difficult either, but for the sake of argument, maybe catching it is easier. The problem is that if Rex is too worried about the pass rush, or where his receivers are, and he looks up too early.... I'm not dead-set against the shotgun. I just don't think it's going to have much impact. I think used effectively the shotgun can help Grossman have less negative plays (sacks and fumbles especially). It's not going to have much of an impact at all on making positive plays, except for those 3rd and 4-6 yards, which isn't enough to really say that it's making an impact that way.

Just to nitpick this one part, I'm not sure how shotgun remedies this. The shotgun snap is something that would be a far more difficult snap to handle. It'd be like someone having trouble driving an automatic, so we put them in a stick shift instead... I'm speaking strictly as far as handling the snap here... Normally, yes. However, from what I saw of Grossman (about 2/3 of the games last year) he became increasingly concerned about getting out from under the center very quickly. That helped cause some of the QB/center exchange problems by him pulling out a little too early, as well as some of the times where he took a couple steps back and then tripped like he did a couple times in the Super Bowl. I have to wonder if the shotgun, where he can worry about just catching the ball and not having to worry about moving his feet as much will help lessen those situations.

The last time the Cubs faced a left-hander, it was neither of them. If one of them does start, my guess is it will be Floyd.

I've seen a lot more than one game where his reputation didn't really hold up. Blowing a routine play yesterday that would have ended the inning comes to mind. 3 error game. Um..that doesn't exactly help with the lot more than 1 game comment, because that was the one game they were talking about. Izturis has been pretty good defensively other than that 1 game, but not great. I'm actually not sure why that is-he showed a stronger arm in the limited time he was here in August than he's showed so far this year. That limit on the arm caused a play like last night, where with his previous arm he had plenty of time, and now he doesn't (although as I said in another thread, the runner was still out, but Izturis shouldn't have made it that close). If he can get back to the arm he had in August, he'll be fine-I just don't know if he can get back to that or not.

link That doesn't change the fact that the Cubs could've bagged the whole deal the second before getting that slip of paper, the second after getting that slip of paper, or the second after selecting Hamilton. True, but you better have quite a reason to do so-normally, there's not enough of one to make the other GM's in the league upset by breaking an agreement.

our......he could have not walked two people. call me crazy. I totally agree with not walking people. I also think it was obvious Eyre was running out of gas and under normal circumstances, had others been available, he would have been pulled earlier in the inning. Again, credit Cox for bringing in the RH pinch hitters because he knew the Cubs bullpen situation. The ball to Izturis should have ended the inning without a run scoring; He was too lackadaisical. Yup-the guy was actually still out at first, but Izturis made it close enough with his hesitancy that it enabled the umpire to make that call.

Hernandez left with his team down, and his team never tied it up. The team would have had to tie it up or take the lead at some point to make sure Hernandez didn't get the loss, and they never did-they got down 5-0, and they closed it to 5-4 but never got it tied.

Maybe so, but it's pretty obvious that the Cubs don't think very much of Theriot at SS at all. He isn't exactly great defensively in the OF, but he has spent a decent amount of time in both LF and RF, along with 3B and 2B. Even with Izturis and Cedeno playing terribly offensively and being double switched out several times, and with Theriot coming in to every single game, Theriot still hasn't logged an inning at SS the entire season. That tells you that he's not even likely an option there for anything but an emergency situation.

Offseason was OK, but he was at max value last July. Yanks could have had him for the 2006 stretch run plus all of 2007. Arod was in the NY doghouse then too, so I'm sure a Z for Arod swap could have happened. Why would A-Rod have ok'd that deal? He may be getting it pretty bad in NY, but A-Rod's pretty smart in this: he knows that if he agreed to go from a first place to a last place team last year, his reputation as a "loser" might have been cemented forever. He would rather have stuck in NY and had the chance to win the WS last year and change his reputation. Now, maybe, A-Rod might agree to come to the Cubs because of 2 reasons: 1)The Cubs have a decently better roster, which gives A-Rod the hope that he could lead the team to a title, and 2) Lou. A-Rod would almost certainly have declined a trade to last year's Cubs, even if the Yankees had wanted to do it.

Eh? Don't we need to do a ping pong ball blower-thingy first before we know that? We were tied for 5th (or was it 6th?) yesterday. Worst case scenario was we'd wind up at 10th, and we did. Knicks won and everyone else lost. As for the ping pong balls, we know have a lot fewer ping bong balls to be blown... If I understand it correctly, it's either get incredibly lucky and land in the top 3... or wind up 10th (or worse, if a later picking lottery team gets lucky with the ping pong balls). i still think the draft lottery is a sham until they actual draw the ping pong balls live. All this secret drawing, envelope nonsense is crap Wait... you think the idea of Stern telling the refs to call the games in favor of the Heat is ludicrous yet you think the draft lotto is fixed? Seems contradictory to me. Frankly, I think both conspiracy theories are ludicrous. Okay, sham is the wrong word. But there is no reason to hide the drawing. In fact, I think it would be more exciting to see the ping pong balls come out then the super boring envelope reveal There is one big reason-it takes forever. They spit out these 4 number combinations, and these combinations coorespond to different teams. It wouldn't be that exciting to see-okay, 0/1/2/1 has come out-that is-----Boston! Plus, let's say the team with the most combinations wins the first pick. When they draw for the second and third pick, they are likely going to pick those combinations multiple times again-so the balls come out, and the people look at it and go-hmm, no that one has already been used, got to pick again. It would be a mess. I would love to figure out how to do it live, but it would have to require significant changes to what they do to make it work.

I don't think this is very likely, but against the left-hander it is the day to move Pie down the lineup and start Murton and Theriot in the outfield like the last time they faced a left-hander. Maybe a lineup of: Theriot/Murton/Lee/Ramirez/Barrett/DeRosa/Pie/Izturis. I don't mind that Pie is batting leadoff right now, but I hope they pay attention to his minor league splits and move him down accordingly against a pitcher he is likely to struggle against.

I can't see the Yankees wanting to make a deal this early. They have some options that may come back for their pitching rotation, and they know they are going to win enough games anyway to stay afloat-so they don't really have much incentive right now to trade A-Rod. Maybe that will change in June or July, but I doubt they move on it in the next month or month and a half.

I see, that makes much more sense now. Where do you suppose Murton and Jones will hit in the lineup? My guess (again, I could be way off here)-Pie/Murton/Lee/Ramirez/Jones/Barrett/DeRosa/Izturis tonight.