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I would agree that nobody jumps out on the board as being such good value at the other positions and so the default choice of offensive tackle is best. With that said, I'm going back and forth. If the Colts are looking to draft a LT in this spot, it's got to be Sherrod. He's a better pass blocker and while the motivation issues scare me a little I actually think he's relatively polished. If they want a guy who can play RT or maybe even guard and upgrade their run game then Carimi is the pick, but I'm worried about his pass blocking plus some knee issues in his past. But he is at a Big 10 school and the Colts love picking from Big 10 schools. Still, the lockout trumps all. With no news before the draft on if Johnson is coming back, I think the Colts play it safe and pick somebody who will adequately guard Peyton Manning's blind side in his rookie year. It's much easier to find a decent right tackle or guard through free agency So I'll disagree with you and pick Derek Sherrod. Truffle has been PM'd.

I'll give Exile some time to post his thoughts. I'll make my pick around mid-day tomorrow if I haven't heard from him.

And he didn't convert as a Cub but Coello as well now.

I disagree. Pena could be a complete bust. why is Soto going to be better? Aramis could just be on the decline and your putting your faith in Dewitt and Barney to be an offensive upgrade? I also think Soriano will continue to worsen with the bat. I'll be surprised if this offense is better than last year. I think your setting yourself up for disappointment but I tend to be a glass half empty type of guy. Pena could be a complete bust but the odds are not in favor of that. And it won't take much to do more than Lee did last year for the Cubs. Soto won't be better..in fact he'll probably be worse. But Soto only got 318 AB's from the catcher position last year and Hill got 212 . So even though Soto had a career year the Cubs still only got a .774 OPS out of the catcher position. If Soto gets more of those at-bats the average will be a lot better. I personally think catcher will be about the same. Soto will not have as good of a year but will get more at-bats and that will even out. Aramis could be on the decline. But jumping from being a .900 guy to a .750 guy is quite a decline for one year. He'll probably do like Soriano did last year and put up a number in between those two..not like his career averages but better than last year. DeWitt and Barney might not be an upgrade but it would be hard for them to be a downgrade to what Theriot did last year with the bat. It was easily Theriot's worst year and DeWitt while he was better than Theriot when he came over didn't light it up either.

This roster doesn't have a stunning lack of talent. true, there's really nothing stunning about it. it's essintialy the same lineup we ran out there last year + Pena - Lee. The lacking part is a matter of perspective or who you compare them to. I don't see a great deal of offensive talent either. Where did the offense rank last year among NL teams? I'm willing to bet it was somewhere near the bottom. Aramis will be better but how much is certainly unknown, Soriano could easily be worse. There are a lot of question marks in this lineup offensively. So lacking is certainly a valid description. The offense was ranked 10th in runs scored out of 16 NL teams. They were 11th in OBP, 9th in SLG, and 10th in OPS. So a little below average.

I'm giving Barney a couple weeks to show me that his Camp Colvin treatment gave him the ability to hit the ball with a little authority, but I wish they gave Baker a little more credit for what he can do. More to the point, if Barney/Baker are the primary 2B, then why exactly is DeWitt on the roster? I don't think the Cubs would be real comfortable going with 1 backup at 2nd, SS, and 3B for a long period of time. That's probably why DeWitt made it. As for Barney, does anybody know what the league average ground ball/fly ball ratio is? Seems to me that the Cubs starting staff is more ground ball oriented even with the presence of Garza. That should help Barney's case.

I could be wrong, but I'm not expecting him to be one of the better hitters in the lineup. He stands a pretty decent chance of being our 6th or 7th best hitter. Seriously?? I can see that. Ramirez, Pena, Soto, Byrd, Fukudome, and Soriano could all have better OPS's then Castro at the end of the season. Everybody on that list besides Ramirez and Pena was better last year. However, I know that managers like certain types of players in the 2 spot. Castro is one of those types of players who is actually pretty good. So keeping him locked at 2 keeps worse players of that type (DeWitt, Baker, Barney, Johnson) from getting many at-bats there. Plus while Castro could be worse than most of the lineup he probably won't be that much worse.

Sadly, Byrd was probably the Cubs' second best hitter last year after Soto. The real question is why isn't Soto near the top of the order. I don't think Soto is in a terrible spot. He looks to be 5th against left-handers and 6th against right-handers if nobody is getting a day off and Quade has been moving him up to 4th or 5th when people do have days off. Byrd is the only one I'd seriously question that is in front of him in either version of the lineup.

Some lineup talk today from Quade: Castro/Byrd/Ramirez will be 2-3-4 Second base is still undecided On Fukudome: http://chicago.cubs.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20110330&content_id=17202998&notebook_id=17203160&vkey=notebook_chc&c_id=chc

It'll be interesting to see how they divvy up the AAA at-bats. My guess is that Ramirez will get quite a few at-bats at somewhere other than catcher and I'm not sure that he would necessarily be the first one called up if there was an injury.

You don't think the fans jumping all over him and booing him, given the issues he already has, had any effect on him? I think the fan negativity was a huge factor in him blowing up. And a lot of that negative fan backlash was due to the preseason expectations that he would be a middle of the order type slugger who would be an "RBI machine." Maybe he still blows up even with the proper preseason hype, but the booing and criticizing likely would have been lessened if Bradley hadn't been signed with the intent of being the missing power piece we needed. I thought the fans were rather good with Bradley. They really were starting to rally around him in June and July before he criticized them and said he didn't want to be there in late July/early August. Then it started to turn ugly.

Pena looked fine this spring. .237/.357/.441 line. Ramirez was put on waivers and Castillo optioned so Hill did win that job.

The Mariners sent the Cubs 9 million. And there's opportunity cost involved as well. Silva would likely have given positive WAR for the Cubs this year but he also would have taken up a roster spot that will likely be filled with somebody who will also likely give a positive WAR number. Giving 3.2 WAR over a year and a half (since Silva missed most of the second half of last year with injuries) is more valuable than giving 3.2 WAR over 3 years even if you have to pay for all 3 years.

I'm still wondering about the Cubs not announcing a backup catcher yet for precautionary reasons. Why would they need to be precautionary about announcing that Castillo would be sent down at the end of camp? I guess they might be wanting to sneak Ramirez though waivers and feel the secrecy might help in that. There's also a tiny chance that they have picked Castillo for the job-that would make more sense with why it hasn't been announced yet but it flies in the face of everything we've heard to this point.

From what reporters have said, Hendry did want to sign Soriano but the ownership made sure they got him by adding a couple years to what Hendry was willing to offer. (Bruce Miles has mentioned this several times for example) Reading between the lines on this, my guess is that ownership did have significant input into the contract but they probably still allowed Hendry to pick which one he wanted between Soriano and Carlos Lee for example.

If they're willing to make him one of the highest-paid coaches, that's as good a reason as any. I can't think of anyone that wouldn't leave their job if they were being offered nearly double the salary at another job. I don't know about that. I know several people who wouldn't take a job just because of higher pay. It's certainly an important consideration but hardly the only one. For a public example, look at Brad Stevens. He quit his job to take a job that was probably less than 1/2 the salary he was making before.

For the love of god, can we fire weber and back a truckload of money to this guy's house? No way Tim. That's the exact type of thing that Ron Gunether would never do. Brad could leave us someday. what's the story on Stevens? Is he really a die-hard IU fan like I'm hearing, just waiting for the opportunity to coach there? I'm not sure about that. He definitely has affection for IU. There was a line in today's IU Star where Stevens was listening to the Butler-Florida game 10 years ago because he was driving to Buffalo to go watch IU play (and that's an 8-8 1/2 hour drive so he's no casual fan). But I also think he just is mostly unconcerned about money. He never would have quit at Lilly if he was ultra concerned with his financial future. And I do think he wants to go somewhere where he just won't be another guy...where being a Butler guy and playing the right way will really mean something. So I don't think he'll leave unless it is the right situation. IU certainly might be the ultimate right situation for him but I would guess certain other situations might also interest him.

It's still possible to have all four of the Final Four be conference tournament winners. I wonder how often that has happened in the 64 team era.

This is the best part of all. Now release Koyie Hill and let's start the damn season. Well, the BEST part of all would be getting something for the sack of crap, but I can live with a release. Carlos Silva is probably not the best option for our 5th starter. As a team needing to make up some degree of ground for any hope at the playoffs, we need the upside play at #5. But let's not get out of hand here. Carlos Silva pitched well for us last year, to the tune of of 3.75 FIP and 3.90 xFIP. That's not to say he's particularly likely to repeat that, but he's certainly not without the potential to give us a decent number of league average innings. If there's a way to keep him around in the bullpen as a swingman without him being a negative clubhouse presence or the Cubs FO yanking one of our more deserving starters out of their spots to make room for him, I'd certainly like to see him stick around. If those criteria cannot be met, I'll be sad we had to cut a valuable asset... not relieved to be rid of that "sack of crap." Silva actually said all the right things about potentially going to the bullpen. He seems to realize that his performance this spring left himself vulnerable to this. I do think Hendry will not release Silva just yet for the reason he said on the broadcast yesterday. If you send somebody down to Iowa and decide to change your mind in 10-15 days then you can bring them back up. If you release somebody it's often not easy to get them back if you change your mind.

The SEC is the only conference with 2 teams left at this point (if OSU had won there would have been 8 conferences with 1 team left including every Big 6 conference). And of those 8 teams, 4 won their conference tournament and the other 4 made it to the finals of their conference tournament.

Where'd the .9 go? When they went to commercial there was 7.9 left. When they came back there was 7.0.

They'll fill those holes. With what? Aren't they up against the cap? That leaves the draft and trades besides James, Wade and Bosh what do they have to trade? They have the mid-level and bi-annual exceptions they can use to sign more players even if they're up against the cap. They can't sign any stars, but they don't need stars.

The problem is that he is supposed to be good defensively. So even if his bat isn't ready it could be conceivable that a team would take him and hide him as their 5th OF for a year. While this is more difficult for position players than pitchers, a situation like this rarely comes up where a position player is so talented and yet so far away from the majors at the time of being Rule 5 eligible. Usually a position player has either shown signs of promise and put on the 40 man or mostly flamed out by then.

I have a hard time believing that this was the optimal solution. It strikes me as a little strange as well but we know minor league contracts are a little restrictive. They could have signed him to a major league contract but that would have necessitated adding him to the 40 man immediately. Szczur might be eligible for the 4 option rule though if they are used consecutively (it depends on if he was in the minors long enough last season to count as a full season or not). So the Cubs will still have quite a bit of time before he has to be in the majors.

Back on topic please.