Outshined_One

Great to see a new face with the Cubs, Mr. Ingram! Who are you most excited to watch on the Daytona Cubs this year? What players strike you as leaders, jokers, silent hard workers, and so on?

I think another important thing to factor in will be whether the Cubs see themselves as legitimate contenders for the division by the time summer rolls around. Pie could help the team in two ways: 1) Much like Murton and Greenberg were intended to be last season, sometimes a team needs a youth infusion or a new guy in the clubhouse to help make matters a little easier on the team. A rookie with infectious energy can really help in the stretch run, ya know? 2) Pie is probably the #1 target for any team looking to trade with the Cubs. If the Cubs want to go after a top-flight player, Pie will be a valuable trading chip. If he comes up to the majors and handles himself quite well against major league quality pitching, his stock will only elevate. Granted, this line of thinking could very well backfire and it is rather premature to be talking about Pie in this way. But nevertheless, it is food for thought.

http://www.progressiveboink.com/dugout/archive/dugout4-8-06.htm Mwahahahahahahahaha.

Wind should be blowing out to left/left center between 5-7 mph.

I'd prefer Pie gets until Sept before getting called up. If he manages to keep hitting around .500 with a 2-1 K-BB ratio, I think it'd be pretty hard to keep him down in AAA for that long. ;) But a half season stay down at Iowa to work on his SB technique, approach at the plate, and so on would be ideal. I predict he gets called up in mid-June.

En fuego!

Moises? ;)

That's quite a nice line, all things considered.

Anyone care to tune into the Peoria broadcast to see what Yepez is throwing?

The Phillies have pretty good talent that they'll want to cash in on while they're cheap and under contract (Rollins, Utley, Howard), but their pitching is just a mess. If they go through a rebuilding process, the Philadelphia fans won't be all that kind to them. What's going to matter is how the Cubs' pitching prospects perform up to the deadline. It will take top of the line pitching to land Abreu. If Guzman tears his rotator cuff, Rich Hill goes Ankiel on us, Marshall busts spectacularly, and so on, then I don't think the Cubs will have the ammo to trade for Abreu. However, if Hill regains his consistency, Guzman blows away AAA, and Marshall posts good numbers in the majors...options will present themselves. The only thing I'd worry about would be Dusty moving Jock to left with Abreu starting in right. I think Murton will show enough with his bat over the next few months to justify starting every day...but you never know.

The Brewers are on the cusp. They'll be serious division contenders next year, or at the latest the year after. If they get a legitimate #1/#2 starter to complement Sheets and get a healthy season out of the two of them, they will be pretty darn good.

My observations so far this season... 1) Juan Encarnacion/So Taguchi or whatever scrub they put out in RF is not going to approach Larry Walker's numbers. While Walker was declining during his time with the Cardinals, he still managed to put up pretty good numbers. Without his bat, they're not going to be as productive offensively. 2) Their bullpen is a mess. Braden Looper as a potential closer just doesn't strike me as the best of ideas, even though Izzy has had his own share of struggles. Even with good starting pitching, this team will have problems winning games if they have to rely on their bullpen to win. 3) It will be reasonable to expect Pujols/Edmonds/Rolen to continue to be three of the best hitters in baseball. They'll likely see drops in runs and RBIs due to the surrounding lineup being fairly weak, but they can still mash. 4) Chris Carpenter is still pretty darn good. 5) The rest of their rotation is...interesting. It's hard to draw a bead on Mulder since he actually performed much better in the second half than the first half, which is the first time he's done that in awhile. I was curious as to whether his hip problems would flare up, but he might have found a way to get over that. Suppan and Marquis are pretty much what you'd expect them to be. Ponson...if he manages to start 30 games and post an ERA under 4, I will be convinced that the entire Cardinals organization has indeed made a pact with Satan. The Central is going to be a fun division this year. I don't think it'll be like previous years where the Cardinals build a 100 game lead by June 1st. Quite the contrary, I expect the division to be fought over until the end of September. Also, if the Mets and Phillies collapse like previous years, we may well see another Wild Card team come out of the Central.

Box Scores Iowa won 7-1 Box Score CF F. Pie 3/4, R, 4 RBI, 2 3B (2), SB (3) 2B R. Theriot 1/5, RBI, K LF J. Strong 1/4, R, SB (1) RF M. Restovich 1/3, BB, R, RBI, HR (1), SB (1) 3B C. McGehee 1/4, R, K C C. Kopitzke 0/3, BB, R PH M. Fontenot 0/0, BB, R SP A. Guzman 5 scoreless, 2 H, 6/1 K/BB, 5-4 GO-FO RP B. Brownlie 1.2 IP, 3 H, 1 ER, 0/0 K/BB, 2-3 GO-FO RP A. Shipman 1.1 scoreless, 1 H, 1/0, 2-1 GO-FO RP D. Aardsma 1 scoreless, 1 H, 1/0 K/BB, 1-1 GO-FO West Tenn won 3-0 Box Score CF C. Walker 0/4, R, 2 K 2B E. Patterson 1/2, 2 BB, RBI, 3B (1), 3 SB (3) RF L. Montanez 0/3, BB, K, SB (1) 3B S. Moore 0/3, BB, 2 K LF R. Lewis 2/4, R, K 1B M. Hoffpauir 2/4, R, RBI, 3B (1) C T. Richie 0/4, K SS C. Rojas 0/3, BB, K SP D. Cash 5 scoreless, 1 H, 6/2 K/BB, 6-3 GO-FO RP T. Atlee 2 scoreless, 3 H, 1/0 K/BB, 3-2 GO-FO RP C. Rapada 2 scoreless, 1 H, 2/0 K/BB, 3-1 GO-FO Daytona lost 7-4 in the 12th Box Score CF S. Fuld 0/4, BB, HBP DH R. Harvey 1/6, RBI, 4 K LF N. Jackson 1/5, 3B (1), K, CS (1), HBP C J. Fox 4/5 BB, R, SB (1) 1B M. Craig 0/3, BB, R SS J. Simokaitis 2/5, R, 2 RBI, SB (2), E (1) 2B N. Spears 2/5, BB, RBI, K, SB (3), E (1) SP M. Holliman 5 IP, 2 H, 1 ER, 7/0 K/BB, 3-5 GO-FO RP M. Weber 2 IP, 5 H, 3 ER, 2/2 K/BB, 3-1 GO-FO Peoria won 2-1 Box Score CF D. Gregg 1/4, K 2B R. Chirinos 0/3, BB 3B K. Taylor 0/4, K 1B R. Norwood 0/4, 2 K DH A. Garcia 1/3 RF J. Defendis 0/3 C M. Reed 1/3, K SS D. Johnston 2/3, 2 R, 2B (1), K SP J. Yepez 6 IP, 2 H, 1 ER, 2/2 K/BB, 7-8 GO-FO RP M. Phelps 2 scoreless and hitless, 2/1 K/BB, 4-0 GO-FO RP E. Campusano 1 perfect, 2/0 K/BB, 1-0 GO-FO OVERALL: 3-1

1) Similar production. 2) Cheaper. 3) Under the Cubs' control for less than three years. He'd still suck, but it'd be easier to stomach. I've explained myself every time I've made that statement. Care to include that the next time you say something like this?

Not a bad line. Hopefully the Cubs can throw some cash at him. :D

Heck of a crazy game. Always exciting when the Cubs and Cards meet. :D Let's go Marshall!

Encarnacion up as a PH.

Eck grounded into a force out.

You. Out. Now. You should know better than to come into the Game Threads during games. :P

Come on, get the Garden Gnome to GIDP.

Please tell me that thing hanging from Spiezio's chin on his gameday picture still isn't on his face...

Does anybody know if Dempster got credit for the save yesterday in the 5-1 win? He did.

This is one of the situations I'd be perfectly fine with Neifi subbing in for Cedeno at SS.

Jones by a country mile. Murton isn't a slug on the basepaths, but he runs like he's constipated. :D Shall we have him pimp Metamucial? That might actually get him to run a liiiiiiiiiiiiiittle bit faster. ;) FC at third. Don't see that every day.

Time for Cedeno to atone for past sins.