Win for Santo

... is not the fact that two of our best pitchers (plus Miller) are rehabbing from injury. No, it is Juan Pierre. What an incredible disappointment so far. I had high hopes that this "spark plug" would really energize the offense. I was at Great American Ballpark for opening day and saw his lead-off triple. However, it has been downhill from there. This evening, in the eighth, with the Cubs desparately needing a run, he leads-off the inning. This is why we got him...he supposed to get on base somehow, wreak havoc, maybe steal a base, and score the second run that ties the ballgame. Instead he grounds out weakly (to the pitcher, I thinkg - but I might be getting this out confused with one of his other weak at-bats...). I'm really concerned. Am I over-reacting? Will he improve? Or, do we need to start getting on the Pie bandwgn...

My favorite... First, I have to set it up...often when a batter strikes out, the catcher will rifle the ball to the third baseman, and he'll throw the ball around the infield. And that's what happened... For Carey, however, he called something like, "a hot smash off the bat of x, snared by y at 3rd base. Bang bang play. Holy Cow!". It was left to Steve Stone to say sheepishly, "ahhh, Harry, I think the batter stuck out, and the catcher threw the ball to the 3rd baseman". Maybe that's sad? But, if you liked Harry (and I did), you just had to laugh.

Interested in some feedback on this... I think our two biggest weaknesses right now are (obviously) the hole that is right field and the back-end our rotation, especially if Wood is injured. Adding a pitcher addresses the 2nd weakness, but also helps with the first...since our natural trading partners (e.g., Texas for Wilkerson, LA for Bradley, even Baltimore for Tejada at SS) need pitching. Unfortunately, in a year in which we have money burning a hole in Hendry's pocket, we can't use it to acquire a RF, given the dearth of FAs at that position. All of this points to using our money to get 1 or 2 strong starters (e.g., Millwood, Weaver) and using our new pitchers to shore up our rotation against injury risk and to make it easier to send our valuable/cheap pitchers (e.g., Williams, who I really like) to another team for the RFer we need. Thoughts?

I was going to post a message, but you've captured my feelings. Zito will be much better, and if we can get him from the Athletics now, we'll have no problem affording him next year (when Maddux's contract rolls off). The superior pitching provided by Zito will offset what I believe will be only average production from RF (i.e., the candidates discussed here...Bradley, Wilkerson, Huff, Mench are OK, but not serious impact bats).

So, what are we rumored to be receiving in return for Patterson?

I just looked at the Insider blurb...it just references today's Chicago Tribune article ("the Cubs may be close to landing righty setup man Bobby Howry, The Chicago Tribune reports." This is what I pay for? The online version of the Tribune is free!

Or, the Braves decide not to be overly aggressive in retaining Furcal.

This thread just inspired me to buy the song at the iTunes store. With this purchase I symbolically put this season to a merciful rest...some would say I'm at least a week late, but hope dies hard. So much talent, so few wins.