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"The first test of Andy MacPhail's authority as Orioles president of baseball operations will come if a rival club makes a strong push to acquire second baseman Brian Roberts.

"A year ago, Orioles owner Peter Angelos refused to allow his previous front office to trade Roberts...Orioles executives, however, say privately that they are not under orders to keep Roberts.

"The Mets and Astros were among the teams that showed interest in Roberts before signing free-agent second basemen Luis Castillo and Kaz Matsui, respectively.

"The next team to take a run at Roberts could be the Cubs, who failed to land Matsui."

-- FoxSports.com, 12/3/07

Rich Hill (0-1/7.04) throws against Nick Masset as the Cubs make their only visit to Tucson Electric Park this Cactus League season. (The Sox will travel to Mesa next Saturday.) First pitch is at 3:05, and the game will be telecast in Chicago on WGN, though described by the insufferable White Sox announcing team. (Wild guess: at some point in the broadcast, lifetime .239 hitter Hawk Harrelson will talk about how much more fundamentally sound baseball players were in the Old Days.) Pat and Ron will also have the call on WGN Radio.

Another reason for a Cub fan to love, or at least be fond of, Lou Piniella, from Chris DeLuca in the Sun-Times:

Piniella feels compelled to bring a competitive team to Tucson today to face the White Sox, but Derrek Lee, Aramis Ramirez and Soriano will stay in Mesa, along with Henry Blanco and Felix Pie, to work on their hitting. ''We have to take a representative team over
there,'' Piniella said of the two-hour trip to Tucson. ''First of all,
we're playing the White Sox. Second of all, the game will be televised
back in Chicago.'

I have been unable to find any reports on the x-ray results following Alex Cintron's nasty encounter with that foul ball off the bat of Mark DeRosa yesterday. If you've heard or read anything, please post it in the Comments.

Update: According to cubs.com, neither Cintron nor Cedeno made the trip to Tucson. Piniella says Cintron "probably could've come today, He
was a little sore. He's fortunate that he didn't get hit a little
higher because it could've cracked his cheekbone." Cedeno stayed behind to rehab a tight hamstring.

In the Comments last week, loyal TCR reader The Joe asked which Major Leaguer had the most at-bats without ever getting a hit. (The question stemmed from the fact that Cubs CF candidate Sam Fuld currently has the roundest of lifetime batting averages, .000, after his 0-for-6 showing last season.)

According to the Baseball-Reference.com Play Index, the answer is Mets pitcher Randy Tate, who had 41 at-bats in 1975 without once hitting his way on base. Among non-pitchers, the more interesting record, I think, Mike Potter ('76-'77) and Larry Littleton ('81) share the mark with 23 hitless at-bats for the Cards and Indians, respectively.

But what about the Cubs? I figured that an organization which has fielded so many craptacular teams with roster spots filled by so many never-developed young players and over-the-hill old players would have some worthy entries in a category like this one.

So I waded back into the B-R Play Index and changed the original search parameters a bit to find the 10 non-pitchers who accumulated the most AB's for the Cubs without getting a hit. Note: the players listed may have hit safely before or after they wore the Cub uniform; the point is, they were hitless while they were ours.

Anyway, here are the Top Ten Members of the Hitless Cubs Club:

The Cubs play the A's this afternoon at 2:05 Central Time in Phoenix. You can hear the game via the mlb.com Web cast.

Jason Marquis starts for the Cubs against former White Sox farmhand and non-roster invitee Gio Gonzalez. The lefty led all of minor league baseball in strikeouts last season and fanned three Giants over two scoreless innings in his Oakland debut last Saturday.

Marquis also threw last Saturday and, you may recall, pitched like hell.