TCR Friday Notes
The big news is that the Cardinals have struck again on the trade market acquiring Matt Holliday from the Oakland A's for 2008 1st round pick Brett Wallace, RHP Clayton Mortensen and OF Shane Peterson. Wallace was a 5-star prospect according to Kevin Goldstein to begin the season and #2 on John Sickels list, with Mortensen and Peterson being "C+" prospects according to Sickels. Apparently being too right-handed isn't a concern for them as they're lineup could be Molina, Pujols, DeRosa, Ryan, Glaus, Holliday, *Rasmus and Ludwick. Of course Glaus isn't back yet, and he'll probably be given a lot of days off when he does return but that's what their lineup could look like down the stretch.
Good news for the Cubs is that when Alfonso Soriano, Milton Bradley and Aramis Ramirez really start hitting, it'll be like making a trade.
(slams head in door)
I don't think this guarantees anything for the Cardinals, but it certainly doesn't hurt them this year, so....crap.
- Joe Posnanski, one of the few sports columnists I seek out to read, recently came out with his top 100 list of players right now. The only Cubs to make the list are Aramis Ramirez at #80 and Carlos Zambrano at #92. The TLFC is naturally upset over the omission of Ted Lilly.
I could spend a lot of time picking the list apart, but then I realized that my own attempt would probably come up with just as many issues. There's just no way to do something like that and for everyone not to hate it.
Beyond that list though, I do recommend Joe's blog, one of the better sports writers out there in my opinion and his conversations with Bill James on SI.com are probably the most entertaining baseball reads on the web.
- Speaking of lists, Fangraphs recently did a series on the Top 50 players ranked by trade value with no Cubs making the cut and you'll see what I mean that these lists are ripe for anger.
- Found this link from Ruz's blog on how the Red Sox pitchers dissect the strike zone. A pretty in-depth and technical article on how pitchers attack hitters.
- Ryan Dempster's toe X-ray showed "excellent healing" and he should be back in the rotation next Wednesday (maybe Tuesday now with Lilly going down). Pitching match-ups for this weekend are Harang vs. Wells, Cueto vs. Hart and Owings vs. Harden. Ted Lilly was scratched from his start tomorrow with a sore left shoulder, exam tomorrow....ruh roh.
Today's lineups...
Dickerson RF |
Fukudome CF |
Taveras CF |
Theriot SS |
Votto 1B |
Lee 1B |
Phillips 2B |
Ramirez 3B |
Encarnacion 3B |
Bradley RF |
Nix LF |
Soriano LF |
Hanigan C |
Fontenot 2B |
Gonzalez SS |
Hill C |
Harang P |
Wells P |
- If only this headline from the Miami Herald was true (thanks to 10man for the link)...
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