Friday Notes

- As one astute reader noticed - replacing the big bat of Alfonso Soriano with Mike Fontenot has all the makings of replacing Derrek Lee's bat in 2006 with Neifi Perez. After today's showing, it's hard to see if Eric Patterson is much better.. But with two lefties scheduled after today, I think it's time to (wait for it)....Free Matt Murton!

- A quick shout-out to a new member of the Cubs Blog Army. One of our readers has started Harry and Hawk, which covers both Chicago baseball teams. You can stop by and read half the articles.

Some site notes after the jump...

...Friday's game thread is below...

- As you've probably heard by now, the Cubs received 25-year old outfielder/first basemen Doug Deeds from the Twins today as the PTBNL in the Craig Monroe deal. A ninth-round selection of the Twins in 2002, the lefty was an honorable mention on John Sickels top 20 Twins prospects before 2007, but didn't make the cut in 2008 after a rough year in AAA. His scouting report on Scout.com before the 2007 season sure had some encourging notes:

Deeds is one of the more polished hitters in the Twins’ organization, and each year he seems to grow at the plate. He has the ability to hit to all fields, and has shown the ability to hit at every level he has played at during his Minor League career.

Deeds is a great defensive outfielder, and should have a future as an everyday corner outfielder in some organization, hopefully the Twins. He makes all the plays in right field, and has a tremendous arm that enables him to scare potential base runners from advancing a base. He uses good closing speed to get to balls that most outfielders do not get to, and has had his fair share of outfield assists throughout his Minor League career.

His career line is still a solid 291/374/463 and hopefully a change of scenery will benefit him. I imagine he'll be headed Mike Wellman's way and on to Iowa.

we kid...we kid.

Observations from the first three games:

• A bad idea is a bad idea and I'm glad Lou doesn't take 20 games to come to these conclusions. Theriot batting leadoff was just never a good idea and Soriano batting second is even a worse idea. Soriano doesn't have the patience or bat control needed for that spot and Theriot doesn't get on nearly enough that it's going to help the teams bottom line - scoring runs. Kudos to Lou to for the willingness to admit his mistake quickly and moving on just as quickly.
• Has Geovany Soto been listening to Henry Blanco or did he dust-off a copy of "Michael Barrett's Defensive Drills for Catchers"? It's never good when between you and Jason Kendall, Kendall looks like the better defensive backstop.
• While legal, Weeks took one heckuva cheap shot at Soto. I'm not sure if Weeks was just angry at getting plunked a few times, but he's made a career of getting hit by pitches, so he needs to get over it quick. As for the play itself, the ball wasn't all that close to Soto and it wouldn't have taken any effort by Weeks to go around him. I'm frankly shocked that the Cubs didn't retaliate later in the game. On the other hand, we needed the win pretty badly and maybe it's best to save that for down the road.
• This Fukudome character is pretty good.

....counting down to Vegas (I'm going next week, Cubs arrive at the end of the month).

- Feel free to use this as today's game thread, Cubs stay home in Mesa and battle the Angels; Ryan Dempster vs. Ervin Santana. 

- The big news of the week was another Lou lineup change, this one involving our highest paid player though. I immediately expressed my displeasure over the experiment, but I'll save my final judgement when it's actual put to use in a game that counts. Lou still has a few weeks to change his mind. I have no problems with moving Soriano to the 2-spot or the 5-spot or the 4-spot or even the 3-spot. I have all kinds of problems with giving Ryan Theriot even more plate appearances, even if it's just a handful more.

On the other hand...

There's just something about the Lou tenure so far that makes me give him the benefit of the doubt. It's not that I think he's infallible or anything. It's just that if he does go down this road with Theriot at the top of the order, I feel just as confident that he'll abandon it if it's not working. This is the complete opposite of how I felt about Dusty, who was stubbornly stupid.

- The Cubs made their first roster cuts, trimming the roster by nine. They included pitchers, Billy Petrick, Esmailin Caridad, Jose Ceda and left-hander Geoff Jones. Also, outfielders Tyler Colvin and Andres Torres, infielder Bobby Scales, and catchers Wellington Castillo and Josh Donaldson.

- A couple of quick site modifications with more soon to come. I added a "module" as Drupal calls them, that will automatically fill in the subject line for users when they comment. When you first hit the comment button, it will add "Re: {Title of Post}. If you hit reply to a comment, it will fill-in the subject line with the subject of the comment you are replying to. You can go in and edit them if you wish. If you are replying to someone's comment though, we do ask that you just leave the default because it makes life a lot easier for those viewing comments in the "flat" modes.

- The next tweak is the signature module. It has a few options - the most important is that it will stylize the signature automatically (no more broken tag troubles hopefully). Currently it's set-up to have a small line break and italicize it:

__________________________

Welcome to The New Cub Reporter!

Also, if you change your signature or add one, it will change the signature on all your old comments as well.

Next, your signature will no longer show up in the comment box and you won't have to type around it. If you added a signature to your account, it will automatically attach it to the end of your posts now.

The last note is that after I installed the module, it did take everyone who had a signature yesterday and duplicated them in your comments. An unfortunate side-effect, but everything should be working normally from here on.