Saturday Notes
Saturday, February 23rd, 2008Inside the Ivy has a Q & A (Source) with former first round pick in 2005, Mark Pawelek. You might remember that Pawelek injured himself last season when he tripped over his Playstation 3 in the middle of the night. As a result, he fractured his radial head in his non-throwing arm. He’s had two seasons now and has disappointed in both. This year he’s been working on his control as well as conditioning. I have to wonder what happens if he struggles again this season. Because he’s a first round pick I think he earns a big of extra patience, but eventually you have to begin to call an audible much like what happened to Bobby Brownlie.
Baseball America had their recent edition of the Cubs Organization Report (Source) on Tuesday and the first line made me laugh. “Don’t worry. Rocky Roquet is OK.” My first thought was that not only do most fans not know Roquet was injured at the end of the AFL this off-season, but most have probably never even heard of Roquet to begin with. In response to his hernia injury, Roquet said:
“It was nothing too serious, but something that needed to be taken care of,” he said. “I tried working through it for the most part. I worked through it in August and September. It was no problem. After a month in the fall league it was acting up and it wasn’t worth risking further injury. I had surgery the first week in November and I’m back fully now. Everything is working out.”
Ryan Dempster is slated to start the first Cactus League game on the 28th (Source). I’ve seen people get upset about that. I just don’t see how spring training news means that much to people. If I could, I would make it so no spring training news was ever released. It’s useless. Veterans that have their spots locked up are working on new things, so their number should be taken with a grain of salt. Invitees and players on the bubble are playing hard, but oftentimes are facing less than ML ready competition, so their numbers aren’t particularly accurate either. I’m just waiting for March 31st. That’s the day that matters to me.
Kosuke Fukudome is set to hit third in the lineup until tomorrow when he’ll be hitting 5th and then on Tuesday when he’s hitting leadoff. In other words, Lou has no idea what the Opening Day lineup is going to look like, and I’m OK with that. Why should he know already? He’s never seen Fukudome face a live ML pitcher in a game situation before. Give it time and quit pestering the guy.
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