It's Split-Squad Day Again

And another split result, this time not ties, but an 8-3 win over Oakland at Mesa, in front of a smallish crowd of 7,291, and a 13-7 blowout loss to the Diamondbacks at Tucson, with a lot of the minor leaguers riding the bus down there.

Most of the hitting in the Oakland game was done by reserves, except for Derrek Lee's first homer of the spring. David Kelton also homered and Paul Bako had a couple of hits. Kerry Wood got into the fourth inning today, the first Cub pitcher to do so this spring; I suspect by the time I get there, starters will be going five for the first time. Todd Wellemeyer made his case to make the squad by striking out three in his two innings of work.

Tipped off by my friend Dan Lichtenstein, I tried bypassing the MLB audio site to listen to the game on the A's station website, but all I got was a talk show talking about the Raiders, of all things. Seriously -- do these sports talk shows only talk about football? That's one reason I gave up listening to local sports talk radio here. All they'd talk about was the Bears, no matter what time of year and how bad they were. I'm not going to bother paying for MLB radio, since I don't need it during the season. MLB made another mistake here; last year they gave away the spring games as an enticement to sign up, but this year you have to pay first to get the "free" exhibition games. Yet another stupid marketing decision.

Today, Sammy Sosa actually made the ride down to Tucson and had a 1-for-3 day; Jason Dubois, who I suppose has an outside shot at making the team as a backup, homered, but that was about the only good that came. Jimmy Anderson, also trying to make the team, threw two good innings, but the D'backs damage was done off four pitchers (Carmine Pigniatello, John Foster, Brad Cornett, and Russ Rohlicek) who have virtually zero chance of pitching anywhere north of Jackson, Tennessee this year, so that part of the split-squad results have absolutely nothing to do with how well the Cubs will do this year.

Can't wait for Saturday when I can actually see a game (via TV, on WGN). Tomorrow, the Rockies visit Mesa.

In other news, Mark Prior did some long-tossing today but it appears it'll be a while before he throws off of a mound. It's still way too early to be worried about him.

And in an amusing note, I signed up to be in a Yahoo baseball fantasy league. It's free, and I figured, why not?

In setting up my player rankings, I noticed that Barry Bonds is not called by his name, he is simply listed as "SF Left Fielder". I learned that this is because His Bondsness has opted out of the MLB marketing plan; therefore they are not allowed to use his name in connection with things like this.

And Bonds thinks this is going to get us to buy his self-branded stuff. What utter arrogance.