Today, the Cubs ought to hack some more. Why? Because Josh Towers just doesn't walk people -- only seven in 63 IP.
This doesn't mean they should hack away at bad pitches, only that Towers will likely be throwing strikes.
Towers wears uniform #7, the lowest uniform number of any pitcher in baseball today. I used to get him confused with Josh Phelps, his former Toronto teammate. But Phelps is now a Devil Ray, so that won't be a problem tonight. Man, the Blue Jays are an anonymous team!
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Today is also the MLB Amateur Draft -- the Cubs are set to choose twentieth. I haven't paid as much attention to this as some other writers, because, frankly, unlike the NBA or NFL drafts, most #1 baseball draft picks are years away from contributing to their respective major league teams -- Mark Prior being the most notable recent exception.
The Cubs selected Utah high school pitcher Mark Pawelek with their first round choice. High school pitchers are a crapshoot, in my opinion, but Pawelek, a lefty, seems to have considerable upside. He's a Scott Boras client, which may be why other teams shied away from him. The Cubs have always had a good relationship with Boras, so I'd look for a reasonably priced signing, IF Pawelek doesn't opt to go to Arizona State.
For further discussion about the draft you can go to Shawn Goldman's diary on the right sidebar.
Finally, if you keep score, there was apparently a scoring change from last night's game. This play-by-play shows Vernon Wells reaching 1B on an Aramis Ramirez error. But the boxscore shows Wells with two hits (he also doubled in the first) and no error for Ramirez. The rest of the boxscore proves out, so there must have been an unannounced change. It had no effect on the score.
UPDATE [2005-6-7 13:54:58 by Al]: Fear not, Cub fans. Our newly-solid bullpen will not be sullied. I'm actually being serious, not sarcastic, here. Danny Graves has signed with the Mets.
Good.
Discuss amongst yourselves.