Among other events today, Carlos Zambrano will be making a rehab start for Daytona at Dunedin this afternoon; the game begins at noon CT. You can follow the game via the milb.com scoreboard page.
Meanwhile, I think it was a smart idea to move Sean Marshall to the Cardinal series, where he and Ted Lilly will both start: the Cardinals are hitting .220 vs. lefthanders.
So, what will happen when Z returns on Friday? Lou says he likes Marshall in the rotation, but with Randy Wells also throwing well, Lou will have a choice to make. It's a nice problem to have: too many good starting pitchers. I'd stick with Marshall -- he's done a good job and it's always nice to have more than one lefty in your rotation. Wells can become a long reliever -- that is, if Lou ever figures out how to properly use guys like that.
Chris DeLuca writes, almost in the Telander vein, about the current steroid controversy fueled by the Manny suspension. Unbelievably, he quotes former Giant and Cardinal Jack Clark on the issue:
"You want to pay to watch something special," Clark said in a rant relayed by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. "But now you watch these guys, and it's not special, it's not fun. And you never know where [the next revelation] is coming from."
Well, I dunno. If the mainstream sports columnists want to keep doing "flavor of the month" columns and continue to rant that "everyone" is under suspicion, let them go ahead. Somehow, though, Jack Clark isn't the guy I want to hear it from.
Lou listened to Alan Trammell regarding his infielders:
[Bobby] Scales started at second after playing two games at third, with Mike Fontenot going back to third. Manager Lou Piniella made the switch at bench coach Alan Trammell's suggestion.
"Alan feels more comfortable with Fontenot at third," Piniella said. "[Trammell] is our infield coach, and I listen to him on where we should play our players."
Smart thinking. I saw Scales play third in spring training. He wasn't good there. Second base, he can handle.
Oh, one more thing. There's a hockey game this afternoon, too. Go Hawks!
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Here's what I wrote about Moehler on Friday:
Brian Moehler's ERA is 8.44. That's really bad, but the good news for him is that it has actually come down steadily with each of his starts. He threw seven good innings in his last start -- against the Padres, who as we just saw, have trouble hitting. His previous start vs. Washington, decent results, same thing, bad-hitting club. He started against the Cubs on April 8 in Houston and they drilled him for eight hits and seven runs and he used 37 pitches to get five outs. Moehler is 37 and when he was a September callup for the Tigers in 1996, one of his teammates was... Cubs bench coach Alan Trammell. If that isn't a signal to retire, I don't know what is.
All of that is still true. Let's beat him.
Rich Harden has a long history with a lot of current Houston players -- but not while they were Astros, instead facing many of them during his AL days. He has only two career starts vs. the Astros, the last one being 11 days ago in Houston, when he threw seven good innings and the Cubs won 6-3. Just to prove that it can be done, Kevin Gregg actually threw a scoreless inning that night.
Today's game is on WGN -- at last, available nationwide. For today's other games see the MLB.com Mediacenter.
Baseball-reference.com game preview
Overflow comment threads will post today at 2:15 pm, 3:15 pm and 4 pm CDT.