We face our first left-handed starter in Sanchez in San Fran on Friday.  Is this when Bobby breaks out all of our right-handed bench players as starters to give some travel recovery time to the regulars or will we just go with the usual lineup so far since it's still early in the season?

Obviously Diaz starts, but does Heyward still play in right or will Bobby play the percentages and let Melky bat right-handed to let the rookie rest?  I think Heyward plays.

Could Ross and Infante start at C and 3B to give the starters more recovery time from the travel to a west-coast day game after an east-coast night game?  Does winning the night before factor into the decision at all?  I think Hudson will still do fine and we have a good chance to win even with a "spartan" line-up so I don't have a problem with most of our bench starting.  Just wondering what other's ideas are on our line-up under the unusual travel circumstances.

He is African-American.  He would be the only one on the team and a team with none would be unacceptable to the black community in Atlanta (I can hear Terence Moore coming out of retirement for one last article).  You'd hear/see a million stories about how the Atlanta organization doesn't care about black people or doesn't like them on their team.  We have many latin players, but zero black players.  Personally, I think it was the main reason we pursued Griffey last year and ended up signing FUGA.

I'd like to have Heyward on the opening day roster and I see this as one of the unspoken reasons that he will make the team.  I'm allowed to say this because I am a Bahamian and those labels are irrelevant to us... ;)

Agree... disagree?  What would happen if we went into 2010 with no African-Americans on the roster?

Been reading for a while, but this is my first post... this should be fun.

http://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2009/03/odds-and-ends-tejada-manny-white-sox.html

So the White Sox (and Detroit according to tonight's game) are looking for a centerfielder who can hit leadoff and we have a few.  My suggestion is to trade J. Anderson and let Schafer start with Blanco backing him up.  I get uneasy thinking about who will play CF when our regular needs a rest.  I'm uncomfortable with any other regular OF playing the position because none of them have the range/speed/glove.  Blanco can play the position and gives us a great replacement for the 10-15 games that are reasonable to assume for a rookie break as well as some extra speed off the bench.

I figure with the new durable starters, we can sacrifice one of the bullpen spots and use that spot for an extra OF since the starters will be going in the 7th inning most nights, which will save the bullpen. 

So would you feel comfortable with Schafer starting and Infante/G. Anderson/Francoeur giving him a break once in a while, or do we need an outfielder that can play every position as a backup?