Alright it looks like we won't get anyone voted onto the team, please stop the snickering, and will  have to again rely on the graciousness of the manager to decide which player he wants to take. I know alot of people want to see Andrew McCutchen on the team. So do I as he is by far our best player. There is just no way this happens. You would have to keep out so many other deserving players from teams doing much better than our team it just isn't going to happen without some sort of miraculous event (IE some strong voting to at least get him in the top 20) .

I think its obvious its going to be Evan Meek, he just has goofy numbers to this point that make it very easy to defend the pick.

What do you guys think?

Here is the link to it. I think its a layman's type article outlining the circumstances around what each player must do to get promoted this year. I think its a good article that explains the FO thinking. Some good quotes by Neal in there as well. Its actually a very positive article and really touts Lincoln. If anyone already's posted this somewhere else sorry but I didn't see it listed here yet.

Bucs Prospects Article

On Sunday's Baseball Tonight lead in to the Met and Phillies game, they did a feature on Zach Duke not retaliating against the Dodgers. Also the Post Gazette also did a feature about it too. Here is the link.

Post Gazette Story


The guys on BT sounded like he broke a rule of baseball by not taking out the reliever who threw at McCutchen. Duke in the interview from the PG sounds like he heard about it from teammates.

I wonder if this will have any kinda long term effect on the team when Duke pitches?

Do you guys think Duke should have retaliated? And was he being selfish by not?

Looking at MLB today I think how much luck is involved in winning.

St. Louis Cardinals got extremely lucky with the development of Pujols based on his draft position.

Milwaukee gambled at the time that Prince Fielder would beat the bad body rap and would stay motivated. Many people including Billy Beane did not think this was likely.

The A's of the early 00's had 3 ace pitchers all develop at one time. Beane hasn't been able to recreate this success because most of the time in MLB you don't have 3 studs develop all at one time. If you do its easy to look like a genious.

The Dodgers lucked out with Mike Piazza etc. etc.

It seems to me that we are going to need some luck to pull this out. We need at least 5 players to develop into star level players to have a chance at winning. Does this mean we need to gamble more on the draft?

It also seems we don't have any real power in the minor leagues outside of Pedro. Are we not valuing it enough in drafts?

Gorzelanny and Silva Make Rotation

Looks like he and Silva will be battling it out once Lilly gets back from the DL. With Samardjza and Marshall also on the team they have like 8 starting pitchers. It seems Lou is going with experience instead of results IMO. It also looks like Tyler Colvin is starting the season in the minors in spite of a his great spring. Also it states in the above article that young reliever James Russell (who's dad was Jeff Russell) will be sent down if they pick up another veteran. Russell has been really good as well this spring.