pie down, soto up, cuban lurking

the second half starts today, with the cubs carrying no true centerfielder and three light-hitting catchers. beats me, folks. i only work here. at least the 24-year-old geovany soto has a potential future, which is probably more than minor-league journeymen like koyie hill and rob bowen can say.

felix pie is in a way another sad victim of babip unawareness, to my way of thinking. (also victim of the utter non-demand for jacque jones on the trade market, but no post can fail to mention babip, of course.) his .264 babip in spite of a 19.3% linedrive figure suggests that he might rightly be owed by the gods another five hits or so, which would at least bring his average up to .251. but that's still just a normalized .302 on-base percentage. if lou piniella considers jacque to be a sufficient offensive improvement over that to offset his defensive tradeoffs.... well, you decide for yourself. i'd certainly rather see the kid play everyday, but then i'm not trying to win the 2007 nl central and have thought the idea a pretty futile one for some time. bp has jacque with a 115 rate in center this year, so maybe it's justifiable. not to mention that jacque is owed some hits by the gods as well. maybe he can take a few from mike fontenot.

Depth	SP	RHRP	LHRP	C	INF	OF
1	Carlos Zambrano	Carlos Marmol	Scott Eyre*	Rob Bowen**	Derrek Lee	Alfonso Soriano
2	Ted Lilly*	Bob Howry	Will Ohman*	Koyie Hill**	Mark Derosa	Jacque Jones*
3	Jason Marquis	Michael Wuertz	Neal Cotts*	Geovany Soto	Ryan Theriot	Cliff Floyd*
4	Rich Hill*	Sean Gallagher	Clay Rapada*	Henry Blanco	Aramis Ramirez	Matt Murton
5	Sean Marshall*	Billy Petrick			Cesar Izturis**	Angel Pagan**
6	Juan Mateo	Rocky Cherry			Daryle Ward*	Felix Pie*
7	Jeff Samardzija	Angel Guzman			Mike Fontenot*	Buck Coats*
8		Ryan Dempster			Ronny Cedeno
9					Scott Moore*
10					Brian Dopirak
60-day	Mark Prior	Kerry Wood
60-day	Wade Miller	Roberto Novoa

if i had something to add to the mark cuban furor, i'd add it -- but i really don't, beyond saying that i'm a big roman abramovich fan and anything we can do to get a russian oil tycoon into this thing is all for the better. ccd's latest take says everything i might.