Jim Fainter

No, not by a long shot. But we don't know how desperate they are. Last year they picked up White after Rockies cut him. If they use Porzio properly, they might get some good use out of him. Maybe they have some AA shortstop that we could use. Nothing more would be expected. It's getting late, so I'm dreaming.

Dan Wright is back with Charlotte.

Seriously, if they are hurting that badly for pitching, we ought to see what we can get for White, Koch, and or Porzio.

Why do we do these questions? No one knows.

Wright's performance has really hurt this year. No one expected him to be an all star, but a lot of us thought he could win 8-10 games and eat up some innings. Wrong. When you have the # 5 starter continually getting pounded, it effects the whole bullpen. It caught up with us today.

That's why we can never evaluate the trade. No one knows if Rowand got his s*** together. If we had waited another two weeks, maybe the trade doesn't get made. Easy to second guess.

The Devil Rays looked good. They are a pretty good team. They have several kids who can flat fly, and they are not afraid to use their speed. Plus, they hustle; they play hard. And they are well managed. If you take away two of our best pitchers, say Loaiza and Buehrle, and Maggs, which is the better team? I think they are. They have really improved. Give sweet Lou a couple of years, and they will be tough. Their hitting will improve, just becasue Lou himself is such a good hitting coach.

1. JM takes Porzio out earlier. He had nothing today. He accomplishes nothing by leaving him in. 2. One or two of those bunts gets beat out. That could have been a really big inning. Daubach's should have been a shoo-in, the third baseman was so far off the line. Robbie's was an eyelash play. Just give me one of them. 3. JM brings in a lefty to face Huff, or at least walks him. No excuse to leave White in the way they were hitting him. The game was tied at the start of that inning.

I was actually feeling sorry for Koch when he had the bags loaded with no outs. But just one run scored. He is not the same pitcher he used to be. He got took old, it looks like.

Back to Rick White. I know he had a big save in Toronto, protecting a 2 run lead, but he faced 4 hitters, and at least 3 of them hit the ball real hard. He was a bit lucky, but I didn't care. Today, his luck ran out.

Porzio was lucky to hold his own in his first twostarts. He got by because he had no homers and few walks, but they hit him. With Porzio you need two things: a stingy bullpen and some offense. His luck ran out today. He is not a big league starting pitcher. I don't know that Charlotte did him any favors by putting him in the rotation, because that was not his long term ticket to the bigs.

Are you serious?

Jerry choked.

Hawk nearly came out of his chair yelling at Frank that there were two outs.

I don't think the big chaw of tobacco helped Porzio very much. He shouldn't be starting again anytime soon.

Is there a rule against taking Porzio out? Glover and Koch are well rested.

Trade Porzio to the Cards.

He's 30, and JM will leave him in for 5 innings or 27 runs, whichever comes first.

I think Bell is a better pitcher than Porzio. 4-5 more starts from our # 5 guy, whoever he is. I was a little surprised we didn't bring up Adkins instead of Porzio, since Adkins had been doing pretty well at Charlotte.

They will sing a different tune if he has three more good seasons and reaches the 500 home run plateau.

The real Manny Ramirez was in the news today (the one who plays for Boston). He took a water bottle with him to the outfield in today's game.

You're right, Jason. I have mentioned his improved swing elsewhere. You don't think Greg Walker has been working with him, do you? Just kidding, I think.

One could make a pretty strong argument for both Frank and Robbie achieving that status. They both need 2-3 more years of playing on a regular basis. Frank figures to finish this year with 410-415 homers with a lifetime BA of about .310. Three more years averaging 30 homers and .275 BA should do it for him. That will give him 500 or so with a lifetime BA of right around .300. Robbie should finish this year with close to 2700 lifetime hits, which means two full years of playing regularly will push him over 3000 in 2005. With that, he should be a shoo-in. I can't see him signing with any team that won't play him regularly.

He'll probably do it (500) in 2006, barring injury, diminished skills, etc. I would hate to see his lifetime batting average fall below .300, but if he hits .275 until the end of 2006 it most likely will.

I don't see the Sox protectecting Stumm on the 40 man roster, so he might get picked up by some other team. We seem jinxed with our number 1 draft picks. Our # 1's who did well were drafted a loooong time ago: Frank, Robin, Alex F, Black Jack. In recent years, the only guy to stick in the bigs has been the catcher Mark Johnson. Am I missing someone?