Stances on a few things

First of all, I'm sure most (if not all) of you have seen and heard about Chico-gate by now. My stance: I agree with Mike from Nationals Fanboy Looser-Chico made a mistake, apologized for it and we need to get over it. He didn't choose this beat (in Soviet Russia, beat chooses you), but still is a good writer (with the potential to be a great one) and does a fine job, considering covering baseball is a 24/7/365 event.

Lastings Milledge has been named the leadoff hitter. My stance: AGAINST! FJB had a nice post up today concerning optimizing the batting order, and while I do disagree a bit with some of it, I wholeheartedly agree with batting the OBP monsters at the top. Putting Milledge and Guzman, two of our three most undisciplined starters (the other being free-swingin Flores), 1-2 is just plain stupid.

Cutting Shawn Hill: A necessary evil. It seems that with guys like Hill, the only way to quit the whole "he's so good, but he's always hurt" mantra is to cut bait completely. I still believe Hill can be a great #3 starter, but I think it was time for him to go.

Signing Joe Beimel and Josh Bard: Both good moves. Beimel provides steadiness in the pen-he's more or less a known quantity. Not flashy, not as good as his 2008 line, but good enough to be worth $2 mil. Bard is solid and you can't argue with the price ($600k), especially when you consider the fact that he might end up being the starting catcher. From the looks of things, he's either awesome or terrible every year. Hopefully this is one of those awesome years.