[Cannon Shell]

Originally Posted by Bigsmc

Spot on Chuck. I would lean much more towards the lucky side of the hitting vs. the timely side. Average pitchers can shut them down on any given night.

Through yesterday their leadoff guy, Bartlett, is batting .243, Pena .183, Upton .214, Navarro .182 and your most used bench guys, Rodriguez .222 and Kapler .224.... You can't win a Championship with that in your line-up no matter how good your pitching is. They addressed one of their many problems, Burrell, they need to address the above players. You can afford to keep Bartlett, Pena and Upton in the line-up because they provide gold glove type work in the field, but the rest need to not see the light of day. Jaso (.313) should catch every day unless he's hurt, when Soppach comes back from injury, Navarro should pack his bags. He does not provide any defense to supplement anemic bat. Rodriguez and Kapler should provide once a month fill ins for resting players, no more. Once Matt Joyce retruns from his injury (which should be soon), he should provide some offensive punch after the All Star break. Ruggiano is also batting over .300 at Durham and has big league experience.

The bullpen has been average, then again, most bullpens are. If those guys were great pitchers, they'd be starters. Soriano is a minor upgrade, but every appearance is an adventure. He needs to get his **** together and be a closer.

JP Howell is not the savior the local media thinks he is.

Thankfully, their starting pitching is loaded and if one of them goes down, Hellickson is ready to roll.

I'd give Jermaine Dye a call to see if he wants to play in a pennant race for say a $1 mill for the remainder of the year? He slumped badly the 2nd half last year but has always hit well in Tampa (lifetime .375/.389/.813) and has always hit lefties which is important against NY. Maybe he would be stubborn and look down his nose at such an offer but you could do worse than him as your DH especially considering Hank Blalock and Aybar are you other options.