Paul Sullivan is either the best-sourced or the most speculative beat writer: he suggests the Cubs are giving serious thought to sending Pie down to AAA to work on his swing. He would (potentially) be replaced by...

...drumroll...

Andres Torres!

The sound you hear is me self-immolating.

Torres hasn't played in the majors since 2005 - his career batting line of .210/.258/.276 I think explains that pretty well. He's 30 years old and might well be the only player on the Cubs' AAA affiliate who could hit right-handed pitching worse than Reed Johnson. (I'm serious - his career splits against left-handed pitching are amazing. I refuse to reprint them.) His CHONE projection is a wonderful .238/.300/.360. Yay .660 OPS!

The best part:

A call-up of Torres could give Pie time to cut down on his strikeouts in the minors, while giving Piniella the option to sit Reed Johnson against selected righties.

Ignoring the platoon splits for a minute... selected righties? You mean all of them?

At least he was a very good defensive center fielder. In 2003. Is he anymore? It's possible, I guess.

If you were wondering, by the way, self-immolation is the act of setting oneself on fire. I'll let you know in the morning if I was kidding about it. Or I won't, because it's hard to type while you're on fire.

(The rebuttal is that Torres is currently hitting .356/.441/.525 down at AAA. My counterarguement is that I don't really care - the guy shows every indication of sharing Johnson's platoon split, and until the league becomes predominantly left-handed neither of them are useful as everyday starters in center field. Are Sam Fuld and Eric Patterson both dead? Because that's the only way this gets within spitting distance of acceptability. Oh, wow. Can we take a look at Mike Fontenot in center field before we try this out? I'm dead serious.)

There's a lot of news on the business front for the Cubs this week. I'm still trying to internalize all of it myself, so I don't have a lot to say. Maury Brown breaks down the opening of the financial books and handicaps the potential owners. The Trib is still trying to offload the ballpark to the state in a separate deal.

Wittenmyer writes a surprisingly sober piece about the Roberts deal that never was.

Bruce Miles wonders about a certain line of thinking:

A lot of my regular readers and some on my favorite blogs and message boards keep waiting for shortstop Ryan Theriot to falter so Ronny Cedeno can take over. I've never understood this negative kind of thinking. Theriot is batting .331 with an OBP of .406. He deserves the benefit of the doubt until he shows he can't do it anymore. Go ahead and laugh about Theriot's alleged "grit," but he worked hard in the off-season to get himself into shape and to make adjustments with his swing. There's nothing wrong with a little grit as long as it's producing results.

I can't speak for everyone, but I can speak for myself, at least.

Cedeno and DeRosa have - in my estimation - a higher true talent level than Theriot. That means I think that it is most likely that a Cedeno-DeRosa middle infield would be the most productive going forward. There is a finite amount of playing time to be apportioned over the season - if Cedeno and DeRosa are more likely to contribute to winning than Theriot, by the time there's a significant change it will have already cost the team.

My biggest worry is that Theriot’s defensive liabilities – his mediocre range and his bad arm – are being overexposed out at shortstop, and putting in Cedeno solidifies our infield defense. (I looked at Theriot's defense using Revised Zone Rating a few days ago. It's a topic I hope to revisit soon.) Then the question becomes WHICH established veteran do you bench, because DeRosa and Theriot can’t both play second base – at least not at the same time. Despite season to date performance, my money is on Mark DeRosa going forward.

(And the difference in performance between DeRosa and Theriot to-date is overstated if you simply look at AVG and OBP. If you're going to use two rate stats to evaluate a player, they need to be OBP and SLG - batting average is simply the least useful of them all.)

But let me go ahead and clarify something: I don't root for Ryan Theriot to fail. I just expect that he will, based upon his past performance. I don't question his desire to substantially improve himself after last season; I'm just highly skeptical that a player can do so at the age of 28 in spite of his track record. And I'm more than a little frustrated being the fan of a team that thinks it's a good idea to gamble on the idea in a season when they plan on being in serious contention.

Some people - and people like Al Yellon and Bruce Miles, that I respect quite a bit - have argued for gambling on it a bit longer. I'd rather collect my winnings while I'm ahead.

(And bet on Ronny Cedeno? I know, I know. And I'm not entirely sold on Cedeno's offensive performance so far, either. I just think that Theriot is overexposed defensively at shortstop.)