Al Yellon wonders what people see in Sergio Mitre, undoubtedly colored by his witnessing Mitre's poor performance on the mound today.

It's true that Mitre has an ERA+ of 65 in 60.3 career big league innnings, but it's also true that he only turned 24 in February. And this is what I see: a guy who has had success at every level of the minor leagues that he has been at. In 2001, Mitre had a 3.07 ERA in 91 innings for short-season-A Boise, with a 3.9 K/BB ratio. In 2002, 2.83 and 3.6 in 168 innings for low-A Lansing. In 2003, 3.34 and 3.1 in 145 innings for Double-A West Tennessee. Last year, 2.98 and 2.4 in 102 innings for Triple-A Iowa.

MLB.com quotes Dusty Baker as saying today about Nomar Garciaparra, "The guy can hit. He's a good fielder, [has] an excellent arm. When I look up his record, the guy has a lifetime .322 [batting average], that's unbelievable. For a right-handed hitter to hit .370 without a lot of speed, that's something, too." (Emphasis added.)

We are talking about the same Garciaparra, right?

How about this: Ryne Sandberg has started writing a column for Yahoo! Sports. His first addresses the topic of the day: steroids. Sandberg writes: "I have a question for Congress: Why don't you give Major League Baseball's new steroid testing policy a chance?"

The Daily Herald's Bruce Miles has a nice recap ("Anatomy of a trade," 3/20/2005) of the deadline deal that brought Nomar Garciaparra to Chicago last year. "With a minute to go until 3, Hendry reeled off the names to MLB."