One Gathers that Guzman Has Passed Prior

There are some people in our lives from whom compliments simply mean more, whether we have a rare respect for that person or they just tend to hand out compliments with less frequency. Piniella strikes me as that kind of person.

Speaking of which, this story from the Official Site made me happy. As implied, Piniella must trust Theriot to a certain extent to let him know that he's made the team, and it seems like it's been awhile since the Cubs have had a manager that trusted younger players to any extent at all.

I have to say, I'm fairly impressed with Piniella so far. He seems to have brought a legitimately fresh outlook to this franchise in terms of talent evaluation. It's nice to see guys like Theriot, Guzman, and even Murton get fresh looks this spring, when they probably would have already been pigeonholed into a role (respectively, AAA, AAA, and short end of a platoon) before.

And, the opposite seems true, as well. Guys like Jacque Jones and Mark Prior seem to have had their roles with the organization thrown up in the air, too, although they're probably not as happy as the others about it.