Burnett vs Robertson, at 1:05 this afternoon. Curse these weekday afternoon games!

And we get a whole day to enjoy it.

Now the Mets beat the Cardinals?

Just a few days of spring training left. The starters seem to be in place now. The battle will be for the final couple bullpen spots.

Another bunch of meaningless games. Can we tease out some meaningful stuff?

In the current poll thread discussion, Bauxite zeppelinkm pleads,

"Can we please get a thread up to talk about Roy Halladay (or a general Jays thread at least!). Pleeeeeeeease! He's reinvented himself again (well, at least his approach), and it's awesome to watch.  I have no one to discuss the awesomeness of Halladay with..."

So here it is. Over to you zep (or any Bauxite who wants to jump in) ... Roy Halladay has "reinvented himself again," you say? What's that mean, and why should we be talking about it?

Go!

Four wins, two losses, and a tie. Not that anyone's counting. There's more interesting stuff to consider this spring.

Halladay starts out well against the Sox in a 4-1 win.

Sammy Sosa is in Rangers camp now ... In bigger Lone Star baseball news, Roger Clemens is in Astros camp (sort of) ... Another former Yankee hurler, El Duque Hernandez, has a real pain in the neck ... Meanwhile, still another veteran pitcher, Curt Schilling, says he definitely will file for free agency ...

In other news, the Cardinals are planning on using Braden Looper in the rotation, while the Dodgers plan to hit Rafael Furcal and Juan Pierre (!) 1-2 in the lineup this season ...

What else?

Jeff Blair reports that the Jays and John Gibbons have agreed to an extension through the 2008 season. The deal will reportedly pay Gibbons $650,000 in 2008.

The Jays are starting to roll into Dunedin and there seems to be two stories right now:

1. Doc says he's perfectly fine.
2. Gibbons is in the last year of his contract. Bob Elliot is concerned about this. JP and Gibbons? Not so much.

The Jays signed Pete Walker to a minor league deal.  Walker is coming off of rotator cuff surgery and is a long shot to fill a spot in the Jays bullpen.

Today, John Beamer tells us in THT that most projection systems have Frank Thomas mashing in 2007 for 450-500 plate appearances. Meanwhile Rich Lederer in Baseball Analysts reviews the ground-ball and strikeout tendencies (Shouldn't Strikeout Tendency be the name of a Marxist faction?) of minor leaguers, and finds that Chi-Hung Cheng was in the right place last year before his injury. And the Todd Helton trade talks continue, with money as opposed to players seeming to be the major issue. "Helton for diddlysquat" doesn't quite have the ring of "Manny for nothing", does it?

And don't forget, it's only 3 weeks until pitchers and Molinas.

Jeff Weaver and Arthur Rhodes are about to sign with Seattle, so the M's should be in good shape to win the division -- Oh, wait, it's not 1999 any more ... Willie Randolph re-upped with the Mets at double the salary -- imagine if he'd actually won something! ...

Glendon Rusch has been released by the Cubbies, so he joins the still-available open market with other Names You Probably Know like Gabe Kapler, Phil Nevin, Eddie Guardado, Tony Armas, Jr. and hey, ex-Jay hotshot Steve Karsay ...

What else?

Today's News ... let's see ...

Antonio Alfonseca to the Phillies ... Mark Bellhorn to the Reds ... The legend and greatness of Fernando Tatis to the Dodgers ... The A's traded Kirk Saarloos and a PTBNL to the Reds for David Shafer and a (presumably different) PTBNL ... In The Biggest News of the Day (so far), two-time All-Star Darin Erstad, a Gold Glove at two positions and a silver slugger to boot, signed on with the White Sox ...

So it's not ALL about Tomo Ohka! What else?