--Inspired by a question Carrie Muskat of cubs.com posed to herself, I have a post up at The Cub Reporter addressing the question of Ryan Dempster's fitness to make the Cubs starting rotation.

The bottom line on the Dempster-as-starter talk as I see it is that Ryan Dempster had one good season as a starting pitcher, back in 2000 for the Marlins, when he went 14-10 with a 120 ERA+ and made the NL All-Star team. As these numbers show, Dempster's career line as a starter looks a lot like Jason Marquis's...only not quite as good.

In other words, if the Cubs come north from Mesa and Dempster is scheduled to get the ball every fifth day, we have problems.

--On Wednesday afternoon, dedicated AHNY reader California Phil reported that he was only able to view the first part of the Sam Zell video before the video stopped. I checked it out and the piece continued to run for me all the way to its glorious conclusion, leading California Phil and I to assume that some filter in his employer's network had detected Zell's obscenity and frozen the video.

Naturally, I have suggested to California Phil that he get a new job immediately.