Lou is Lying or He's Crazy

Even a dramatic, game-winning home run by Aramis Ramirez failed to keep Carlos Zambrano from being the story after last night's game.  Lou Piniella said Zambrano now will have a new bullpen role, becoming the most expensive long reliever in baseball history.Z will be "stretched out" to prepare for a bigger workload, so a reasonable person would speculate that this move is cover for his eventual return to the starting rotation (and all to baseball sanity).  But Piniella said this, per the Sun Times:  "I didn't say rotation.  I said we're going to change his role in the bullpen."

So he'd better be lying.  See, long relievers are the worst pitchers -- if not players -- on any baseball team.  They are the guys not good enough to start, not good enough to close, not good enough to be set-up guys and not good enough to be used for a key out at an important time.  They are mop-up mopes who can eat innings and buy time for the occasional comeback when a starter blows up.  So if Lou is not lying, he has carefully executed a plan to ruin Zambrano's value entirely.  Or waive his no-trade clause.

We'll talk about this today when we hit the airwaves after Sox/Tigers postgame, as well as break down the overall Sox mess and preview Hawks/Sharks game two.

And Terence Moore -- national NBA columnist at fanhouse.com -- writes today that LeBron James will be a Bull, bringing Doc Rivers as coach, and possibly Chris Bosh as a teammate.  Ok, then.  That'd be fine.