Alfonso Soriano Looks “Young” and Other Bullets

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  • Geovany Soto continues to recover from a “minor” groin strain, which manager Dale Sveum is downplaying. “It’ll be several days until he’s in games,” Sveum said. “He’ll take some swings, but I wouldn’t expect him to be in playing shape for several days. It’s not that big of a deal, just a very minor thing. But this time of spring you don’t want to mess with that.” It’s impossible not to be nervous, but, yeah, this time of year, it’s commonplace to give guys extra rest. You’d be crazy not to.
  • Presumed third starter Paul Maholm has been under the weather with the flu. I’m not sure how he’s expecting to win the bunt tournament now.
  • Speaking of which, another chunk of the first round of the Cubs Bunt Tourney was played yesterday, with Joe Mather, Darwin Barney, Starlin Castro, Ian Stewart, Travis Wood, Jeff Samardzija, Randy Wells and Andy Sonnanstine winning, and Edgar Gonzalez, Bobby Scales, Jason Jaramillo, Matt Tolbert, Esmailin Caridad, James Russell, Chris Volstad and Manny Corpas losing. The first round could be completed today (featuring Kerry Wood versus Dale Sveum), but the tournament will extend into mid-March.
  • Dale Sveum says Alfonso Soriano is looking good and “young” in practices so far, which can only be a positive sign. If Soriano stays healthy, he can still hit a bit. Even in last year’s down year, Soriano was still worth about 1.3 WAR. Just one year earlier? He was worth 3.1 WAR, or about how much Matt Garza has been worth in his average season. Comparisons like that are imperfect, but it’s something to remember.
  • Fluff on Tony Campana and his valuable speed.
  • Another set of MLBullets over at BCB, which focus heavily on the Ryan Zimmerman extension.
  • Ian Stewart talks about coming to the Chicago Cubs (CSN Chicago):
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    Brett Taylor is the Lead Cubs Writer at Bleacher Nation, and you can find him on Twitter at @BleacherNation and on LinkedIn here. Brett is also the founder of Bleacher Nation, which opened up shop in 2008 as an independent blog about the Chicago Cubs. Later growing to incorporate coverage of other Chicago sports, Bleacher Nation is now one of the largest regional sports blogs on the web.

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