Ryan Dempster has a lot on his plate, and not just in making preparations to head to Mesa, Ariz., for spring training.

The Chicago Cubs pitcher is dealing with a personal battle as well, trying to help his 10-month old daughter deal with a serious ailment. (From the New York Times):

Ryan and Jenny Dempster's 10-month-old daughter, Riley, was born with DiGeorge syndrome, a developmental disorder caused by a defective chromosome. She requires nearly constant medical attention.

Her digestive system has been affected. Unable to swallow, Riley spends mealtime tethered to a feeding tube, while another tube in her tiny throat allows for the draining of built-up secretions that could seep into her lungs and impair breathing. It's her only manifestation of the illness.

Riley Dempster has spent more than three months in hospitals in Chicago, Philadelphia and Phoenix, and has had four surgeries. The Dempsters hope that physical therapy will help her strengthen the muscles used to swallow and that she will eventually learn to do so.

Meanwhile, Dempster and his wife have started a foundation to help raise awareness - and money - for the cause, in part to help others who can't afford treatment.

You can read all about it here.

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The Cardinals signed second baseman Skip Schumaker to a two-year, $4.7 million contract on Monday, avoiding arbitration.

It's a modest surprise, given that the two sides had to close a wide gap for 2010. The Cardinals proposed a $1.45 million salary for Schumaker's first year of arbitration, while Schumaker requiested $2.75 million, nearly twice as much.

Another part of the equation was that the Cardinals appeared to be flrting with free agent Felipe Lopez as an alternative at second base. Those talks have quieted, though.

In his first year as a second baseman, Schumaker hit .303/.364/.393 while serving as the Cardinals' primary leadoff hitter. The former outfielder is a career .301/.356/.399 hitter in 1,327 at-bats.

Considering that he's 30 and still a long shot to last as regular second baseman, this could well go down as Schumaker's biggest payday. He'll make $2 million this year and $2.7 million in 2011. He won't be eligible for free agency for the first time until after 2012.

That sound you just heard was the optimism of Mariners fans blowing up like the Hindenburg.

OK, so that last sentence was way over the top. But there must be at least a little bit of concern in Seattle with the news from MLB.com that Cliff Lee underwent foot surgery on Friday.

The surgery, which was performed by Dr. Bryan Burke, removed a floating bone spur in Lee's left foot that broke from its attachment. The procedure will not require Lee to wear a cast. He's expected to return to normal baseball activities in the next two to three weeks, which means Lee will be unable to participate in workouts when Mariners pitchers and catchers report to camp in Peoria, Ariz., on Feb. 18.

"We decided Lee should have the surgery as soon as possible, rather than try to pitch with the discomfort during the year," general manager Jack Zduriencik said. "To get it out of the way and have it behind us is important."

This procedure looks like a minor thing, and it's not as if Lee showed any signs of health problems in the playoffs.

Besides, with the magic Zduriencik has been working lately, I wouldn't be all that surprised if he's actually going to use the bone spur to clone a new and better Lee - and at half the price.

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This is part of a 30-article series looking at each team's depth chart headed into spring training.

Pittsburgh Pirates

Rotation
1. Paul Maholm
2. Ross Ohlendorf
3. Zach Duke
4. Charlie Morton
5. Kevin Hart
6. Daniel McCutchen
7. Brad Lincoln
8. Donnie Veal
9. Chris Jakubauskas
10. Jeff Karstens
11. Tim Alderson
12. Virgil Vasquez
13. Brian Burres
14. Brian Bass
15. Daniel Moskos

Hart will be the heavy favorite to hold off McCutchen for the last spot, but my guess is that he'll finish the season in the pen. I see McCutchen as the superior option, and Lincoln, Veal and Alderson could all earn shots as the season progresses.

Bullpen
1. Octavio Dotel
2. Joel Hanrahan
3. Brendan Donnelly
4. Evan Meek
5. D.J. Carrasco
6. Javier Lopez
7. Steven Jackson
8. Jeff Karstens
9. Brian Bass
10. Donnie Veal
11. Vinnie Chulk
12. Jack Taschner
13. Chris Jakubauskas
14. Anthony Claggett
15. Daniel McCutchen
16. Wilfredo Ledezma
17. Brian Burres
18. Justin Thomas
19. Daniel Moskos
20. Ramon Aquero

Yeah, there's going to be a lot to sort through here. Jose Ascanio, Neal Cotts, Craig Hansen and Tyler Yates will also be in camp with the Pirates, but none of them may be healthy enough to compete for a job in spring training.

Dotel, Donnelly and Carrasco should bring stability to the pen, though it still looks like a pretty weak group. I'm penciling Jackson into the last spot, even though he was recently bumped from the 40-man roster.

Really, he's rarin' to go:

Phil Niekro claims he's in great shape, and if the wind is favorable enough, the 70-year-old right-hander said he can still crank his fastball up in the 80-mph range . . . "I'm in excellent shape," Niekro said on a conference call with reporters on Monday. "In fact, I'm on the boat right now fishing, and I just got done throwing this morning. My fastball is up to about 81 [mph] now with the wind behind me, so yeah, I'm looking forward to [the Classic].

What he means is the Hall of Fame Classic, the exhibition game played in Cooperstown in advance of the inductions in late June. Neikro was announced today as one of seven Hall of Famers who will play this year.  Bob Feller will be there too, as he was last year. As will newcomers Rollie Fingers Goose Gossage, Gary Carter, Harmon Killebrew and Mike Schmidt.

The real question: If Niekro can really throw 80, and if he still has even a modicum of control over the knuckler -- to the extent anyone ever really has control over a knuckler -- how much better is he than, say, the Royals or the Mets fifth starters this year?

Over the next several days, I'll be dipping into my 2010 projections and presenting some leaderboards.

1. Tim Lincecum - 246
2. Zack Greinke - 211
2. Justin Verlander - 211
4. Dan Haren - 203
5. Javier Vazquez - 200
6. Tommy Hanson - 198
7. Chad Billingsley - 197
8. Roy Halladay - 195
9. Clayton Kershaw - 194
10. Felix Hernandez - 193
11. Adam Wainwright - 189
12. Jon Lester - 187
13. CC Sabathia - 186
14. A.J. Burnett - 183
15. Josh Beckett - 180
15. Ricky Nolasco - 180

Lincecum is clearly the best bet here, even if Verlander did beat him out 269 to 261 for the major league lead last season. On a K/9 IP basis, I'm dropping Verlander from 10.1 last year to 9.2, which is still far better than his career mark of 8.0.

Vazquez was projected with the second-highest total here as a Brave. However, the league switch knocked him down a bit.

Some pitchers with particularly high strikeout rates not to make the list because of their inning totals include: Rich Harden (149 in 142 2/3 IP), Max Scherzer (170 in 177 1/3 IP), Gio Gonzalez (167 in 171 2/3 IP) and Francisco Liriano (136 in 143 IP).

They've made a mini-celebration out of "Truck Day" in Boston -- that day when the semis full of gear leave Fenway and head down to Ft. Myers -- for the past ten years or so. Kinda silly, but a nice enough little ceremony. Better than the groundhog as far as harbingers of spring go anyway.

This is the first year, however, where I've heard of other teams -- or fans of other teams -- making hay over their own Truck Days.  The chatter on this has been growing all week.  MLB.com has a whole article about it today, talking about various trucks leaving various parks for various spring training destinations.  Which leads me to ask two questions:

1) Has this always happened? I'll grant that I may have missed it in the past -- I'm obviously following things a lot closer this winter than I did back when I was a working stiff -- but I have no memory whatsoever of anyone but the Red Sox making a big deal out of it before this year, and even then it was a really minor and relatively recent phenomenon;

2) If I'm not imagining it and it is a new thing, do we give the people at MLB credit for coming up with a new marketing/promotional thing, or do we heap scorn on them for synthesizing some phony fan event, ripping off the Red Sox or whatever?  Because I'm kind of confused about it.

Curt Schilling, arguing that the Red Sox should sign Josh Beckett to a contract extension right now:

Here's why, barring some freakish medical issue which I assume he doesn't have or there would be bigger problems, you sign Josh now. The one worry, other than health, you have when signing ANY player to a long term contract is the player themselves. Are they going to keep grinding, working, wanting it?

That's where this becomes a no brainer. I know Josh as well as anyone knows Josh. There is not a sliver of a chance that you get anything less than his total focus, concentration and effort for every day he's under contract, no matter who that is with.

Schilling-the-blogger is most associated with the Red Sox. I'm guessing a good 80% or more of his readers are Sox fans.  I'm guessing a good 80% of them know that the Red Sox front office under Theo Epstein doesn't give a diddly durn about how bad someone wants it. Dave Roberts wanted it bad and worked hard. Nomar wanted it bad and worked hard. So did Pedro. So did Jason Bay. And the front office cut the cord on those dudes because they make a point of signing guys who not only work hard, but who play well, stay healthy and who won't cost radically more than the Red Sox think they can be expected to be worth over the course of the deal.

If Beckett wants Lackey money or better, the Sox will probably let him walk. If he'll take something shorter or cheaper-per-year and he has a good season in 2010, he'll stay.  It's pretty simple really.  It doesn't matter how hard Beckett works. It doesn't matter how bad he wants to win.  It ain't personal. It's just business.

The St. Pete Times has some large pics of the Rays' new home alternate jersey. Kind of reminds me of a Blue Moon beer. I like Blue Moon but it's not like I'm crazy about it or anything. I feel kind of the same way about these home alternates.

If the Rays had any guts at all they'd pair these with matching blue pants.  They won't though because only the Blue Jays have the guts to take fashion chances these days.

For much of the offseason the assumption has been that the Yankees would sign a right-handed bat to platoon with Brett Gardner or Randy Winn in left field, and now SI.com's Jon Heyman reports that they've found their man in Marcus Thames.

Thames actually came up through the Yankees' farm system after being a 30th-round pick in 1996, but New York traded him to Texas for Ruben Sierra in mid-2003 and then Detroit signed him off the scrap heap a short time later.

He's spent the past six seasons as a part-time player for the Tigers, getting around 350 plate appearances per year against primarily left-handed pitching. Thames has elite raw power, averaging 33 homers per 500 at-bats, but has hit just .234 with an ugly .291 on-base percentage against right-handers during his career.

However, the Yankees have plenty of left-handed bats to plug into the lineup against righties and will simply need Thames to knock around left-handed pitching, which he's done to the tune of .256/.329/.516. Right now it looks like Winn and Gardner will compete for the left field job, with the winner forming a platoon with the 32-year-old Thames and the loser serving as fourth outfielder.

I'm not going to say that baseball news is slow, but this is one of the better things I've read today:

It always angers me that some athletes will go to great lengths to sign legibly, and others will scribble their name, and be done with it. Personally, I think it is a travesty for an athlete to sign his name in such a way that you cannot decipher what it says. Now I realize that players sign so much that it is ridiculous, and naturally some players sign more than others, but you can't tell me that a player can't at least write two or three letters that can be read by the average person.

Yeah, it's that bad.  But at least it provides me a basis for jumping into a subject I raised on my old blog a couple of years ago and which probably worth raising again: what's the freakin' point of autographs? I simply don't understand the appeal. Sure, I understand that they're valuable, but why? On a simple level, an autograph is proof that you were in the presence of someone famous.  But why should anyone else care that I -- or some autograph dealer more likely -- met someone famous? It's like tulips or dotcom stocks or something. Price that doesn't correspond with much if any value.

To be fair, the article linked above is about kids getting autographs and I sort of understand it for kids. They're told by their parents that autographs are worth having, so kids seek them out.  If obtained in person, they're a handy vehicle for getting the kid near the ballplayer, and that is kind of cool.  But isn't the biggest takeway from that the fact that the kid actually stood next to the ballplayer and maybe said a word or two to him? I got Alan Trammell's autograph when I was a kid. It's in my basement somewhere and I haven't looked at it in years. But I still vividly remember meeting him and talking to him, and I'd have the same emotional warm fuzzies about it if I had simply walked up to the crowd next to him and didn't walk away with an autograph.

So sure, the kids can have their autographs because they may not go up to the ballplayer otherwise, but what about the grownups? It seems mildly twisted to me. A grownup either gets an autograph at a signing or by interrupting a celebrity in public.  If it's the former, it's just an act of commerce, so what's so special about it?  If the latter, man, isn't that kind of rude?  Can't we invade their personal privacy simply by pointing our cameras and gawking and leave the final line -- thrusting personal objects at them for them to handle, sign and return -- uncrossed?

I'm not trying to be a total killjoy about this or anything. I have some autographs. Some -- the ones I got myself as a kid, mostly -- I like. Trammel, Gaylord Perry, Stan Musial, Al Kaline. Others I obtained in the course of my baseball card habit. For example, I never met George Brett, but I have his autograph on a ball and a 1980 Topps card. Same with Don Sutton and Eddie Matthews and Paul Molitor.  But either way, I'm not sure what I'm supposed to take from them. I'm not sure what they're supposed to mean. I'm not sure I'd ever obtain another autograph for as long as I live.

Craig already wrote about Steve Phillips' apologetic appearance on The Today Show, but here's the actual video of his interview with Matt Lauer:

I haven't gotten this misty since Apollo Creed let Rocky wear his red white and blue trunks for the Clubber Lang rematch:

The White Sox announced Monday that Aparicio has given his consent for Omar Vizquel to wear No. 11 in his first year with the White Sox, as the number will be un-retired by the organization for Vizquel to wear in tribute.

"If there is one player who I would like to see wear my uniform number with the White Sox, it is Omar Vizquel," said Aparicio in his statement released Monday.  "I have known Omar for a long time.  Along with being an outstanding player, he is a good and decent man."

Now all that needs to happen is for Aparicio to come out of retirement, get taken out on the turn at short by the baseball equivalent of Ivan Drago, die from his injuries, have Omar train like a madman to some bad Robert Tepper song and then take revenge "like piece of iron."

Which raises the question: who's the baseball equivalent of Ivan Drago?

Which raises another question: when is Bill Simmons gonna sue me for stealing his shtick?

Joel Sherman of the New York Post writes that Carlos Beltran is "furious with the Mets" for how they've handled his knee surgery publicly and may let that impact his return timetable:

He wonders if he should have been playing last year (in other words, was he properly diagnosed?). More important, he pushed to initially play in pain and then rush back in a lost season.

The Mets probably should not expect Beltran to prioritize the team this time around. He turns 33 in April. His contract walk year is 2011. So I expect that Beltran will take care of No. 1 and make sure he does not do anything to hurt himself for a 2011 salary-drive season.

Of course, making sure he's completely healthy following surgery before jumping back into the lineup is probably a good thing, so the notion that Beltran is hurting the team by not rushing back from a major injury seems kind of strange. After all the Mets went through last season, the last thing they should want is a star player going through something less than a full rehab and/or playing at less than full strength.

From the Brewers' official PR Twitter account:

Brewers announce it will honor MLB Commissioner & former owner Bud Selig with statue at Miller Park's Home Plate Plaza, unveil set for 8/24.

OK, first off, let's put an end to the snark-fest that has already started.  You and I can could mock this if it was a statue dedicated to Bud Selig the Commissioner of Baseball. We could say things like this should be the pose in which the statue should be cast. We can say that no Commissioner who presided over the cancellation of a World Series should be honored. But that would be wrong. Why? Because Bud Selig was an owner first, this statue is to honor him as an owner and in that capacity he probably deserves it.

Selig was a minority owner of the Milwaukee Braves, who for a while there were beloved in Milwaukee.  When the majority owners started casting about to find a place to move the team, Selig worked in vain to keep them in town.  As soon as that effort failed, he formed a group to try and get Milwaukee another team. He managed to get the Pilots. And before you accuse Selig of being a team-stealer, remember that (a) the Pilots were going bankrupt there anyway; and (b) if the Pilots didn't cease to be, "Ball Four" would be way less fun.

The Brewers were successful when he was an active owner. They played in a World Series. The city fell in love with them, and though that love has ebbed and flowed depending on the record, I'd wager that fan loyalty is greater in Milwaukee than it is in the majority of major league cities. This is a gut feeling but it's backed up by anecdotal evidence.  For example, Jonah Keri just tweeted something interesting:

Went to Brewers game in 90s, Bud emerged from box during 7th inning stretch. EVERYONE started chanting BUD! BUD! Seriously.

Bud may be a cold fish. Bud may not be as great a commissioner as his supporters in the game and the media make him out to be.  But he's Milwaukee's cold fish commissioner, and there are people there who love the guy. And even if they don't, they love the team he brought them and helped build into a winner.

Is that not statue-worthy? I kind of think it is.