Some quick hits

A few quick hits while I wrap up the work week with a little down time....

*** The Royals got their last 2 players under contract Thursday by signing Zack Space Case Greinke and Mark Teahen to 1-year deals to avoid arbitration. Dayton Moore said on 810 yesterday morning that Greinke was gonna be given a chance to start again in '08. Hope the leash is somewhat short, because he was a great set-up guy last season. I saw a projected batting order for 2008 the other day (for the life of me can't remember where) and it had Teahen batting third, which confounds me. I think he's more of a 6-7 slot guy, leaning toward 7. But there isn't really anyone on the team that's a natural #3 batting order guy right now. I can see Gordon getting there, but not quite yet. Somebody has to hit there, I guess. Moore also said the goal in the offseason was to get Torii Hunter or Andruw Jones, plus Jose Guillen. Obviously neither signing happened (Hunter or Jones). Woulda been nice to see one of them (I'd prefer Hunter) in the new powder blues. No matter what happens, as of right now it's oh so nice to have baseball right around the corner.

*** Been updating the links section to the left.....added the entire list of Countdown links, plus some card blog links (of all those, I gotta say I like Cardboard Junkie the best so far), plus some new video links. We'll see how long those stay good. Find a dead link? Let me know by e-mail (link in picks to click) or the comments.

*** Speaking of comments, I hardly ever get any of them. Like the blog? Don't like it? NPB Notes drone on too long? Card talk not up your alley? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? I know people are reading it, but don't get a lot of feedback, other than a kind word here and there.

*** One short card-related note -- opened 8 packs of retail 2007 Topps Update baseball today and pulled 2 Joba Chamberlain RCs (unfortunately neither was the reverse negative version), a Grady Sizemore gold parallel and a Ryan Howard all-star jersey card. Not too shabby.

*** Getting ready to start some posts at some point about good books, probably mostly sports-related but maybe not all. The first one I'm gonna post about was written by a Pipeline reader, so look for that in a couple weeks or so.