I’ll write one more article about my tournament thoughts and reflections and so on in a day or two, but let me just sum up the final last night with three words – wow, oops, and yawn. Wow, as in wow North Carolina looked incredibly good. Oops as in, oops, I guess I was wrong when I repeatedly said that I thought North Carolina looked vulnerable coming into the tournament. Yawn as in that was a truly boring game to watch despite the Tar Heels’ laser precision. Ugly.

The Giants won their season opener today, but the game featured a strange and potentially troubling development. Not surprisingly, Tim Lincecum got the start for the Giants. The surprise was that Lincecum got the hook after just three innings. He struggled through those innings, but he had only thrown 78 pitches, and he reportedly wasn’t injured. Given all that, it’s hard to believe that they wouldn’t let him at least try to work through his problems. It’s just one game, of course, but it’s a little bit concerning – TomVerducci from Sports Illustrated talks all the time about the year after effect – how pitchers under 25 who increase their work load by more than 30 innings in a season tend to struggle the next season (there is another article about it on the SI website today if you are interested) – and Lincecum is a prime example. His workload went up 50 innings last year. I hope mightily that he bucks the trend, but this first start isn’t a great omen.

I heard an amazing stat while I was watching the Cubs play the Astros tonight – this is the first time in 23 years that the Cubs have had no players on theDL on Opening Day. The point isn’t that they have had particularly bad luck – they haven’t. It just shows hard tough it is to keep a team healthy. I have been wondering what impact the extended spring training will have this year (because of the World Baseball Classic). Maybe this is one effect – more time meant guys to take it easier and nurse aches and pains a bit, so they were healthier when the real season started. As it turns out, the accomplishment could have been a bit of a curse (like the Cubs need another one) – catcher Geovany Soto left the game in the third inning with shoulder soreness.

Speaking of watching that game, it sure was great seeing Pudge Rodriguez play. I’m glad he landed somewhere that he will get lots of chance to play. He is not looking great at the plate yet – he struck out his first two times up. He’s just such a master at handling a pitcher, though. It was his first time in real action withWandy Rodriguez, but they were clearly in sync. I feel very lucky to have watched his career in its entirety. He’s the best there has ever been at his position, and I don’t even remotely feel silly saying that.