I periodically check the various roto-sites and what-not for the latest news and rumors and I had noticed that Jason Simontacchi hadn't signed anywhere. The Cardinals did release him (quietly), so he's a free agent, and while Simo might be substantially below average as far as major league pitchers go, I expected he'd at least get a minor league deal with a non-roster invite.

Last night Wayne Hagin cleared up the mystery, noting during the Cardinals-Mets game that Simo's in St. Louis rehabbing from shoulder surgery. Maybe I misunderstood Hagin, and maybe he in fact said Simontacchi's taking human growth hormone to get an extra five miles on his fastball, but it appears Simontacchi will sign with someone in the not-so-distant future.

On a completely different note, Dave Cameron over at USS Mariner has a a slick take on spring training in general and on Albert Pujols in the spring of 2001 in particular. Spring training stats aren't that useful as the quality of players are dubious, some guys are working on skills rather than competing and there are always sample size issues of course. But players can change during a single offseason, for better and for worse:

Thanks to the nature of spring training, we don’t have any real way to quantify the effects of these changes, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. These are the kinds of outliers that scouts can see before they’re quantifiable... The key is to remember that these adjustments are rare. There might be one guy per organization that takes that kind of leap forward.

The chatter I've read at the PD and elsewhere suggests that the Cardinals don't have anyone like that this year, except perhaps Anthony Reyes, whom Bobby Cox liked. The Cardinals are in a position though where there's little point to rushing him. Bill Pulsipher's 0.00 ERA and accompanying K/BB ratio are nice, but Duncan told the PD (in an article that's since gone off to the ether) that he didn't understand how Pulsipher was doing it, making Pulsipher an obvious candidate for Memphis.