Pinella announces Spring training opening lineup

Today Lou announced his starting lineup for the first game of spring training and it had Matt Murton in LF. Hopefully he shows Lou this is the right decision and can win the starting job out of spring training. Lou is also batting him second which I think will be a good spot for him, but I also hope that he doesn’t press too much and it hurt his OBP.

People that have been reading this blog, know that I am high on Murton and think he has one of the best hitting strokes on the team. He may never be a major power hitter, but he should always be able to get on base and hit the ball in the gap a lot for many doubles. His defense has improved, though that is not saying much, but it is now tolerable and hopefully this spring he can work on his fundamentals and improve some more.

One name in the lineup I hope is changed by opening day is Izturis. I am hoping that Cedeno can beat him out at SS as offensively I still think Ronny has more potential than Cesar has and defensively though Izturis might have more range, I don't think there is too much drop off.

The Lineup is as following:

Soriano CF, Murton LF, Lee 1b, Ramirez 3b, Barrett C, Jones RF, DeRosa 2b, Izturis SS, Marquis P