His name is Pronk... Choo makes WBC Debut

Your day of reckoning has arrived.

The big day for Indians spring.

A few big names are ready to go.

First, I've got to cover the happenings.

Shin-Soo Choo played this morning for Korea and he DHed in their win over Taiwan, better known as Chinese Taipei. Choo went 1-3 with a run scored.

That's all I really got. But it looks like Choo is fine and will continue his WBC journey. The Koreans now face Japan and Choo will face a familiar foe, Boston Red Sox starter Daisuke Matsuzaka.

I'm not sure if he's allowed to play in more than two games if all he can do is DH, or if the Koreans are just going to take it easy and not play him in more than two games in this round just to keep him on sort of regular Spring or not out of respect for the Indians. We'll find out. Choo is the lone Major League player on the Korean roster, so he can get that treatment as far as anyone knows.

Fausto Carmona admitted he came into camp overweight a little bit. But he's doing good now.

"I lost a couple pounds," he said. "I don't know how many, but I feel better now."

The guy sweats like a hog, he should have no trouble losing the extra poundage. Mark Shapiro has said over and over again how important Carmona is to this team's success though.

"He's as important as any one player can be," general manager Mark Shapiro said of Carmona.

I got a lot of faith in what Carmona did over the offseason, fixing himself and getting his control back. The guy's stuff is too nasty to be a one year wonder. If you have something mechanically wrong, and not mentally or physically, there is no reason that it can't be fixed. I think Carl Willis and Carmona have tuned it up and he'll be good to go.

It's hard not to have faith in him.

And if you are Cliff Lee, who is making his spring debut today, you better have faith in the guy flying that fighter jet.

"I thought I'd be nervous," said last year's 22-game winner. "I wasn't nervous at all. I trusted these guys to take care of things."

There are a bunch of more quotes from Lee, the Indians, and the person flying the Jet in that story. It turns out Lee and his family are renting from the guy he was flying with while they are here in Arizona for ST.

As I said though, Cliff Lee will be making his debut today against Milwaukee. Here are the lineups.

2B Jamey Carroll, LF David Dellucci, DH Travis Hafner, SS Jhonny Peralta, 1B Ryan Garko, C Kelly Shoppach, 3B Wes Hodges, RF Trevor Crowe, CF Michael Brantley.

As you can see, David Dellucci is in left and BIG PRONKAH is in the lineup. I'm sort of dripping with anticipation to see how it goes.

I wonder if Matt LaPorta will see time against his former club. This game has a lot of the Brewers newer products, with Brantley in the lineup, as well as some of the guys that were floated around in trade talks with Sabathia. Names like Cain and Lucroy. Plus former Indian Trot Nixon is in the lineup, good old Trot!

Jeremy Sowers will be following up Lee, another shot to prove himself. The following are available to pitch: RHP Rafael Betancourt, RHP Masa Kobayashi, RHP Matt Herges, RHP Vinnie Chulk, RHP Tomo Ohka, RHP Rich Rundles.

No telling how many of them will actually pitch or when Wedge and Willis start to up the innings for guys like Sowers, who've been pitching two innings since the start of spring.