Thursday Rockpile: Francis leaning to surgery? Torrealba returning; Padres trying to keep Cabrera

Jeff Francis' shoulder situation seems to be nearing a resolution, just in time for his February 19 deadline. Francis may either throw a side session today or not depending on the outcome of an evaluation this morning according to Troy Renck, but either way the tone of the news over the last few days points to him undergoing the knife.

Other notes from the Denver Post include Yorvit Torrealba's return and Don Baylor's observance of a lot of early arrivals. Torrealba was delayed due to a death in his family, so we offer him condolences and hope all is well.

Seth Smith thought football was his better game at one point, but credits former Casper manager PJ Carey with opening up his baseball career in a story by Tracy Ringolsby.

The DP also highlighted Carlos Gonzalez in a separate post.

I wrote a couple of pieces for the SpringTraining09.com, most recently this article highlighting the clues the organization has been sending that it really believes that its competitive this year, and also a generic Spring Training preview posted about a week ago.

A couple of notes out of San Diego lead me to think that the Padres are planning to do all they can to keep Everth Cabrera, in this Padres Spring questions piece from Valentine's Day  we get this:

Towers said Cabrera has received good reports and that the team may have to eat one season from the 21-year-old, who has never played above Single-A, in order to keep him in an organization starved for a prospect at shortstop.

And then in this Gaslamp Ball review of Sandy Alderson's MP3 report is the following bulletpoint:

Someone that was drafted in a Rule V would give them the edge over someone else.