A piece of advice for Carlos Hernandez: do NOT hang a curveball to Big Papi. He will destroy you. And it's too bad, really, because until Papi's ENORMOUS two-run blast off Carlito (his second of the game), the Venezuela-Dominican Republic WBC matchup was fairly close. But Ortiz and Adrian Beltre, who also homered twice, were too much for the Venezuelan pitchers. Oh, Taveras went 0-for-4, but made some good plays in centerfield.

As for the Astros, well … they got beat down by the NY Metropolitans, 7-1. Nieve and Buchholz combined to give up seven runs in six innings, although each pitcher was only charged with one earned run thanks to sloppy defense up the middle. Burke committed yet another error, this time at second base. That's got to be his third or fourth error of the Spring. Not helping his chances of seeing time at short... Of course if he keeps crushing the ball (he hit another double today), it'll be hard to keep him out of the lineup. It sure woulda been nice to rough up Billy Wagner, but he went 1-2-3 against us. Bah.