Preliminary good Fucking awesome news

I'm listening to tonight's Dodger game (well, this afternoon's game where it's being played), and I have some good fucking awesome news to report.

First, the opening day starting lineup is slated to have Matt Kemp in right, Andruw Jones in center, Andre Ethier in left, and Juan Pierre on the bench. Hell yes!!!

Second, Chin-lung Hu made the team. Third basemen Nomar Garciaparra, Andy LaRoche, and Tony Abreu will all be starting the season on the disabled list (DL). I don't think Hu will be starting every day---he'll probably just be platooning---but I can always hope that that happens until LaRoche comes off the DL.

I don't know yet if Pierre will be benched for a longer period of time, but the fact that he won't be starting on opening day is absolutely awesome. Let's just hope it's a sign of things to come...


Update (3/31/08): The Dodgers have now officially announced that Andre Ethier will be the starting left fielder and that Juan Pierre will be starting the season on the bench. Hopefully, he'll stay there (or that, even better, we'll find someone to take him off our hands). Rob Neyer summarized this piece of news in a particularly excellent manner: Finally our long national nightmare might be over, as Joe Torre has bowed to reality and will use his three best outfielders as, you know, his three outfielders. But we must remain ever-vigilant, sports fans.