The Reds may not have many sure-fire front-line starters, but they do have depth, particularly when it comes to young arms.  While Aaron Harang and Bronson Arroyo are locks for the rotation to the start the season the battle for the other three spots has been intense.  Veterans Matt Belisle, Jeremy Affeldt, and Josh Fogg all have a chance, but they are going to have to hold off the young arms of Homer Bailey Edison Volquez, Johnny Cueto, and Matt Maloney.

Cueto, who has no major league experience, is making a strong case for a spot in the rotation as he pitched his second straight stellar outing in Friday's loss to the Pirates.  The twenty-year old right-hander is opening some eyes at camp and pitched three scorless innings while striking out four of the 10 Pittsburgh Pirate batters he faced on Friday.

SPRING NUMBERS - thru 3/7
Jeremy Affeldt (5.0 IP, 3.60 ERA, 2 K, 2 BB)
Homer Bailey (5.0 IP, 3.60 ERA, 3 K, 3 BB)
Matt Belisle (4.0 IP, 3.60 ERA, 1 K, 0 BB)
Johnny Cueto (5.0 IP, 1.80 ERA, 6 K, 0 BB)
Josh Fogg (5.0 IP, 1.80 ERA, 4 K, 2 BB)
Matt Maloney (2.0 IP, 36.00 ERA, 0 K, 4 BB)
Edinson Volquez (4.0 IP, 6.75 ERA, 5 K, 2 BB)

If I had to pick today Cueto is the one young arm that makes the rotation. There is speculation that Volquez will likely start the year in the pen and Bailey and Maloney will be headed to Louisville. Only time will tell.

Here are what others are saying about Cueto:

Dusty Baker, Reds' manager
"Sometimes people live up to the hype. Most of the time they don't. He's kind of exceeded the hype so far. I've seen his demeanor, his actions, his desire inside."

Jay Bruce, Reds' outfielder
"Sometimes those guys have no chance -- no chance at all. I asked him how he was throwing, he said, 'maybe 98.' I believe him. He's ridiculous. He's going to be good for a long, long time."

Javier Valentin, Reds' catcher
"If you have that kind of change-up, welcome to the big leagues. He's the next Pedro Martinez."

Paul Bako, Reds' catcher
"I'm impressed with his stuff. I'm also impressed with his command and how effortless his delivery seems and how consistent it is. It appears he's never really out of control out there, which is pretty rare for a guy his age with as good of stuff as he has."

C. Trent Rosecrans, 1530Homer.com
"Put Johnny Cueto in the Reds' rotation right now. Put him third behind Aaron Harang and Bronson Arroyo -- not because Cueto could be the Reds' third-best starter, but because Arroyo’s done it long enough to have earned the No. 2 spot."

In honor of this weekend's Duke and North Carolina showdown let's take a look at college basketball's top rivalries:

1. NORTH CAROLINA/DUKE
No other rivalry on the list year in year out has so much on the line. More often than not the team that takes the season advantage gets consideration for a No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament.

2. KENTUCKY/LOUISVILLE
Basketball is king in the Commonwealth and you are not allowed to root for both teams. There are still some Kentucky fans that hope Rick Pitino burns in hell for taking a job with rival Louisville.

3. KANSAS/MISSOURI
There are more people in Missouri that hate Kansas than there are the Cubs, Broncos, and Raiders combined.

4. INDIANA/PURDUE
It's not quite the same without Bob Knight and Gene Keady on the sidelines, but no there is no state where basketball is taken as seriously as it is in the Hoosier state.

5. CINCINNATI/XAVIER
These schools are 10 minutes apart and you can throw out the records when they meet up as no matter what the scenario this annual match-up generally goes down to the wire.

6. ARIZONA/UCLA
The Pac-10 offers some good candidates for the list, but no two teams have enjoyed the long-term success that the Bruins and Wildcats have managed, making their rivalry even more special.

7. THE BIG FIVE (La Salle, Pennsylvania, St. Joseph's, Temple, and Villanova)
While this unique pentagonal rivalry does not have the same national impact as the previous four, the history and intensity matches it without question. St. Joe's, Temple, and Villanova have all had their moments on the national stage in the last 20 years.

8. UCONN/TENNESSEE (Women's)
The fact that I even included a Women's College Basketball rivalry on the list speaks magnitudes for how special of run that these two schools have enjoyed and how much they typically stand in each other's way to a title.

9. TEXAS/TEXAS A&M
Texas is known for its football, but don't tell these two schools. It almost looks like a football game when the Longhorns tangle with the Aggies on the hardwood as the game always promises to be physical.

10. PENN/PRINCETON
Ivy League basketball is often overlooked, but these two teams never should be. There games are always nail-biters and it seems like every year which ever school prevails ends up a Cinderella candidate once the Dance begins.

Those of us that follow the tennis world have long since given up trying to figure out Andy Roddick.  The man simply disappoints when you expect greatness, and then displays brilliance when you write him off.  So I guess I shouldn't have been surprised that Andy knocked off two top five players in the same tournament for the first time in his career, in the same week that he announced that his coach left him.

No doubt, Roddick is a strange bird.  He's always seemed to want to do his own thing more than what his coaches wanted him to do.  He had a successful run with his first coach, Tarik Benhabiles, but dumped him in 2003 to work with Brad Gilbert, undoubtedly one of the great tennis minds of this generation.  Gilbert took Roddick to the #2 world ranking, but suddenly fired him at the end of 2004 in favor of the venerable Dr. Dean Goldfine.  Now, granted, Gilbert has always struck me as one of those tennis obsessed control freaks that would call you up at 3 a.m. with a strategy he just came up with for your second round match, but you can't argue with the results.

Hall of Fame player and commentator John McEnroe used to say about Austrian great Thomas Muster, "Muster has two plans going into a match: Plan A, hit the ball hard; Plan B, if Plan A doesn't work, hit the ball harder.  Under Goldfine's tutelage, Roddick's game pretty much deteriorated into that sort of strategy.  Roddick failed to reach the quarterfinals in five of his next seven grand slam tournaments, and his world ranking briefly fell below #10.  Things pretty much hit rock bottom at Wimbledon of 2006, when during a 3rd round loss to Scotsman Andy Murray, where McEnroe basically gave a blistering commentary for two hours about everything that had gone wrong for him, and what he needed to do to get back on top of his game.

So when, in the late summer of 2006, Roddick announced that he had hired Jimmy Connors to be his new coach, all of us were stunned.  Connors?  The man who had wanted almost nothing to do with tennis since his retirement (unless there was a big paycheck involved)?  The man with no coaching experience of any sort?  Yep, this was going to be the turnaround point for Andy.  And for a time, things did get better.  Roddick won in Cincinnati, made the finals of the U.S. Open and the semis of the Australian Open, but then things started to level off.

Connors seemed to take only a passing interest in Andy's development at times, only occassionally showing up to his tournaments.  This arrangement seemed to suit Andy just fine; he often talked about how he learned more from Connors over a beer or a poker game than he did from on-court practice sessions, and he could continue to do his thing on court. 

Roddick touts that Connors significantly improved his backhand; this is true, it's a much more powerful weapon than it was in the years before.  What Connors was not able to do was to improve his horrendous service return game (Andy is still consistently one of the bottom 2-3 of the top 50 players on tour in return points and games won), improve his match strategy (displayed most clearly in his Wimbledon quarterfinal loss to Richard Gasquet, when he blew a two set lead by continuing to go to Gasquet's backhand, his clear strong suit), or help his get over his pre-occupation with Roger Federer (who has owned him to the tune of a 15-1 record).  And now, 18 months later, Connors decided that he'd had enough of the coaching thing.

So now Andy is acting as his own coach, and maybe that's best for him.  Almost no one has been able to ever get through to him in a way that makes him an elite player, and those that have he brushes aside when they get on his nerves, which probably explains why he owns such a horrendous record against top 10 players over his career.

The career of a tennis player ends early; most peak around 26-27 - heck, Roger Federer is 26, and may be six months into the downside of his career.  At 25, Roddick still has time to right what is clearly one of the more underachieving careers in tennis history.  He's got $1 million tools, but until someone gets into that ten cent head and turns things around, people are going to continue to wonder what could have been.