Jorge Cantu batting third, for awhile

Fredi has decided to leave Hanley Ramirez as leadoff and he plans to give Jorge Cantu the third hole until further notice .

Manager Fredi Gonzalez said he would give Cantu an extended look in the three hole. Cantu got his first chance there Wednesday and went 1 for 4 with a double and a strikeout. In his career, he had more at-bats in that spot (410) than any other place in the batting order, batting .290 with a .842 OPS.

There are other candidates should Cantu fail.

"There are a couple of other candidates," manager Fredi Gonzalez said. "[Dan] Uggla might be able to jump up there and do it, but we'll leave Jorge up there to do it. Luis [Gonzalez] can do it, but you hate to put three left-handers together."

I never understood the logic of not wanting to put three lefties together in a lineup when a ton of teams have three righties following each other.  Few, if any, teams start as many left-handed pitchers as the Marlins do.  Also, most of the opponents bullpens only have two left-handed pitchers at best.

Yes, yes, I know, right-handed hitters see right-handed pitching all time and lefties don't see left-handed pitching all that often.  But this is the majors and the more they see left-handed pitching, theoretically, the better they should be able to handle it.  And we are talking about putting Gonzo in the middle of the lefties and seeing left-handed pitching is nothing new to him.

I'm not advocating that the Marlins start three lefties in-a-row in the lineup and I do understand why a manager would want to alternate lefties and righties, it just that I don't see the horror of having three lefties in-a-row.  As I'm writing this it occurs to me that there is some team in the majors doing this with their lefties, but who it is, escapes me.

To summarize: Cantu is in the three hole for the time being.