*ahem* Madlock. Everyone forgets about Madlock. Three years doesn't count as stability. He was good, but not a fixture. he certainly wasn't a "hole" Ok, so maybe hole was a bad word, but definitely a position the Cubs had trouble getting a long term answer at. I'm too lazy (and too tired) to look it up, but I'm curious about how many 3B's the Cubs used after Santo and before acquiring Ramirez. I know it was a good number of them. They only had Madlock for three years right after Santo, so yeah, it was mostly a hole from 1977 until 2003. There were random moments of quality, like Steve Buchele inexplicably being awesome in '93, but it suuuuuuuuuuuuuucked for the most part otherwise.