Little Slide Rooter

The back end of the bullpen WAS the one thing this team had going for it.

Because if you look at the 3B market, unless he completely falls off a cliff, he'll likely get a 2-3 year deal for someone, especially if the power comes back. The next best options are 38 year old Casey Blake and 36 year old Mark DeRosa who cant stay healthy anymore. If he wants to give us a home town discount, that would be swell, but if your thinking he'll come back for 6 mil, thats not going to happen.

He wouldn't be my first choice, but I'd hardly call him crappy. He's kept the White Sox competitive pretty much every year, and he's good at identifying under-utilized players from other organizations. Kenny Williams has pretty much gone the Hendry rout and thrown out big money teams in a weak, small market laden division. Hes made a few good moves in picking up Carlos Quentin and signing Alexei Ramirez, and did a good job selling high on Freddy Garcia for Gavin Floyd, but hes made just as many bad moves, and has pretty much gone in record as saying that all prospects are essentially currency. When you have that expensive of a team in the worst division in baseball, you should be in the playoffs every year, and once the Indians and Royals kids grow up, we'll see how good Kenny Williams and his aging, expensive team are doing. I can answer that right now: about as good as Jim Hendry and his aging, expensive team.

It apparently was picked to make the start times of games a reference to a 6-4-3 double play. Wow, that's dumber than 7:11 for the WSox Maybe all Cubs games should start at 1:03. 1:04 next year.

Just throw him on the pile with the rest of them and call up Justin Berg.

The Cardinals haven't had many, if any, legitimately good teams around Pujols for a long time. They've largely had Pujols, Carpenter, Wainwright and a bunch of grit for most of Pujols' tenure. The Brewers have had some nice players in Fielder's tenure - Braun, Hart, Gallardo - but their rotations have been mostly awful and they've dealt with injuries to key guys like Gallardo. The Cubs could easily field a better team than most of the squads Milwaukee and St Louis put out there if we sign Pujols (and he OPS' 1.000) or Fielder. They could, but it might not be in 1 offseason. I cant see them being able to sign Pujols or Fielder and make any other necessary upgrades in 1 offseason. Id love to see it, but I dont know how realitic it is. 3rd base will be our other major hole. Unless they do go all out and trade for David Wright on top of it, the best option might be to pick up Aramis' option, if they can afford it. The 3rd base market isnt pretty, and between Vitters, LaMahieu, Baker, DeWitt, Flaherty, and Marquez Smith, I dont think we have a single guy capable of giving us the production we need at the positon, especially considering we have no idea what kind of production to expect from any of our other positions, including Castro. The both oft injured Grady Sizemore and Carlos Beltran, who somebody is going to over pay for top the outfield market, also featuring a trio of 50 somethings is Bobby Abreu, JD Drew, and and Raul Ibanez. If they still plan on an outfield of Soriano, Jackson, and Colvin next year, that a hell of a crapshoot. We could also use a legit ace pitcher, and those are not easy to come by. Maybe throw up a prayer with an incentive laden deal to Ben Sheets, because other than that, the starting pitching market is highlighted by Chris Carpenter, Joel Pineiro, Edwin Jackson. and Mark "Cardinals or Bust" Buerhle.

Heres MLBTRs take

If your referring to me, I absolutely want to add a good hitter, even if it is at a high price. Im just saying that they cant stop there. We can't surround Fielder or Pujols and Castro with a bunch of mediocre players and expect it to pay off. We can't just assume that guys like Jackson, Colvin, and Vitters will immediately step up as major league ready building blocks. Keep in mind that throughout a good chunk of their careers, both Pujols and Fielder have been surounded by superior teams to what we would be able to build around them at this point, and between the 2, they have 1 WS win and a handful of unmemorable playoff appearences to show for it.

As far as the guys that matter, looks like Nick Struck and Rafeal Dolis were the only guys who did anything worthwhile yesterday.

Quick question: can this mess of a team be fixed with one move? It may very well take an expensive offseason overhaul ala '06/'07. It would be great to have Pujols or Fielder, but keep in mind, for many years we had one of the most prolific sluggers of the era in Sammy Sosa, and couldn't build a consistent winner around him. Granted, they didn't really try, but it's going to take more than one guy. More than one big guy plus a few OK guys. I'm not even convinced that Fielder along would be able to do anything more than move us from a 5th or 6th place team to a 3rd or 4th place team.

Brett Myers wife could probably beat The Cubs. With Davis on the mound, Cubs lose eleventygazillion-1

Much like people who came from nothing to get rich say that they could never go back to their old lifestyle, as a lifelong Cubs fan who lived through the 90's only to finally experience winning teams in '03, '07' and '08, and to a lesser extent, '04, I simply can't go back to the kind of crap teams I sat through in the 90's, and unless they do something big this offseason, that's the direction things could be headed.

This team wouldn't vroom if you put 4 million volts through it...its bleeding demised...pushing up the daisies....gone to meet its maker....off to join to choir invisible.

LOL at the Astros turning into the Yankees on the sorry ass Cubs the past 2 games. Hopefully a sweep at the hands of these guys and a 3-6 home stand versus 3 of the worst teams in baseball will inspire them to start the inevitable fire sale and do away with Quade. Yeah, I know that firing the manager does nothing, but as uninspiring as this team was going into the season, they really shouldn't have been this bad.

'06 was just the suck bug. I think D Lee was the only significant injury, but then again, him and Aramis were the only significant hitters on the team.

Per Bruce Miles. Sori only expected to miss 15 day minimum. Go I Cubs!

Yeah, [expletive] Pujols. bring on Jorge Cantu and Craig Counsell so we can drop ticket prices AND compete with the Astros for 5th!

If the Indians were to win the world series, the 2nd longest world series drought would either be 52 years shorter than the Cubs (if you count expansion teams who've never won - the Senator/Ranger franchise), or 71 years shorter (if you are counting only teams that have won the title before - the Pirates) Seriously, the Indians win and this is what the longest droughts would look like: Cubs - 103 years Pirates - 32 years Orioles - 28 years Tigers - 27 years etc etc etc Also, no its call Progressive Field now All those expansion teams, Brewers, Astros, Senators/Rangers, and Mariners, have to be at least 40 years by now, if that makes us feel any better, which it doesnt. Aside from the Mariners, all of these teams have at least been to the series at least. In either case, I dont see this being the Indians year. Even if that awful division lets them into the playoffs, I cant see them making it past the 1st round.

No wait but...only the Cubs right? I remember seeing on Sports Center or one of those shows when they called this guy up for Wandy that he was the #31 prospect in baseball, and baseball reference has him listed as #42, so hes used to shutting down minor leaguers. No shame is losing back to back home series to the Pirates and Astros, right?

Gvilles hate for Dempster is far more bizarre and unwarranted.

I guess so, due to my unreasonable expectation that the Chicago Cubs not be the laughingstock of MLB. Did you forget about the Dodgers? Dodgers have a better excuse.

Even more XBHs for Szczur - he just hit HR #2. Yes! I like Matt Szczur.

We weren't doing so hot with everyone healthy, but as things are now, its getting ha ha bad real quick. I'm predicting a top 5 pick.

Strained something running to first on a groundout. Our guys are dropping faster than those brats in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

If Soriano hits the DL, we can expect 1 of 2 corresponding moves: 1. Tyler Colvin called up, Brett Jackson to Iowa 2. Brett Jackson called up. In either case, they might not want to put Ha on that flight to Florida just yet.