Chris Archer already assured me the we lost the Garza trade. Question: if we'd gotten the same as we did out of Matt Garza in a time when the Cubs weren't completely useless, would we be looking at the trade as a loss? On the other side of that coin, Rich Harden gave us an excellent year and a half-ish in a time when it mattered. He did, however, cost us Josh Donaldson (a fact that I'm surprised how many Cubs fans are completely unaware of.) Was that trade a loss? And I get that Archer was more more well regarded than Donaldson at the time, but he was far from a sure thing. And we were able to salvage Kyle Hendricks out of Garza. What does sting a bit is that (allegedly) it was our choice between Archer and Trey McNutt, and we opted to keep Trey. I would make the Harden trade tomorrow if we were in the same spot. Cubs fans are aware we gave up Donaldson I think but he was a 24 year old catcher in A-ball and that regime would probably not have developed him anyway. It was the right move. Trading a huge haul for garza before a season where the team was terrible was a bad move even after a 4.9 WAR season because of where the team was on the win curve but it's still somewhat hindsight. Even so they gave up 2 top 50ish guys for a guy that wasn't going to put them over the top.