for

drumroll please...............

Jose Ascanio, a 23 yr old reliever who just had his only good minor league season at AA

here we go again trading servicable assets for essentially nothing in return...

just to shed payroll

this is what kills me about this organization, each offseason is its own independent plan

there is no big organizational puzzle that the team is trying to fill over a few years. We just simply read and react to every offseason as if the ones before it and the ones after it have no bearing on our decision making

god it annoys me...

last year we sign Marquis (which everyone here knew it would turn out like it did) and now we're trying to shed his salary

guess what Jimbo, if you didn't sign the guy you wouldnt have to try to shed his salary this year.... you could've just bit the bullet, inserted a young guy or some other re-tread that gets cut midseason (Maroth, Weaver, etc) and saved 21-24 million over 3 years......

UGH

(Arigato, Fukudome!)

Anyway....lets get Fukodome! NOW!

And sometimes during this particular task, you discover a wrapped Snickers that a comrade put in there. Of course sometimes you don't find a Snickers or anything exciting. But the point of the task was to clean the fridge, not to go looking for a midnight snack.

I am very happy all three are gone, and would have been happy for a used bag of batting practice balls for all three of them.

Now let's go get some baseball players!

I have no objections to this.  And including Ohman in the deal isn't a huge problem for me.  We've got a pretty good pen and he could easily be replaced.  I see no reason we should have kept him.

The problem is that this team has never really been in rebuilding phase.  The 06 season ended up worse than anyone could have expected, but other than that, this team has been a player or two from contention (or in contention) every year since 2002.  I can't entirely blame management for not spending 2 or 3 seasons with a bunch of kids in the lineup preparing for a prolonged period of success.  When you think you're close, you don't really focus on youth movements.

It's not to say that all of the moves that have been made were great, but the formula for success in this league is to get to the playoffs as often as possible and hope you get hot at the right time in one of those years.  Given that the 2003, 2004, 2005, and 2007 teams were all constructed well enough to make the playoffs in the NL Central, I can't really complain about recent management strategy.  Of course they could have done better because we haven't won a trophy, but the strategy has been successful overall.  I'm not happy with the results, but it's kind of a crapshoot.  I mean, look at Houston, Colorado, Detroit, Florida, and SF.  All of these teams made the WS this decade, but all have also had prolonged periods of bad baseball.  

Anyway, the Braves needed a lefty because Ron Mayhay is leaving them for greener pastures so my guess would be that Infante is the throw in here.  Hendry convinced them to take his contract if they wanted Ohman.  Not a bad deal, trade Jones for a guy who was apparently tradeable himself, sort of like a 3-team trade except that it took awhile for the second half to develop.  I'm wondering if the people who don't like this trade would feel differently about it had it all happened at once?

As for Dartmouths rant about not having a plan.... I couldn't read that whole string, too much, but I will say this.  I'd rather have a team that reevaluates every offseason than a team that creates a 5-year plan, possibly flawed, and sticks to it unyeilding.  This may be a glass half full vs. glass half empty thing on your part but try looking at it as a team that's willing to make a change when it's necessary.  Two years ago when we signed Jones we really needed a right fielder, we got him at a descent price, he was league average the time he played here.  Now, we don't need him as much as we did, or to be more specific we need more than what he was.  So we reevaluated and are attempting to get a player who is more than what Jacque Jones is.  Make sense, or would you rather have stuck with Jones because we had already signed him?  I understand your point about having a plan ie. not signing someone like Jones in the first place, but that isn't always an option.  Remember we needed him and didn't have any other good options, unless you include Brian Giles, who was available, and who would have made a lot more money and been just as league average as Jones was.  Looking back now Jones was the better buy all things considered.

Infante might have been useful, but the Cubs also have a bunch of middle infielders. As for anyone crying about why we gave up Jacque Jones, thats just laughable.

Don't get him wrong he's a good player, but the Cubs can go out and sign guys like Green, Jenkins,Wilkerson, Bradley and others will are at the level Jacque Jones is. The Cubs got rid of him for a reason, because they want to add A BETTER PLAYER in right. Especially with Pie/Fuld in CF, they shouldn't have a hard time putting up simliar numbers to Jones 285, 5 HR, 336 OBP last year.

As for Ascanio, Bobby Cox had some really nice things to say about him. This is from Cubs.com

"He's one of our prized prospects, he really is," Atlanta manager Bobby Cox said of Ascanio. "He throws hard, has a big slider, and a great changeup to go with it. At a young age, that's pretty impressive. We've got other guys like him right now, and we needed a lefty with experience and we needed a guy like Infante."

He throws strikes," Cox said. "They're going to like him. Whether he makes the team, I don't know. He could."

I personally think thats a pretty good return for Jones/Ohman, especially when you factor in they save around 6m to use towards Fukudome and other better players.

The Cubs scouts say Ascanio has been clocked consistently at 95-97 mph and could compete for a job in the bullpen. He is a power arm, and reliever who could go more than one inning."