i hope…GET A-ROD TO PLAY SHORT haha

the end.

It won’t be Brian Fuentes. Take a look around ML rosters and you can find at least two likely suspects.

He is a career .302 Pinch hitter with an OBP of .397. I would be happy with those numbers.

...mentioned above, makes a lot of sense. His contract’s up after this season so Pittsburgh will almost certainly be trying to move him. He’s been consistently successful in the LOOGY role for awhile, one of the few guys who really does shut down lefties. His platoon splits are slightly reversed for 2008 but, over his career, he’s held lefties to a .197/.293/.283 line. Moreover, he’s never struggled severely against righties so his role can be expanded to more than just a LOOGY if the need arises.

With Capps going on the DL, Marte is now the Pirates closer so any success he has in that role may drive up his price. Anybody have a guess as to what their price might be?

Hendry was reportedly kicking the tires on Khalil Greene….

The interest was not mutual though.

I am incited to declare that few people really know MLB. In 2004 Sox made a few minor trades in July and the most important acquisitions were Orlando Cabrera and Doug Mientkiewicz. For the most part the playoff roster on the Cubs appear to be set when Soriano and Eyre return.

On the margins Cubs could add a utility infielder so that we don’t see Theriot make another bone headed play at SS like Saturday. In the playoffs I doubt if we will see DeRosa playing the outfield.

The other addition could be a solid left handed reliever although Cotts is okay.

The risk move could be trading Marquis (although his clubhouse attitude might necessitate a move) the question here is whether Hill is regaining his ‘06‘07 stuff where then the Cubs would have five solid starters, two left handers.

Give me Fuentes from CO and Loretta or Vizquel on the infield and they would be able to stack up with anyone the AL and NL have to offer.

Call up Houston and see what they want for Loretta.

I’d be very intrigued about adding a better glove man up the middle (like Khalil Greene).

So what he only hits singles? We don’t need him to get us extra base hits. The team has plenty of other guys who can get you extra base hits. We need him to continue to have multi-hit games. We need him to continue to take walks. We defintiely need him to work on his defense. He is a 2nd baseman playing out of postition. I would never trade, or even platoon Theriot and his 36 multi-hit games, just to try to shore up the defense a little bit. Besides, you don’t reward a hard worker like Theriot by putting some other has been, (i.e. Vizquel) in his place. A lot of people don’t want to factor in intangibles, but many times intangibles bring a lot to the recipe. You can’t ignore his heart.

Having given my left nut for Rich Harden I hereby offer up my right one for Marte. He would be outstanding addition to the Cub bullpen. I’d offer up Felix Pie.

When Soriano comes back, the bench will probably look like this:
C Blanco®
SS Cedeno®
OF Reed®
2B Fonty (l)
PH Ward (l)

The first two are essential players to have on the bench because of their position. I really don’t think you can improve on either of those guys enough to make it worth trading. Cedeno’s been cold, but he’s more likely to snap back to his season average than to continue on being Antarctic cold; and somehow, he could regain that approach he had at the beginning of the season. The best reason to swap someone in for Cedeno is if that player’s defensive reputation is great enough to get some playing time at SS, but that’s not easy to find, either. Neither Aurilia nor Gomez would do that.

Then there’s Reed as platoon partner for Edmonds – again, he fills an important role and I’m not sure there’s anyone available whose cost will be less than the improvement we’d make.

It’s the last two who you’d consider replacing because of their defensive limitations, although both are hitting. If you replaced one, it’d need to be another LH hitter, I think. I believe this is especially the case as the Cubs look to sit Edmonds and Fukudome. Edmonds, especially, remains a risk for injury and the Cubs really don’t want to get stuck without a LH CF who doesn’t have experience hitting in the majors. Reed Johnson cannot play everyday against RH hitters on a championship team.

What seems most likely is that the Cubs will stand pat on their bench unless Cedeno is traded for another piece.

Given what I said above about the bench, I wonder if a LH reliever really would help the club more than going to 11 pitchers and adding a speedy LH OF? Consider the options. The Cubs now have several long relief options. How effective would a ‘pen be that had Marshall, Gaudin, and Lieber all able to go 3 innings? Marshall is described as “unproven” above which is true in the strict sense, but Marshall has fairly well proven in his starts that he can go one time through the lineup with excellent results fairly regularly. Marshall runs into trouble as a starter the second time through (around the 4th inning).

A ‘pen of Wood, Marmol, Eyre/Cotts, Marshall, Gaudin, Lieber can give you a lot of innings. The question is – what do you gain v. what you give up if you have a 12th pitcher or an extra bench player.

I doubt this scenario happens. A team that feels the need to go to 13 pitchers won’t drop to 11 and Lou would have to change his ‘pen use patterns a good bit to make this work. The reason I wrote it out, however, was to raise the question of how much a LH reliever really helps given who in the ‘pen/bench is replaced by him.