I think it’s hard to argue with Shanghai Badger’s 11-man staff here. You’d think Lieber (who could have some value for us if we’d USE him..example he should have immediately come in as Harden left the game vs. Giants and finished the game. With Lieber and his awesome control, we will give up a ton of runs when we’re way ahead far less than when we put in our best relievers to finish such a big lead off..since Marmol is nasty but can always blow up with BB/HBP to give up 4+real quick.) could potentially have some value in a trade also, if you excuse my massive and ridiculous parenthetical. But yeah, I love that staff. Probably my ideal choice, and if you wanted a righty you could go with Hart instead of Cotts. Then in the field we have:
Soto (Blanco)
DLee
DeRo
Ryan “The Glove” Theriot
ARam
Dome
Edmonds (Reed J.)
Soriano

Reed and Blanco are for-sure necessary bench guys, in addition to Ward off the bench at PH. (note:he should just list his position as PH on the roster that would be sweet)
Fontenot: well, Lou loves him. And he is useful right now with Soriano out, but when he’s back then DeRosa shouldn’t move off 2B except rarely- and Cedeno can cover when we do this (or ideally RIOT then put Ronny at SS)

We would be better off if we could combine Ronny and Mikey into one player, who would then actually be good and useful. Otherwise i would rather have a true righty hitter and true defensive replacement- Cedeno is better than RIOT but then also I am better at D than theriot. This is where the infamous “RAKE” as dubbed by Ivy Walls would be nice to have. Also, if we had a true righty PH who would likely be an outfielder, we wouldn’t have to put DeRosa in the OF very often, which is generally a good thing.

so to me, the ideal 5-man bench would consist of something like
blanco, reed, Righty PH sort of like Ward except likely not quite as good a hitter and hopefully not as fat, The Man Ward Himself, and a RAKE (yeah i mainly like this term because it makes no sense whatsoever)

If we somehow manage to get the 11 man pitching staff which is stuff of Cub fan dreams; everyone’s favorite hamster would then be the PERFECT 6th bench guy…bringing walks and pocket-size power to the #2 Lefty PH spot.

This is all for now but it is friday and there hasn’t been a game in 5 days and I’m at work so clearly today’s posts will have the aggregate volume of a david foster wallace novel- that pretentious name-drop is in honor of this weekend’s pitchfork music festival, one of the nation’s top outposts of pretension from right here in our fair city.