I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you’d all better get used to seeing Alfonso Soriano in left field. At least according to Nick Cafardo:

Unless someone is in desperate need of an aging-kind-of-still-slugger at the trade deadline, I can’t imagine the Cubs getting anything “of note” for Soriano.

So here’s a topic for this rainy Sunday afternoon: Which deal was worse for the Cubs: Signing Milton Bradley or the deal Jim Hendry gave Alfonso Soriano?

So this season will never end.  I’m just throwing that out there.  So drink up.

We have all been bashing and criticizing the Ryan Dempster trade but I’m over it for now.

Everyone has there opinion on how the trade went down but I have decided to just suck it up and move on.

What is relevant is that the back end of the season is now starting and we will see call ups and still more trade transactions. Alfonso Soriano will probably be put on waivers and clear them due to his large outstanding contract. At that point we will hopefully trade him and receive something decent in return.

This leads to a whole different saga of call ups and we will most likely see the likes of Brett Jackson and Josh Vitters. I will leave judgement up to you guys on whether or not those are good calls and who you think would be a proper call up. You are now Theo Epstein, what would you do?

Tonight we try to bang up the stinkin Dodgers and our lineup again looks like this:

1. David DeJesus, CF
2. Starlin Castro, SS
3. Anthony Rizzo, 1B
4. Alfonso Soriano, LF
5. Bryan LaHair, RF
6. Steve Clevenger, C
7. Darwin Barney, 2B
8. Luis Valbuena, 3B
9. Samardzija

Go Cubbies! And chug it down its fuckin’ Friday for chriminays sake!!!

The latest news is that Ryan Dempster’s hissy fit seems to have worked. According to Jim Bowden, the Cubs and Dodgers are closing in on a deal, though nothing is official yet.

(peaks around corner of dugout)

Is everyone okay?

(steps over bodies)

I think we’re all okay. For now. But not matter WHAT happens today, DO NOT let anyone hug you!  God only knows what will happen today. As @mproper said on Twitter this morning: “I saw a helmet nachos helmet full of human ears!”

So I was at the game last night, and, I have to tell you, it was pretty hilarious. Players just kept disappearing from the game, and we had no idea why. It wasn’t until a cab back to Union Station in the 9th inning that  I started getting word of what was going down.

So let’s recap:

• The Cubs sent Paul Maholm,  Reed Johnson (SNIFF!!), and cash considerations to Atlanta for Jaye (lame spelling) Chapman and Arodys Vizcaino. (Seriously? Arodys? That looks like a typo. . .).
• Vizcaino, who entered the 2012 season ranked by Baseball America as the 40th-best prospect in MLB, had Tommy John surgery this spring. The 21-year-old posted a 3.06 ERA with 9.3 K/9 and 2.6 BB/9 in 97 innings for three Braves affiliates as he made his way through Atlanta’s minor league system in 2011. The right-hander reached the Major Leagues last year, posting a 4.67 ERA with 8.8 K/9 and 4.7 BB/9 in 17 relief appearances.

  Chapman, a 25-year-old right-hander, has a 3.52 ERA with 10.1 K/9 and 4.9 BB/9 in 53 2/3 innings of relief for Atlanta’s Triple-A team so far in 2012. The Braves selected him in the 16th round of the 2005 draft.

•  Meanwhile, on the manscapey front, the Cubs also sent Geo Soto to the Texas Rangers in exchange for Jacob Brigham. 
• Brigham, a 24-year-old right-hander, had been pitching at Double-A Frisco. He has a 4.28 ERA with 8.4 K/9 and 3.3 BB/9 in 124 innings over the course of 21 starts this year » Continue reading “Cubs Tuesday Headlines: Bloodbath on the North Side”

“Fun” in theory, anyway.

Before we get to today’s game thread, here’s the latest on the Ryan-Dempster-Is-A-Big-Fat-Jerk Saga:

The Cubs and Dodgers have four days to complete a possible trade involving Ryan Dempster. The Dodgers turned down a proposal of Allen Webster for Dempster, but seem optimistic that a deal can be completed. The Cubs, on the other hand, have limited options, since Dempster wants to go to Los Angeles and must approve any trade. Here are today’s rumors, with the most recent updates up top…

• The Cubs and Dodgers are discussing a deal of Dempster for Josh Lindblom, reports ESPN’s Jerry Crasnick, who isn’t sure what other players could be involved in the swap (Twitter links).  Another source tells Crasnick that the Lindblom rumor is “completely unfounded.”
• The Dempster-to-the Dodgers trade isn’t “dead,” tweets ESPN’s Jayson Stark, though the Dodgers are interested in Josh Johnson and are “waiting to see if [the] price drops on” James Shields.
• Dempster will consider trades to a number of teams, including the Braves and Dodgers, if the Cubs approach him with a deal in place, Bruce Levine of ESPNChicago.comreports. ”He has not said that he wouldn’t go to Atlanta or anywhere else for that matter,” a person familiar with the situation told Levine.
• There’s no current dialogue between the Cubs and Dodgers about Dempster, ESPN.com’s Buster Olney reports (Twitter links). Each club know what the other is looking for at this point.
• The teams discussed the possibility of expanding the trade to include Alfonso Sorianoor Bryan LaHair, Danny Knobler reported today.

You’ll notice that no where in all of this is name of anyone we’d be as excited about getting as we were about Randall Delgado. So that’s . . .  lots of fun. Thanks again, Ryan!

BTW, we spent most of Wrigley Talk Friday arguing about this yesterday. You can listen here or download the show from iTunes.

» Continue reading “Cubs Live Game Thread: Fun (?) With Non-Olympic Sports”

I, too, am confused by the events of this afternoon.

After just about every national baseball writer in the country (including Matt Bowman, Keith Law, and Jeff Passan) reported that a deal had been struck that would send Ryan Dempster to the Braves in exchange for up-and-comin’ youngin’ Randall Delgado, Dempter had to go and ruin all the fun.

(raises hand)I know where it came from. It came from Atlanta’s beat reporter, mlb.com. cubs.com. Bob Nightengale, and about 50 other places.  Oh, and Dale Sveum jumped in too, demonizing Twitter and social media, blah blah blah. But since Dale is usually the last to know anything, I figure Theo just hadn’t gotten around to telling him yet.

So, what happened? My guess is that a deal was done and someone backed out. Was it Dempster? The Cubs? The Braves? The world may never know. We *think* the current status is thus: The teams have agreed in theory to a deal, and are now just waiting for Dempster to approve or kill the deal. At any rate. MLB.com is now reporting that a deal is “close.”

Of course, this entire debacle gave the Chicago beat writers, who haven’t broken a story about the Cubs since roughly the time of the Great Chicago Fire, the chance to jump around and crow about people’s “sources.” Do I think Jeff Passan and Keith Law have better sources than the Chicago beat writers? Yes I do. If they reported a deal was done, do I believe it was done? Yes, Yes, a thousand times YES.

At any rate, the Cubs have a game to play tonight, and play they will.

» Continue reading “Cubs Live Game Thread: Uh . . Might Have a Trade. Or Not.”

Someone get this man a scrunchy.

Nice try, Cubs.

CHICAGO — Travis Wood had given up three runs over his last four starts, all wins. On Tuesday, it was a different story.

Carlos Lee hit a grand slam and Omar Infante belted a two-run home run off Wood, and Hanley Ramirez added a solo shot to power the Marlins to a 9-5 victory over the Cubs on a sweltering night at Wrigley Field.

Wood (4-4) served up eight runs, matching his career high, on eight hits over 4 2/3 innings, his shortest outing in 11 starts. The left-hander also gave up eight runs on June 5, 2011, against the Dodgers.

The loss was only the fifth in the last 17 games for the Cubs, as the Marlins snapped their home win streak at six games.

“We started out looking good, cruising kind of, and the thing just kind of hit the fan and it happened quick,” Wood said.

To be fair, it was 10,000,000 degrees at Wrigley last night, and pitching has to be tough when you have a sweaty mullet hanging down the back of your neck.  In a related story, I don’t like it when I see things like “Wood said” in articles and it pertains to Travis Wood.

» Continue reading “Cubs Wednesday Headines: Don’t Call It a Comeback, Because It Wasn’t”

Number one on the trading block?

Cubs headlines these days area boring and depressing. So I’m skipping them. Instead, we’re having a community roundtable discussion. Kind of like the Algonquin Roundtable, but not as  . . .  intellectual. Or smart.

Twitter was all abuzz yesterday with a report from Bob Nightengale that Theo had made it known around baseball that Starlin Castro could be had for  a few “impact prospects.”  From another corner of the internet came this little gem: The Cubs will trade anyone but Jeff Samardzija.

Never thought I would hear those words.

So, I want to know what you think about each of the players below. Trade bait or not trade bait? And don’t give me that “every player has a price and if what’s offered exceeds the price, you trade” stuff. We all read Moneyball. I want to know if you, as GM of the Chicago Cubs, would actively shop the following players:

Starlin Castro

Darwin Barney

Jeff Samardzija

Carlos Marmol

Ryan Dempster

Matt Garza

» Continue reading “Friday Roundtable: Should he stay or should he go?”

Get to know me!

Wrigley Talk Friday is back!

Use the link above to listen or download this week’s episode, in which we talk Castro, Rizzo, Cashner, and Zambrano.While we were on the air, news the the Cubs have traded Andew Cashner to the San Diego Padres for first baseman Anthony Rizzo broke. Rizzo was drafted by Theo in Boston and sent to Jed Hoyer and San Diego in the Adrian Gonzalez trade. Rizzo was recently named the Padre’s top prospect by Baseball America.

While many Cubs fans were surprised to see Cashner go, he missed almost the entire 2011 season due to an elbow injury and was not expected to start in 2012.

As part of the deal, the Cubs also acquired pitcher Zach Kates in exchange for outfielder Kyung-Min Na.

I realize that this dashes the hopes of millions of Cubs fans who had hoped to see Prince Fielder at first base in Cubbie blue, that prospect became increasingly unlikely over the course of the past few weeks.

Cubs GM Jed Hoyer said he expects Rizzo to start out the year in AAA, and for Brian LaHair to play first base for the Cubs in 2012.

This is what rebuilding looks like, Cubs fans. Better get used to it.