Nice to see the Cubs show a pulse, on occasion. All it took was a ceremony to retire Ryne Sandberg’s number to get the crowd in a mood to not boo (that and benching Corey Patterson, again), and the Cubs went out and continued their post 2003 NLCS domination of Josh Beckett (that’s so Cub, isn’t it?) in a 14-3 whupping of the Marlins. Derrek Lee went yard twice in an attempt to keep his MVP hopes alive (they’re dead as Cesar, through no fault of Derrek’s) and Ronny Cedeno tried to prove to his manager that there’s really no reason to trot Neifi Perez out to short every day the rest of the way.
“If I play regularly, I feel more comfortable,” Cedeno said. “I play one day here, then two days off. I’ve got to be ready for next year, and I’ve got to play every day here. I have to show Dusty I can play every day next year.”
Oh, Ronny, you are going to be sooooo grounded.
The Cubs traded Matt Lawton to the Yankees on “Saturday” for a class A pitcher. Which means they traded Jason Dubois for a class A pitcher. Nice going, Jimbo! Way to maximize the old assets.
Interesting isn’t it that the Cubs traded Lawton to the Yanks on Saturday morning and yet, Lawton was in the New York lineup, in Yankee Stadium, an hour later? Wow, he’s faster than we thought.
Because the trade freed up a spot on the Cubs’ 40-man roster they decided to add journeyman Japanese League/AAA/six-time Dairy Queen employee of the month Scott McLain to the roster instead of recalling Matt Murton.
But I don’t have a problem with it. McLain hit 29 homers in Des Moines. He’s 33 and might never get back to the big leagues. Murton’s coming back up on Thursday anyway, so why not reward a guy who’s never going to get another chance to play in the bigs? I actually thought it was kind of a cool thing to do.
The other development over the weekend was the dawn of Nomar Garciaparra, third baseman. To me this makes no sense. Now, I’m not clamoring for Jose Macias six days a week, but if you’re going to play Nomar out of position, why not convince him that it’s time to do what Robin Yount did midway through his Hall of Fame career and go to the outfield? I think, this is the first step in Nomar’s evolution to the outfield anyway. First he weens himself off shortstop by doing the Cal Ripken/A-Rod shuffle to third base. Then he spends the winter getting ready to give shortstop another try, but also learning how to play the outfield.
If I ran the Cubs, he’d be playing left field right now. The reason? The Cubs need three new outfielders next year and the free agent class is devoid of any real impact (and none at all if the Padres re-sign Brian Giles, which they’re going to do), and it’d be nice to have Nomar on board to play left. He can still hit. We’ve seen that since his return from the DL.
I know, there’s always the possibility that he will run into the bricks out there and die, but hey, if you’re going to make an omelet…
Why would the Cubs trade Todd Walker?
He has a club option for $2.7 million. Where else are you going to find a lefthanded hitting second baseman who can hit .300 with some power and a good on base average for that kind of money? If you trade him, you have nobody to take over at second. Mike Fontenot? Seems like a nice kid, no thanks. Richard Lewis? Pass. Ronny Cedeno? Oh, that would be perfect. You have a gaping hole at shortstop, so you take your shortstop and play him out of position so you can trade Walker for a minor leaguer before Wednesday midnight?
I don’t think so. Keep Walker. Keep his disgusted bat flip in the fold for another year.
