http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/11/28/SPGJ4MKSHF1.DTL

About midway through the page it says the cubs have offered a 3/44 deal for schmidt

http://www.benmaller.com/

Don't know how accurate this guy is but says a trade for Westbrook would involve Dempster among others. If Hendry gets this done put him in for GM of the year.

Ken Rosenthal is reporting LA is close to signing Pierre for 5/45 glad we didn't trade any thing of importance for him oh wait....

Link Thingy
http://msn.foxsports.com/mlb/story/6191380

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http://chicago.cubs.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/news/article.jsp?ymd=20061019&content_id=1717959&vkey news_chc&fext.jsp&c_id=chc

Congratulations Mark on your baby girl!! Atleast you were smart enough to have it in the offseason unlike Dempster :)                                                                        

and looked up some stats for the cubs after noticing the cubs had 10 hits and were able to score only 2 runs. Upon further investigation i founf that the cubs were 9th in the N.L in hits and 16th in runs scored. Not suprising we were last in walks by 50. The Marlin, a team loaded with youth, has 64 more walks. What do this mean you may ask, well what I think is that the marlins are COACHABLE, while the cubs have veteran "hackers" who have "proved" they belong in the big leagues and do not take well to coaching. Looking a little deeper I calculated the amount of at bats and divided it by walks to get a rough estimate(i know walks are not at bats but i am leaving them out) . The leaders on the team were Dlee 1 out of 5, Aramis 1 out of 11, Murton 1 out of 9.5 and Barrett 1 out of 11. However the not so good are Pierre 1 out of 19, Jones 1 out of 20, Cedeno 1 out of 31.5, Bynum 1 out of 36.5 and my personal favorite Perez 1 out of 43 at bats! I couldn't find first pitch swinging outs but niefi has to be leading this too. For someone to continue to march out him as a 2 hitter is irresponsible no matter what feeling you have. I think the point that I am trying to make is that we are getting the hits to score runs the issue we are having is that we have a hitter or hitters coming to the plate in between hits and killing scoring oppurtunities. This blame falls solely on he who makes the lineup for not putting players together who have the best chance to score. And its not about playing feelings or favorites its about scoring runs and winning games.

In this ESPN article Kerry Wood anounces that he is not having the surgery on his shoulder. However upon reading you see that he wants to come back to the cubs...AS A RELIEVER!!! Has something or someone gotten through to him that he may not be able to pitch more than 4 innings. He also says he would like to stay in chicago and plns on speaking with Hendry about it. Personally I would welcome him back to a 1 year encentive laden deal with an option for another year.

Over at MLB trade rumors they say he has defected to columbia. If anyone watched this guy this spring during the WBC he tore it up. He is only 21 and can play 2B and 3B. How nice would it be for the cubs to throw a ton of money at him and sign him. I know he probably will go to the yankees or someone else would flash more money but for once I would love to see the cubs take a chance and go get him.

From ESPN The Brewers are trading Carlos Lee to the Rangers as part of a multi-player deal, ESPN's Keith Law has learned. The Brewers are sending Lee, Nelson Cruz and a player to be named to Texas for reliever Francisco Cordero and outfielders Kevin Mench and Laynce Nix. Don't know if they plan on signing him to a long term deal or not but Texas would be a good fit. There goes our chance for mench as well

Over at Our favorite Site they say that the Mariners are interested in Walker to platoon with Eduardo Perez. Now they just aquired Perez from the Indians for a triple A SS that John Sickels had rated as a B. We should be able to get similar if value for Walker. Looking at the what the Mariners have in their system maybe we could get 2 C+ prospects like Shin-Soo Choo and Michael Wilson for him.

Everyone else seems to have an opinion so why not take a try. We should trade Aramis and his opt out contract before the trade deadline and go after ....Nomar, yeah I said Nomar, the dodgers have a stud 1st baseman down in triple A and may not want to spend the money on him. If we were able to swing that Aram and jacque + parts for Arod trade our infield would then be Nomar, d-Lee Arod and cedeno at 2b not too horrible. Then trade maddux to the brewers(don't get me wrong I am a huge maddux fan but what is he gonna do for us next year) and get lee and sign him to an extension. Next hope that Pierre doesn't garner alot of attention this winter and get him to sign a one year deal. Then hope the reds gm still has a man crush on hill and trade him and murton for kearns to play right. so our line up would be
LF Lee
CF pierre
RF Kearns
1B Lee
2B Cedeno
SS Arod
3B Nomar
C- Barrett
A righty dominated lineup for sure but hell we aint having problems with righties it is the leftys that are killing us
Our pitching would be the tougher to fix a staff that has
1 Z
2 Jason Schimdt-FA
3 prior
4 Marshall
5 best pitcher out of ST
Do I think playoffs are possible with this scenario? i dunno but it would be a hell of a lot better than now