There has been a lot of chatter about the Cubs having to eat bad contracts in the past couple of years.  On BCB, I read comments about people saying the Cubs should just eat Soriano's contract. The Cubs actually did eat Carlos Silva's contract this year that paid him $11.5M of which $5.5M was paid by Seattle Mariners.

The Cubs are not the only team in baseball that have had to eat bad contracts.  In 2006, the Arizona Diamondbacks ate $22 million of Russ Ortiz salary.

I don't know how to research this but I was wondering what MLB team has ate the most bad contracts in the history of the game.

Here is the real and my proposed All Star team if there didn't have to be a player from every team or fan voting. I have highlighted the names in yellow that are different from the real roster to my proposed one.

Considering the amount of negative comments about this topic on BCB on pretty much a daily basis I am sure I will get negative comments on this post. Here is a list I have been compiling on Quade’s nicknames for Cubs this year.  There are a couple of guys I have not heard him use nicknames on. Those include Blake DeWitt and Reed Johnson. I have not heard it firsthand but I think he has referred to Carlos Pena as ‘Los. Here is the list:

Dougy - Doug Davis
Marm - Marmol
Sori - Soriano
Wellsey - Wells
Cassy - Castro
Fuke – Fukudome
Woody – Wood
Marsh – Marshall
Bake – Baker
Colve – Colvin
Hilly – Hill
Russ – Russell
Cash – Cashner
Z - Zambrano
Demp  - Dempster
Rammy – Aramis
Sote – Soto
Zamarge - Jeff Samardzija
Monty - Lou Montanez
Barn - Darwin Barney
Garz - Matt Garza
Zeus – Ivan DeJesus
Carp - Carpenter

I read everyone's comments about what Jim Hendry should do to build the best Cubs team. I have been thinking about what the best mix of player's wins championships. I looked at the past 3 World Series winners to see how they got their players whether they were free agents, trades, from the draft, etc. I also included the 2011 Cubs roster to compare. The Cubs have a similar formula from the past 3 champs.

2008 Phillies World Series Roster:
8 free agents
8 draft
6 trade
1 amateur free agent
1 waivers
1 rule 5 draft

2009 Yankees World Series Roster:
10 free agents
8 draft
1 Purchased
3 amateur free agent
3 trade

2010 Giants  World Series Roster:
10 free agents
9 draft
4 Trade
1 amateur free agent
1 waivers

2011 Cubs Opening Day Roster:
8  free agents
6  trade
8  draft
3  amateur free agent

I was thinking about how we look at certain positions as power hitting positions so I thought I would compile the home run totals by position for all of MLB this year. Here are my findings. I doubled the # of homers for the DH position since the National League does not have the DH. Here is the spreadsheet: http://www.mysportsscoop.com/cubs/homer.xlsx.

Did anyone try and get playoff tickets today? I tried every game and there were no pairs available for any games!

Does anyone have a good place to get tickets? Ebay or Stubhub? I wonder how many tickets were actually available today at 10AM if any?

There is nothing like Blackhawk playoff hockey. I love the hawks and want to get tickets to a game. I was going to get some for my wife for our anniversary.

I would have to go with Bruce Miles over at the Daily Herald. He seems to be the only reporter that embraces the blogosphere and actually joins in and replies to people's comments on his blog.

Bruce Levine seems to get hot rumors before other reporters do but he doesn't spend all his time on the Cubs. I guess I just like reporters named Bruce.

Who is your favorite, Paul Sullivan, Phil Rogers, Gordon Wittenmyer, Bruce Miles, or Carrie Muskat?