Bruiser Chong

The best ones are those that lead to the Red Sox party, where all the girls wind up with the World Series rings on their fingers. Good to know those things went to good use.

With these two on the mound, this thing's gonna be going back and forth for a while.

Where are all these coming from?

And weren't the D-Backs having rotation issues recently? I don't quite understand how they can make this deal, especially when Julio is the ONLY thing coming their way.

Holy hell. D-Backs get fleeced. I'll take a questionable Hernandez over a healthy Julio. So the D-Backs have essentially traded Vazquez for Julio?

Wasn't he just in danger of missing a start last week because of back problems?

The Royals would look like the 2008 World Champions if they played the Cubs right now.

Fantasy points! Yeah, at that point, that's what I was thinking myself.

And just to remove any doubt, Roberto Novoa, who must have incriminating photos of someone to still be on the MLB roster, gives a three-run jack to Cabrera.

Oh, and I realized that if the Cubs lose this one, they'll have four more wins than the lowest payroll in baseball. That's something to be proud of.

It doesn't help he's pitched well enough to win some games, but the offense just isn't there. I wasn't watching, but my understanding is the five-run inning started with two outs and then a Ronny Cedeno misplay started the rally. I wasn't sold on him at the outset of the season and now that he's made tons of errors and shown no patience at the plate, I'm inclined to say Hendry really should've pushed for Furcal.

After Maddux gave up a five-spot, smacked a cooler of ice in the dugout with a baseball bat, which left the poor, unsuspecting trainer who was sitting next to him soaked. And after getting the first two on in the inning, Ramirez grounds into a DP and Murton grounds out. The Cubs are en route to getting swept by the Marlins. But none of it's Dusty's fault!

Dear god, Aramis Ramirez just tripled.

Juan Pierre is worthless. He finally gets on base and gets thrown out by a mile trying to steal second. I'd root for a Marlins sweep if I knew it had any influence on Dusty's extension.

He's just trying to disprove the gay rumors.

Cole Hamels has been scratched from his scheduled start tomorrow.

Uh, it's been three days? Since when does MLB do anything quickly?

I guess it's a good thing I left in the middle of the game when it was 4-1. I'd probably be lining my living room with gasoline had I actually seen the happenings in the ninth. Maybe the team heard Dusty's new contract is in place and the team's just waiting for the right moment to announce it and is doing what they can to make sure such a moment never pops up.

Jacque Jones looks absolutely helpless against lefties. Not just good lefties; ANY lefties. Ronny Cedeno ensures a leadoff triple doesn't go to waste and Wood follows up with an RBI of his own. The Jones signing wouldn't look as bad if they had also picked up someone to platoon the position. I think I can hit better than Juan Pierre, though. This guy looks terrible. He's seen four pitches in two at-bats and both times, has grounded back to the pitcher. Wood's also all over the place early. Marlins may have him out by the third at this rate.

Sometimes I think watching every game (or near every game) a team plays in the season can make you biased in one direction or the other. Lord knows I ragged on certain elements of the Cubs teams in recent years, when in reality, things weren't as bad as they seemed. If you see every A-Rod at-bat with RISP, of course you're going to have your perception of him skewered. You've probably seen him fail seven out of 10 tries.

The second sentence would seemingly cancel out the first.

Video's not new, either. Been out several months.

Why does it seem that it would be appropriate to do the hand zipping over the head to several of the people in this thread? I thought it was pretty obvious this was tongue in cheek.

We didn't trade Wellemeyer in that deal; it was Sergio Mitre. He's hurt right now, so it's not a big deal, but given the rotation's struggles once again, he could've been a better alternative than Rusch, Hill, or Guzman.