Cubs Stories of the Day – December 16, 2009

- Batting cages?!? F, yeah. Can we get a concession stand now? Yes?! Will you carry Big League Chew? Yes?! Oh, my. Mesa, we can never leave you. [Mesa prepares to spend thousands on cages for Cubs]

- The 4th Annual Len & Bob Bash for Cubs Charities will take place at the House of Blues on January 14, 2010. Be there, or, ya know, be somewhere else. G’ Love is the headliner though, so perhaps it won’t be totally awful. [Big News on the Bash!]

- The real news of the day appears to be the absence of news. Paul Sullivan, who I remind you gets paid to write, summed it up in a way only a sports journalist could:

“The Chicago Park District delayed the opening of the new Wrigley Field skating rink until Saturday, which only seems appropriate considering the Cubs’ lack of offseason movement.”

See what he did there? He took something tangentially related to the Cubs, in this case a skating rink located in the Wrigley Field parking lot, and compared it to the Cubs front office. The common theme being “delay.” Genius.

Let me try some:

“As I drove by Wrigley today, I saw somebody wearing a shirt that had a tortoise on it, which only seems appropriate considering the Cubs’ slow movement this offseason.”

“My brother was chewing some long-lasting Wrigley Spearmint gum yesterday. I never saw him reach for a new piece, which only seems appropriate considering the Cubs’ lack of new pieces this offseason.”

Anyway, word on the street is now that the Red Sox have stolen Lou Pinella’s precious, the one CF to rule them all, Hendry has moved on to Marlon Byrd, with “Coco” Covelli Crisp as a back up. Gag. Are the Cubs really at the point that they need to throw money at replacement level players just so they can feel good about getting a “name.” Crisp has a career WARP of 8.0. 8.0! Marlon Byrd has a career WARP of 8.1. Fuku is at 5.7, after two years. His WARP of 4.4 last year is twice as good as Crisp (.4) and Byrd (1.4) combined.

Unless we have some miraculous ability to sign Bay or Holliday, I think it is time to get on board with the fact that a Milton Bradley reconciliation is the absolute best case scenario for this team. Burrell, a 37 year old Cameron, Crisp, Byrd, Posednik, and Ankiel are all marginal players at this point. There is no reason to pick them up, even if we DO trade Bradley. I am crossing my fingers in the hopes that Hendry shows restraint here and doesn’t wade into the waters of replacement level CF hell.