All things considered, I was more enthusiastic about the Cubs' signing of Aaron Miles when I thought he would be replacing Ronny Cedeno as a spare infielder than when I think of him as a replacement for Mark DeRosa.

Aaron Miles (643 Major League games)
.329 OBP / .364 SLG / 693 OPS / 77 OPS+ / 4.1 Runs Created per Game

Ronny Cedeno (329 games)
.289 OBP / .350 SLG / 639 OPS / 62 OPS+ / 3.2 Runs Created per Game

Mark DeRosa (893 games)
.348 OBP / .422 SLG / 780 OPS / 97 OPS+ / 5.2 Runs Created per Game

It has been pointed out that last year DeRosa set career highs for HR (21 vs. previous high of 13), RBI (87 vs. previous high of 74), OBP (.376 vs. previous high of 371), and OPS (857 vs. previous high of 813). It is also true that as DeRo closes in on his 34th birthday, it's likely he will see some regression from those best-ever numbers. But '08 also saw Miles set career highs in several categories, including the ever important on-base percentage, where Miles's .355 mark was well above his previous career best of .329.

Ironically, .329 is also the lifetime on-base percentage of the guy Miles may replace as Cubs leadoff man—Alfonso Soriano.

As I sit down to write this, Jake Peavy, Randy Johnson, Milton Bradley, Bobby Abreu and Raul Ibanez are not Chicago Cubs.

Mark DeRosa is not a Philadelphia Phillie.

Felix Pie is not a Baltimore Oriole.

Ronny Cedeno, Jason Marquis, Kevin Hart, Michael Wuertz, Angel Guzman and Sean Marshall are not San Diego Padres.

Kerry Wood is not a Cleveland Indian.

And though it falls outside the normal purview of this blog, I am proud to point out that I did not vote to keep the State of Illinois' Chief Narcissist and Sociopath in office the last time he ran.

The 97-win season is ancient history, friends. We're back where we belong—the Official Laughingstock of Major League Baseball.

The closest I can come to finding some point of interest in this series is trying to predict which missed opportunity or failed play will become the signature moment; the '08 version of the Bartman ball or the Alex Gonzalez error from Game 6 in 2003.

My nominee right now is Mark DeRosa's flub on what should have been a double-play ball in the 2nd inning tonight, when the Dodgers scored five runs, effectively locking up the game and, most likely, the series. That would be a shame, since DeRosa had a career season and, maybe along with Edmonds, has stood out among the Cub hitters in this series because he isn't flailing away, at-bat after at-bat, as though he were swatting at butterflies.

I'm pointing at the DeRosa play and yet, I think the Cubs lost tonight's game when it was still scoreless and Alfonso Soriano was standing at second base with nobody out in the bottom of the first inning. Ryan Theriot was batting, there seemed to be tension and expectation in the Wrigley Field air surrounding the possibility that the Cubs could jump out to the early lead and wipe away the memory of last night's embarrassment...and Theriot wet the bed. Then Lee and Ramirez did likewise, and the game remained scoreless until the Dodgers came to bat in the second, and then the circus really began.

Lee, Ramirez, Soriano, Fukudome (!)—these guys should be humiliated. I'm sure they are.

I hope this ends Saturday.

Mark DeRosa came into Friday's game against the Rockies hitting .308 with a batting line (OBP/SLG/OPS) of 400/453/853 and an OPS+ of 121. If he were to finish the season with those numbers, he would establish career highs for batting average, on-base percentage, and OPS, and the Cubs would seem to be getting good value for their $4.75MM.

Still, according to another metric, DeRosa has been the least effective offensive player on the '08 Cubs. Fangraphs, a site I refer to and link to often, measured DeRosa's cumulative Win Probability Added before today at -.72. (By comparison, Aramis Ramirez led the team at +2.42 with Kosuke Fukudome second at +1.42.)

Today's stunning 10-9 Cub win over Colorado at Wrigley Field will take its place in the Big Book of Unbelievable Cub Comebacks; it also did wonders for DeRosa's WPA number. DeRo's two-run, seventh-inning homer off of woebegone Rox reliever Manny Corpas which put the Cubs in front to stay, 10-9, increased the Cubs' probability of winning from 40.9% to 76.7% and boosted DeRosa's personal WPA by a whopping .358. It was far and away his most impactful hit of the season.

And many, many Cub fans in every corner of the baseball-loving world, most of whom haven't heard of Win Probability Added, will never forget it.

On his pre-game radio show Monday night, Lou Piniella said he felt the need to start cutting back on the number of appearances by his two ace relievers, Carlos Marmol and Kerry Wood, and start finding opportunities to use Jon Lieber and Chad Fox.

As you know if you watched the 7-2 win over the Astros, Lou went 2-for-4:

Wood did get to rest, and Lieber did get to pitch (1 2/3 scoreless IP in relief of starter and winner Ted Lilly). But Fox remained idle, and Marmol was forced into action in the home half of the eighth, and it was nasty duty, at that. The Cubs were up 5-2, the Astros had men at first and third, none out, and Tejada, Berkman, and Lee were due up. A pop out, a strikeout, and a ground out later, the Astros were taking the field, and the lead remained safe (even safer after Aramis Ramirez's two-run homer in the top of the ninth). Another Marmol masterpiece.

Speaking of Ramirez, he and Derrek Lee went a combined 5-for-10 with 3 RBI on Monday night. This was a big turnaround from the weekend series against the Pirates, in which R. and L. went a combined 0-for-22. In fact, over the course of the just concluded homestand, the Cubs' two big sluggers didn't do much slugging at all.

Ramirez hit .257 with no homers and 4 RBI, Lee hit .171 with an OPS of 556, and yet the Cubs won 8 of 10.

Of course, over that same 10-game stretch, Alfonso Soriano hit .524/1.150/1674 (OBP/SLG/OPS) with 7 HR and 16 RBI, and lifted his batting average from .191 to .296. And Mark DeRosa hit .514/.645/1159. Fukudome, Soto, and Theriot, while posting less spectacular numbers, all held their own, so the offensive falloff by Ramirez and Lee didn't pose much of a problem.

Depth. It's good.

Tuesday morning update: So much for Chad Fox helping to shoulder the bullpen load. Fox has been placed on the 15-Day Disabled List after developing elbow tenderness. According to the Tribune...

Fox said trainer Mark O'Neal told him "it could take a week, it could take two weeks, it could take two months. Who knows?"

Fox's spot will be taken by Jose Ascanio, whom the Cubs acquired this past off-season from Atlanta in exchange for Will Ohman. Ascanio had a 2.29 ERA and 9 saves in 16 appearances for the I-Cubs.

And speaking of the I-Cubs, they've placed Rich Hill on the 7-Day DL as a result of back spasms that caused him to be pulled from a start last Friday, but Lou Piniella doesn't think the back spasms are serious, or maybe even the real issue at all. Again, from the Tribune...

“I don’t think it’s serious,” Piniella said. “Probably more of a mental break than anything, I’d assume. That’s just my assumption. [The break] may not be bad. It might be the best tonic of all. But I haven’t heard anything wrong of a serious nature, anything fundamentally wrong with his back.”

Having dispatched Aaron Harang and Josh Fogg, the Cubs will try to defeat Reds phenom Edinson Volquez Thursday afternoon at Wrigley Field and complete the sweep of Cincinnati.

Eric Patterson made his 2008 debut in Wednesday night's win and struck out, which he did a lot this year in Iowa (12 K in 36 AB). Patterson has been among the most highly regard Cubs position prospects (Baseball Prospectus 2008: "...sounder fundamental player (than brother Corey) with a very good plate approach and a high baseball IQ..."), but I have this nagging feeling that he is simply going to wind up joining Corey and Felix Pie in the List Of Guys Who We Thought Were Really Going To Be Something But Turned Out To Be Nothing Much.

Mark DeRosa looked utterly helpless last night running after a wind-blown fly ball, and Patterson, an infielder by trade, is hardly accomplished in the outfield. All in all, I wish the Cubs had brought up Matt Murton.

– All but two of the Cubs were able to make it through the first weekend of Spring Training without requiring the attention of a cardiologist or getting beaten up by a panhandler.

The exceptions were Mark DeRosa and Jose Ascanio.

DeRosa flew back to Chicago Monday to see a cardiologist after he experienced an irregular heartbeat on Saturday and spent Saturday night in a Mesa hospital.

According to Carrie Muskat's story at cubs.com, DeRosa has been aware of the irregular heartbeat since he was a teenager.

"I went through a gamut of tests when I was in high school to make sure it was nothing serious," (DeRosa) said. "It's never been a problem. I've been able to have certain techniques over the years that have got me out of the situation. It's never been an issue.

"The other day, it didn't get progressively worse but just lasted a lot longer," DeRosa said. "I needed some help to get me back to the right heartbeat. That's why the precautions were taken to go over to the hospital."

DeRosa expects the Chicago cardiologist to prescribe medication or recommend an unspecified "outpatient procedure" to help him deal with the problem.

Ascanio, meanwhile, was thumped outside a Scottsdale convenience store on Saturday night "by a guy who was looking for some money," according to Cubs manager Lou Piniella.

Ascanio's face and left eye were swollen after the incident and he was held out of workouts on Sunday. His status is day to day.

– Here's a swell Web site: Greg Rybarczyk's Hit Tracker, which lists the "true distance" of every Major League home run.

Rybarczyk, who holds a degree in mechanical engineering, determined that Aramis Ramirez hit the longest home run in all of Major League Baseball last season, a 495-foot shot off the Pirates' Paul Maholm on September 21st. Matt Murton had the Cubs' second longest homer of the year, a 449-foot blast off the Astros' Dave Borkowski on August 7th in Houston.

What makes the site doubly swell is the way Rybarczyk classifies each home run as "Just Enough," "No Doubt," or "Plenty" and tabulates the homers within each category. Alfonso Soriano paced the Cubs with 9 No Doubts in 2007; Derrek Lee led the team with 8 Just Enoughs.

What makes the site triply swell is that it offers links to mlb.com so you can see video footage of each longball.

– I'm no mechanical engineer, but by my calculations, this past weekend will be the last weekend without Cubs baseball until the conclusion of the regular season, the weekend of Sept. 27-28. Of course, the date will be even later if the Cubs are able to make the...oh, forget it.

I'm not going to risk jinxing it.

A comparison of career, 162-game averages for three second basemen who were in the news on Wednesday:

The first guy, of course, is 32-year-old Cubs second baseman Mark DeRosa, who will become Cubs "super sub" Mark DeRosa if the team consummates the endlessly rumored deal for the second guy, the Orioles' 30-year-old Brian Roberts, in a transaction that seems likely to cost the Cubs young pitchers Sean Gallagher, Sean Marshall, and more.

And the third guy? The often injured Marcus Giles, just 29 years old, who cost the Colorado Rockies next to nothing when he signed a minor league deal with the National League champions on Wednesday.

Here's what the immediate future of Cubs GM Jim Hendry holds:

Under majestic, climate-controlled glass atriums, you'll be surrounded by nine acres of lush indoor gardens, winding rivers and pathways, and sparkling waterfalls where you can unwind, explore, shop, dine, and be entertained to your heart's content. Highlights include a 44-foot waterfall, fountain shows, and tours aboard our Delta Flatboats - right inside the hotel.

So says the Web site for the Gaylord Opryland Resort and Convention Center in Nashville, where the Cubs and the rest of Major League Baseball will convene for the Winter Meetings, which begin on Monday.

Carrie Muskat's latest report at cubs.com seems designed to lower Cub fans' expectations of what the team might accomplish in Nashville. ("Cubs expect minor tweaks at meetings"; is that an expectations-lowering headline or what?) One thing the Cubs definitely won't accomplish at the meetings is signing free agent infielder Kaz Matsui since the Astros beat them to it, pending a player physical and agreement on a few contractual details.

For the Cubs, I think this is a case of addition by non-addition: Matsui was a disaster for the Mets from 2004 through early '06, hitting .256 with a dismal .308 OBP in 239 games. Exposed to the grass fields in America for the first time, he struggled defensively as well. Wrote the New York Times early in Matsui's first season with the Mets...

Many of Matsui's errors have come from waiting for ground balls, then rushing throws. On the fast artificial surfaces in Japan, Matsui could afford to sit back on grounders and casually sidearm the ball to first base. On the dirt infields common in the major leagues, he has to charge the ball more often and throw over the top.

Matsui's hitting numbers in Colorado, spanning 136 games between late '06 and '07, were respectable. He hit .288 last season with 32 stolen bases. KazMat clearly benefited from hitting in Denver's mile-high Coors Field, however: at home he hit .330 with an 864 OPS; away from Coors, the numbers were just .249 and 638.

To be fair, Matsui had the best defensive Zone Rating for all regular second baseman in the National League last season, and he has been a much more solid defender at second than he ever was at shortstop, where he played when he first joined the Mets.

All in all, however, I'm happy that the $15 million destined for Matsui's bank account over the next three years will be Drayton McLane's money and not the Cubs'. And I'm happy that the Cubs won't have to turn Mark DeRosa into some sort of über utility player to make room for the offensively inferior Matsui in the Cub lineup.

Of course there's also the fact that Cubs can put that $15 million to use somewhere else. And right field--Fukudome country--still appears to be the spot to keep your eye on.

It pleases me to know that even if Soriano can't handle left, center or right, and DeRosa turns out to simply be a rich man's Neifi Perez, and Ramirez really shows us the meaning of the word lazy, and Wood and Prior and Marshall and Marmol and Guzman all injure their obliques and their rotator cuffs and everything else there is to pull, tear or rupture, and Sweet Lou is pining for the good ol' days in Tampa by mid-June, and the Cubs lose 120 games, and things get so bad even Yosh Kowano is embarrassed to be associated with the organization, they still won't be the worst team in Chicago.