Hire Jim Essian

I was out all day, so I hope I beat all the other blogs to that headline. Theo Epstein has made his first signing since joining the Chicago Cubs. Right fielder David DeJesus joins the Cubs to give them the left-handed power that Jim Hendry has sought for YEARS. The 32-year-old has spent the majority of his 9-year career in Kansas City (poor bastard), and he had a disappointing 2011 season with the Athletics. He's a career .284/.356/.421 hitter, which makes him about a thousand times better than Tyler Colvin and Tony Campana combined. Plus, he plays a pretty terrific right field. I know everyone was hoping for Epstein to come in and figure out a way to sign both Albert Pujols and Prince Fielder. But it's the little moves like this that are going to improve the team. Or at least make them watchable until they're ready to compete. I like it, especially since he comes pretty cheap, according to our good friend PAUL SULLIVAN.

I have an inescapable, unexplained disdain for Randy Wells. It's a powerful force that has survived both his bad years and his good. Wells strikes me as a less-talented Matt Clement. He has that Clement manner of looking over his shoulder at the bullpen whenever the going gets rough. He's a converted catcher, meaning he was an absolute failure at the plate. He's also a Rule 5 draft guy, and the track record of those guys is, with a few notable exceptions, overwhelmingly bad. HE'S ALL THE BEST PARTS OF MATT CLEMENT, RAFAEL DOLIS, AND DAVID PATTON! So, when Pre told me this morning that the Cubs may be actively shopping Wells, I was excited.

Happy Black Friday, humans! I hope your shopping day is going well so far, and that you haven't been pepper-sprayed for trying to buy an Xbox. WOMEN BE SHOPPING! Forgive this late, short Roundup, but like many of you, I'm still in a turkey coma. The internet was also boring this week. With that ringing ... Read More

All you need to know about the MLB's new collective bargaining agreement is here. Finally, the constant interleague games that baseball fans everywhere DEMANDED will be reality. Finally, the Cubs won't be in the biggest division in baseball. Finally, Bud Selig avoided the pesky nuisance of having to occasionally host a thrilling Game 163. But that's all bookkeeping. All you need to know EMOTIONALLY is HERE. I'm pointing at your heart right now. Because the departure of the Houston Astros from the National League Central is the end of some good times. Ten of them, exactly. And here they are.

If you haven't finished your Christmas shopping, and you know some Cubs fans, and you HATE them more than anyone who lives on this earth, then the Cubs have just the thing for you! This Friday at 10:00 a.m., the Cubs are offering four-game "Holiday Packs." As has become a bit of a tradition around here, let's take a look at your options!

Bud Selig doing stupid things is par for the course, but adding two more Wild Card teams to the MLB may be the dumbest thing yet. First of all, we're coming off the most exciting final day of an MLB season in the history of the MLB. Second, there are 162 games available to decide which teams are good and which teams are bad, and the Cubs usually know they're bad after the first 60. Third, this is just another way to get more goddamn Red Sox-Yankees games on TV, isn't it? Fourth, people have complained for years about how the five-game divisional series aren't long enough to determine which is the better team. So how the hell is a one-game "playoff" supposed to solve anything?

It looks as though of all the potential 2012 managers, the Cubs are going to choose the least-whelming. Rumor has it that Dale Sveum was offered the job. However, if your only source of information was the Twitter feed of Chicago's own baseball guru Phil Rogers, you would be SUPER-CONFUSED about that. And you'd probably have some serious existential questions about what sort of world you live in where your only source of information is Phil Rogers' Twitter feed.

"There's no way Carlos Zambrano will ever play in a Cubs uniform again." That was the conclusion that basically everyone who writes about the Cubs either professionally or for "fun" came to after Jim Hendry put Carlos on the disqualified list. But leave it to Theo Epstein to think for himself and form opinions of his own instead of relying on the advice of fucking idiots.

One of the best Cubs of the past decade is apparently now an ex-Cub. (HT: level5) If you were at a Friday afternoon game at Wrigley Field in the past five years, you had about a 50/50 chance of seeing Aramis Ramirez hit a walkoff home run (usually against the Milwaukee Brewers). In his eight and a half seasons in Chicago, Aramis made himself a good defensive third baseman, and he was the most (and sometimes ONLY) professional hitter on the team for a long stretch of time.

I'm pretty confident that Theo Epstein is going to make the right choice for the next manager to lead the Cubs. But that's no reason you fine readers of the Friday Night Fukudome can't help him make the right choice. Because we know everything! So, who you got?