Hire Jim Essian

Well, this is a gift from the heavens. Also, from 'Duk. One of the greatest pitchers of all time went all hipster on us over Christmas, and the results are both glorious and meme-worthy. Have at it!

Today, a lot of stupid people are celebrating the fact that Carlos Zambrano is no longer a Cub. I'm not. Whether or not one thought Big Z needed to go (he almost certainly did), the end of the right-hander's amazing Cub career should have been met with "thanks for the memories and good luck, Z!" Rather than remembering the big lug for the incredible things he did in a Cubs uniform, too many people are gleefully dancing on his Cub grave and pretending that paying Chris Volstad $18M to pitch for the Cubs is WAY BETTER than paying Carlos Zambrano $18M to pitch for the Cubs. It's not, and I LIKE Volstad.

A funny thing happens when one includes active players on a list of Cub-killing baseball players that takes over four and a half years to complete. Statistics CHANGE. So, when I compiled the T79 and started it way back on- June 24, 2007? Holy shit. Anyhow, Xavier Nady was a reasonable choice back then. There were guys higher up on the T79 whose statistics changed, and whom I was able to swap in and out of the lineup. Ryan Theriot comes to mind. But now that I'm at the top 20, I think I have to grin, bear, and just go for it. On my sealed master list of T79ers, buried in a vault beneath the McDonald's parking lot across from Wrigley Field, I made myself just one note: "absurd OPS vs. Cubs." It's no longer absurd, but my sheer stubborn will causes Xavier Nady to stay at #14 on the list of the Top 79 Cub Killers of My Time.

It's hard to imagine that Neifi Neftali Perez was a bigger liability to the Cubs when off their roster than when on it. When last we left Neifi over four years ago, he was being honored as the second-worst Cub of my time. Now here we sit, eagerly awaiting his official retirement from baseball so that his Hall of Fame eligibility clock can begin its insistent ticking. Surely, a man with a career .297 OBP will not get a call from the Hall of Fame. He would, however, if the BBWAA considered only Neifi's statistics against the Cubs. His career pursuit of those numbers caused Neifi to scrap his way all the way up to #18 of the Top 79 Cub Killers of My Time.

I suspect that there will be a significant number of Cubs fans as pissed about Aramis Ramirez signing with the Brewers as some Cardinals fans were about Albert Pujols signing with the Angels. I suspect that because I'm not a dumbass, and I know there are stupid fans of every single professional team in sports. Unlike Mark DeRosa and Ryan Theriot, Aramis Ramirez deserves and should get a standing ovation the first time he returns to Wrigley Field in a Brewers jersey. Sadly, he'll probably be booed. Don't be those fans.

As if people weren't already aware that Hall of Fame voting is the stupidest, most arbitrarily biased, most narcissistic exercise in all of sports, Ron Santo was finally voted into the Hall of Fame this week, one year after it means anything. If you believe in an afterlife, I guess you can appreciate that Santo is clicking his heels together with two fleshy legs and a full, natural head of hair. If you don't, you are probably telling the Baseball Writers Association of America and the Veterans Committee to go fuck themselves. And you are utterly justified in doing so.

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.

Whenever a team lets a player go for no compensation, although they say all the right things and wish him well, they are secretly hoping that the player sucks throughout the course of his career. You hope he becomes Mark Prior or Matt Clement or Rueben Quevedo. You certainly don't want him to become the greatest pitcher of ... Read More

I offer you this submission. Never has there been a more hate-worthy Cub shortstop than Ryan Theriot. Not Jeff Blauser. Not Neifi Perez. Not Alex Gonzalez. Not Ronny Cedeno. All of those guys were terrible, but they either had some redeeming moments (Gonzalez), were hated solely because of misuse (Perez), were harmless simpletons (Cedeno), ... Read More

It's going to be a sporadic week for posting, as I unexpectedly have to head out of town on Wednesday. But what sort of Hire Jim Essian would this be if I didn't acknowledge August 29 as the 42nd anniversary of the day the Philadelphia Phillies took a chance on an Armenian lad named James Sarkis Essian? On ... Read More