Hire Jim Essian

Except for the fact that no one on the team got their foot caught in a bear trap, last night's game was pretty close to the perfect summary of the 2009 season so far, wasn't it? Not only was Rich Harden was perfect until the sixth inning, but he had looked brilliant in striking out six Phillies in his ... Read More

Of all the melodramatic reactionary stupidity that swept across the media over Kevin Gregg's back-to-back blown saves on Saturday and Sunday (I'm looking at you, Marc Silverman, you couch-slapping, walking panic attack), David Kaplan's reaction was, predictably, the worst. The worst thing to come of the weekend series loss to the Marlins was clearly the fact that it inspired ... Read More

I'm going to go ahead and give Carrie some credit. She may pick ludicrous questions to answer. She may pick decent questions and completely fail to answer them. And she might get her facts wrong sometimes. But at least she doesn't make stuff up, which makes her a better journalist than Burnt Sienna and Playgirl. ... Read More

Carrie, you clever little vixen. You took a long break from the Muskbox, only to have it spring up on a Thursday. I bet you thought I'd be too busy posting the Roundup, Skip's Comment of the Week, and the Friday Night Fukudome to fisk it. The Muskbox will never escape my watchful gaze. Don't you think Wells ... Read More

I hope you idiots didn't forget that today is National Doughnut Day, so make sure you thank those great men and women who fought in the Doughnut Wars. I was a bit hungover under the weather earlier, so I apologize for the late Roundup. I sure hope you didn't get any work done this morning, or anything. Geovany Soto ... Read More

In case you haven't noticed, David Kaplan has gradually been changing color from pasty white to Oompa Loompa. I can only imagine the change is for one of the following reasons: The Caucasian race has officially kicked him out. He's so dumb, his skin doesn't even realize he's white. He's going on a hunting trip with the Monsters in the Morning this ... Read More

You know that old adage, "If you can't laugh at yourself, then you suck"? I have to give credit to Carrie for not sucking today. (HT: James) Good one, Carrie. We're one step closing to you fisking one of the Muskboxes, and then I'll have to fisk that, and we'll just keep passing the same article ... Read More

Did you almost turn off the TV Friday night when Aramis Ramirez went down? Did you curse, in the following order: (1) God, (2) Jim Hendry, and (3) Barry Rozner? I spent most of Saturday thinking about how screwed the Cubs are. Losing Aramis for any significant period of time is way worse than losing Carlos Zambrano. ... Read More

It's not a question of whether or not you've heard it this season. It's a question of how many times you've heard it. It's some variation of "This team would be so much better if they'd kept Kerry Wood and Mark DeRosa." Maybe over the course of the season, those people will be right, but they sure ... Read More

Last week, the Muskbox came out on Thursday, presumably because Carrie knows that Fridays at HJE are Sweet Uncle Lou's time to shine. But you can't hide the Muskbox from me, Carrie. Especially since it's so stupid, it emits an odor. So, here we go. Now that Jeff Samardzija has been sent to Triple-A Iowa, will he work ... Read More