11/10/2003 03:22:00 PM by Rob

ESPN.com Free Agent Previews

The greatest purpose of the ESPN preview page is, if you print it hardcopy, you could wipe yer ass with it if you were in a bind. But they have remembered one thing that many of us in the Cub Blog Army have forgotten...namely, there are 29 other teams that could conceiveably bid for players.

ESPN predicts that we will end up with.....drum roll.....Pudge, Ugie Urbina, Curt Leskanic, Grud and Lofton. WHEEEE!

Um...sorry. I'll curb my enthusiasm. Let's see...

CF Lofton
2B Grud
RF Sofa
LF Alou
C Rodriguez
3B Ramirez
1B Choi
SS Gonzalez
P Stud-O-the-day

Well, with Ugie, Leskanic, Farns, Remlinger, Reg'lar Joe and maybe a Wellmeyer or Beltran, the pen looks good, and we'd only spend about $4M to get it done.

But, see, I gots a problem here. Where's Patterson? In my world, he plays Center, bats second. But what about Kenny? I killed Kenny, dammit!

Kenny has to play left, and Alou has to play first, much of the time. There will be days where Kenny can spell Corey, or Alou can spell Kenny, or (God forbid) one of them spell Sammy, and Choi can ease in gradually. Grud can then bat seventh.

But even if Grud, Lofton, and Pudge cost another, say, $17M, we still have about $5M laying around. There better be a few good trades on the horizon, too, especially surrounding the SS position.

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