One Confession, One Prediction, One Beer

I have something to get off my chest. My heart must be cleansed.

As with most fans, I have a habit of voicing my opinions about the moves the Cubs front office makes as soon as I hear about them. Now it doesn't take a genius to be in favor of the Rich Harden trade, but I do think I can show a little more patience that I currently display. After all, the Cubs front office gets paid to know these things, so they're obviously more knowledgeable about baseball than I am, right?

Also, having patience would certainly help my diet, because right now, I've got my foot so far into my mouth that I couldn't eat anything if I tried.

I'll admit that I was not a fan of the Cubs bringing in Reed Johnson in the middle of the season. I wasn't alone, but that doesn't mean I was right. We threw around terrible nicknames for Reed here at the Saloon ("Reed-tard" and "Fuck that guy" come to mind...), and the only one that seemed to think it was a good idea was Brant Brown. Reed has done more than I ever expected this season, which is good considering how awful it must smell in the Cubs clubhouse from the large shit Felix Pie left. He and Jim Edmonds form one pretty good player when you platoon them. Maybe I should have given the 'Pride of Riverside' some time before I dumped on him.

But that's not the worst conclusion I've jumped to in recent memory. What's worse than that you ask? Check out my Jump To Conclusions mat below to see just where I landed in the winter of 2007:

That's right. I was against the signing of Mark DeRosa. Not just against it. I was seriously pissed off. "What were we doing giving a guy who has had 1 successful season in the majors $13 million? Screw DeRosa! Give me Theriot and Cedeno up the middle or give me death!"

If I had a time machine, there are very few things I would go back and change. This was one of them. As soon as I would have read that the Cubs signed DeRosa, Future Daft would have showed up and handed Present Daft an authentic DeRosa jersey and just said "Trust." That's all it would have taken. I love Mark DeRosa. I think he's the heart and soul of what I want the Cubs to be. He's clutch, he's classy, and he plays multiple positions. He truly is the King of Kings.

I feel better.

Now that I have that off my chest, it's time for another one of my crazy predictions. If you remember correctly, the last time I did this sort of thing, it worked out pretty well. So here we go.

I'm taking all things into consideration here. For every one part Harden and two parts Lee and Ramirez, I have to counteract it with a dash of Marquis and a pinch of Cotts. But looking over the Cubs remaining schedule and applying my famous logic, I have come to the following conclusion:

Starting today against the Pirates, the Cubs will go 19-13 down the stretch, ending with a record of 99-63. I wanted to put the Cubs at 100 wins, but I think they'l lose 2 out of 3 to the Brewers in the last series of the year just to rest most of their regulars a bit before the playoffs.

Mark it, Dude.