Lou Tries To Gets His Cajones Back From Soriano & Hendry...

Call it a copycat move (See Francona/Ortiz, Manuel/Rollins, Leyland/Mags) but Lou Piniella finally made an attempt to get his balls back. Cubs fans (The Maestro included) don’t really care at the end of the day about contracts. We don’t give a rat’s ass that Alfonso Soriano is making roughly $18 million a year. We want the best players possible in the lineup every stinkin’ day...

So when Piniella sat Soriano for two games in favor of Sam Fuld earlier this week, it marked a baby step forward for the Cubs manager. The Cubs won both games & had a vastly improved energy level. Then Lou caved on Friday (7/3/09) and put Soriano back at the top of the starting lineup. The result? A hitless game with a couple RISP stranded. So much for the time off clearing Soriano’s head...

Now, on Independence Day 2009, Piniella has pushed Soriano down to the sixth spot in the batting order. Regardless of the outcome (which looks to be an ugly Chicago loss, due more to an ineffective Rich Harden than anything else), Sweet Lou is trying to push buttons. And that’s a good thing, because Piniella was beginning to resemble a Build-A-Bear a few weeks ago...

With Soriano, Kosuke Fukudome, and Milton Bradley, Lou is stuck with Jim Hendry’s playthings. However, young players like Fuld, Jake Fox, and Micah Hoffpauir should give Lou options...namely, to sit the overpriced Hendry mistakes and play the potential bargain-basement gems. A manager should not have to kiss the GM’s hindquarters. The GM gets the pieces and the manager should then be able to use them how he sees fit. In the case of the Cubs, if that means benching the ‘Little Three’ (as I so eloquently call them), so be it...

After all, what big-league manager wouldn’t want $40 million worth of pinch-hitting prowess available for those late-inning heroics???