Sosa Trade Official

Well Sosa is gone and received absolutely nothing for him in my opinion. What is worse is that the Cubs then went ahead signed Burnitz. What is even worse than that Burnitz costs as much as Sosa's contract if you look at it in depth. The Cubs have given the Orioles 12 million dollars and given Burnitz 5 million dollars, which almost equals what they would have paid him.
What makes no sense is if Hendry was so insistent on trading Sosa, why didn't he get into the FA pool much earlier? What is this man thinking? After ripping off the Dodgers in the Hundley trade and the Pirates in the Ramirez trade, I don't think he has the best track record. His FA signings have not impressed me. When you put a bench of Bako, Macias, Goodwin, and Martinez together last year and expect to win you aren't the brightest cookie in the world (I excluded Hollandsworth and Walker from list because they are decent players). He should have jumped at the chance to sign JD Drew when he was an FA, he was the perfect fit for the Cubs. His bat would have been a key asset in the lineup, instead Burnitz is in the lineup. Burnitz in some of the preseason predictions of stats looks like he will have a better year than Sosa, but you have to keep in mind Burnitz stat's were projected for Coors. This is a guy who kills the ball in Coors with a 1.057 OPS, but once he leaves it he hits a paltry .775 OPS. Over last three years in 38 plate appearances at Wrigley he has hit .286/.342/.371 equally an even lower OPS than he hit on the road last season. If anyone can see how this makes sense please tell me, I would really like to know how it does make sense.

Call me a pessimist, but with this team they have, I feel the Cubs will be lucky to finish more than 5 games over .500 and this is on the high end. They have some major holes which I think they can't overcome and a manager that can't manage during a game. As much as Baker gets his players ready for games and give 100%, when it comes to game time he has to be one of the worst managers in baseball. He is horrible with his pitchers, leaves starters in too long and never has any faith in pen. He kept "Wave them home" Kim around a year too long until some upstairs told him he had to go. He doesn't know when to steal, bunt or hit and run. Baker manages like he needs to win all his games on HR's and well without Alou and Sosa the Cubs are going to have a hard time hitting them.