The West Tennessee Diamond Jaxx announced today that 1B/DH Brandon Sing, LHP Renyel Pinto, RHP Ricky Nolasco, and OF Matt Murton were named to the Southern League end-of-season All-Star team.

The Cubs have purchased the contract of Iowa closer Jermaine Van Buren. It's a just reward for Van Buren, after putting up a 1.98 ERA in 54.2 IP, with 22 BB and an impressive 65 K. As the lone Iowa reliever who's actually had a good year, the 25-year-old Van Buren figures to be in the Cubs' plans for next year.

I think he's actually somewhat promising. He's always had a good strikeout rate, and has never given up a lot of homers. His weakness, like so many Cubs, has been his control. After bouncing around the Rockies organization for a few years out of high school, he seemed to find himself somewhat during a year with the (independent league!) Fort Worth Cats in 2003, posting a 3.07 ERA with 113/37 K/BB in 111.1 IP. Which reminds me, one of these years I should go out and see the Cats.

. . . can be found here, courtesy of CubsNet.com contributor Diana. There are a lot of good ones.

In a premium article, Baseball Prospectus's Joe Sheehan deconstructs the Cubs: "The gap between Cubdom and contention is wide, but so much of it is contained in three Baker mistakes: using Neifi Perez and Corey Patterson atop the lineup, refusing to play his better left fielders, not keeping Rusch in the rotation. . . . In the wake of the 2003 NL Championship Series, in which Baker made a series of bad decisions that cost the Cubs, I wrote: 'The Cubs will never get this close again with Baker as their manager.' I see no reason to back away from that statement." . . . more (sub. req'd)

As Rob Glowacki at The Cub Reporter notes and Paul Sullivan of the Chicago Tribune reports, the Cubs are likely to call up outfielder Matt Murton on Tuesday to replace Todd Hollandsworth. But just because Matt Lawton and Hollandsworth are gone, don't go telling Dusty Baker to play Murton. "Depends on how [much time] I can get Corey [Patterson] and [Jerry] Hairston," says Baker in the Trib. Not sure about Ronny Cedeno either. "I just can't take the ball and glove out of Neifi's hands."

"You've still got to win games too." Because the Cubs are really winning with the way things are right now.

The benefit of having serviceable and disposable veteran corner outfielders continues to manifest itself. After receiving a minor league pitcher for Matt Lawton last week, the Cubs traded Todd Hollandsworth to the Atlanta Braves tonight for minor league pitchers Todd Blackford and Angelo Burrows.

"Kerry Wood will have season-ending arthroscopic surgery on his right shoulder Wednesday," reports the AP. He is available to pitch tonight.

The Cubs announced some minor league moves today, reports MLB.com: "Second baseman Eric Patterson was promoted to Double-A West Tenn and pitcher Matt Weber was promoted to Class A Daytona, and the Chiefs added pitcher Angel Guzman and recently-acquired pitcher Justin Berg to its roster."

The Baltimore Orioles placed Sammy Sosa on the disabled list today with the same toe problem he had in 2003. At this point, it is safe to call the trade that sent him to Baltimore, ignoring money issues, a win for the Cubs. Here are Sosa's numbers, along with the numbers of the players the Cubs received in return, Jerry Hairston, Jr. and infielder Mike Fontenot (Iowa) (pitcher David Crouthers, who the Cubs also received, retired), through Saturday's games:

After weeks of not very good news, the Bears had a couple of good announcements today: they named Kyle Orton the starting QB, after Chad Hutchinson failed to perform in the preseason; and they signed Cedric Benson.

I have a 1929 Cubs team signed baseball with cert of auth and list of players that signed. Anyone know how I could find out how much it is worth?

Congratulations to Ryne Sandberg, my favorite player as a kid, who today became the fourth Cubs player to have his number retired. It's a well-deserved honor, for a player who was never anything other than a credit to his team.

Does this mean that Matt Murton will get a month-long shot at the leftfield job? "The New York Yankees are close to a deal to acquire outfielder Matt Lawton from the Chicago Cubs, according to ESPN.com's Jayson Stark."

UPDATE (1:45pm): The trade is done and the Cubs received minor league pitcher Justin Berg in return. The Cubs also put third baseman Scott McClain, who made a bid to make the big league team in 2004 out of spring training, on to the 40-man roster and called him up to Chicago.

The Cubs can't win because they make too many mistakes and they don't play baseball they play homerun derby. Fact: When the wind is blowing in at Wrigley Field they are 15-20. Why? No homeruns. If you can't field a winning team with Prior, Zambrano, Maddux, Lee, Ramirez, Barrett, and Walker as the nucleus you can't field a winning team period. I'm tired of hearing about injuries. Yes, Wood and Nomar have missed most of the season. The Atlanta Braves went without 3 of their starting 5 pitchers, their starting third baseman, rookies in left and right, and their starting catcher for portions of this season. Guess what. The Cardinals have been without Rolen, Walker, Sanders, and Molina this year. Guess what. First place by a wide margin. Playing good fundamental baseball. I have seen only a few players on this Cubs team do that.