Apparently Omar Infante was not meant to wear a Cubs' uniform after all. Off to Atlanta he goes, along with the out-of-favor Will Ohman. In exchange, the Cubs get 22-year-old right-handed relief pitcher Jose Ascanio. Ascanio had a 2.54 ERA in 78 innings in the double-A Southern League in 2007. He had an impressive 71 K's against just 18 BB's. He also pitched in 16 innings for the Braves, allowing 9 runs.

Ohman was set to make $1.6M in 2008 and Infante would have made something similar.

So Jim Hendry turned Jacque Jones into a young major-league ready fireballing reliever, giving up Ohman in the process but also dropping salary. Well done.

For their part, Braves blogs Talking Chop and Chop-N-Change both like the deal from their perspective as well, noting Ohman's excellent road ERA over the past three seasons.

Slowly, but surely, Jim Hendry is ridding the Cubs of his middling free agent acquisition mistakes. Neifi Perez to the Detroit Tigers. Glendon Rusch to injury. The latest is Jacque Jones to the Tigers (oh, how we love the Tigers). Ryan Dempster, Jason Marquis, and Scott Eyre: be ready.

The Cubs are also sending the Tigers some cash, though we do not yet know how much. It seems likely to be at least the $1.3M in signing bonus money Jones is due in January.

In exchange, the Cubs get Jose Macias (man, Derek, you're too quick with that joke). To be fair, Omar Infante is younger and probably better than Macias was when the Cubs acquired him in December 2003. He did, after all, post a 101 OPS+ as a full-time second baseman and 22-year-old in 2004. In any event, as the aforementioned Mr. Smart notes, something else could happen yet this offseason to make the acquisition of Infante make more sense.