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.

Jim Hendry has not had a good trade in a couple of seasons. He's now back in the game. Somehow, he convinced the Detroit Tigers to take Neifi Perez and his $2.5M 2007 contract, and the Cubs even received a player in return: 22-year-old minor league catcher Chris Robinson.