BALCO Presents: Your 2010 St. Louis Cardinals

We'll get to the Bears stuff sometime tomorrow.  Until then, let's divert your attention to some baseball.

It looks as if Tony La Russa is returning to manage the St. Louis Cardinals, dashing the wet dreams of some idiot Cubs fans that prayed nightly for La Russa to leave his perch in the Redbirds dugout and travel up I-55 (along with sidekick Dave Duncan) and win a championship for the Chicago Cubs.

And in a stunning development which looks like an attempt to not be outdone by the Cubs' signing of a "superstar" scapegoat hitting coach, it looks like La Russa is bringing Mark McGwire out of hibernation with him.  Yes, that Mark McGwire.  The man who hit 583 home runs in his 16-year career and posted 1.111 OPS while with the Cardinals will be St. Louis' hitting coach for the 2010 season.

I'm not sure how McGwire, a career .217 hitter in 10 postseason series, is going to help the Cards not make Vicente Padilla and Randy Wolf look like Don Drysdale and Sandy Koufax.  However, when Skip Schumaker and Brendan Ryan each have 60 home run seasons next year, we'll know why.

Is Jim Hendry Reading This Blog? If So, Please Continue To Do So

The Cubs offense is already putting new hitting coach Rudy Jaramillo to sleep.

A couple of years ago, my roommate and I were discussing the upcoming Major League Baseball offseason.  It started as a hot stove chat and turned into me analyzing who would go where and for how much.  Back then, I wrote a blog that was not TBDS and made predictions on a handful of players.

I was spot on in each prediction.  He would later suggest MLB execs were reading my blog. So, Jim Hendry, if you're out there reading.  Thanks.  Click a link and help some brothas get paid.  Oh!  And stay tuned for my offseason guide to not fucking up building a contender.  Maybe you'll see something you like.

There really is no denying this timeline:

• Alert Jim Hendry: Rudy Jaramillo (Not A Dozen Glazed Donuts) Is The Must-Have Item Of The Offseason (The Big Dead Sidebar, Oct. 6)
• Is Rudy Jaramillo On Cubs Radar? (Chicago Tribune, Oct. 14)
• Cubs are in contact with Jaramillo via@SI_JohnHeyman (via @bigdeadsidebar)
• Cubs to interview Jaramillo (Chicago Tribune, Oct. 16)
• Cubs to meet with Jaramillo next week (MLB.com's Carrie Muskat, Oct. 17)
  
• SI's Jon Heyman tweets: "hitting guru rudy jaramillo likely to join #cubs. expected to become baseball's highest paid coach at 800 G's per." (via @SI_JonHeyman, Oct. 19)
  
• Cubs hire Jaramillo to be hitting coach (Cubs.com, Oct. 21)
  

Hiring Jaramillo is truly a step in the right direction for the Cubs.

Alert Jim Hendry: Rudy Jaramillo (Not A Dozen Glazed Donuts) Is The Must-Have Item This Off-Season

The Cubs gave their bats a lot of stupid looks throughout the course of the 2009 season.

The Chicago Cubs dismissed hitting instructor Von Joshua, who proved to be the most meaningless mid-season acquisition in the history, on Sunday.  On Monday, the chatter of Ryne Sandberg possibly replacing him began, but was shot down shortly thereafter.

Remember when I questioned the vastly popular idea that Dave Duncan could cure cancer whatever ails the Cubs' pitching staff?  Yeah, that was fun.  And while Dave Kaplan and Bob Verdi think that Duncan and Tony La Russa are basesball's top free agents, they totally are overlooking the guy that could help fix the Cubs' biggest problem.