Hope for the hopeless or It's time to blow up the Cubs

The title for this post depends on your allegiances. For those teams that are clinging to hope, this is good news:

Chicago Cubs pitchers Rich Harden and Aaron Heilman have been claimed off waivers by contending teams, according to industry sources.

Great stuff, but what else do we have here?

An American League source with knowledge of the process indicated the Minnesota Twins may be the team that claimed Harden. He will become a free agent after the 2009 season.

I like the sound of that, but I'll believe it when I see it. The Twins don't have a great track record of making big acquisitions like this.

Going into the season, the Twins pitching staff was seen as its strength but it has been ravaged by injuries and shattered expectations. Harden would be huge.

Now if you're a Cubs fan this is clearly the front office waving a white flag. I know the new owners are a little cash strapped, but the way to fix that isn't by selling off the good parts. The problem is they have so much money sunk into the wrong people - Fukudome, Zambrano, Soriano, Bradley. They're going to have to find a way to win with those salaries on the books.

Speaking of Bradley, the same guy who it took all of what, three weeks to quit talking to the Chicago media now is complaining about Cubs fans. My heart bleeds for you, Milton. I pulled up Bradley's stats today and almost fell off my chair. Here we have a middle of the lineup guy making $10 million a year and he has 35 RBI. That's only seven more than Nick Punto!

Bradley's teammate, Alfonso Soriano is used to being booed. He's making $17 million this year, has an on base percentage under .300, and plays left field as if he's wearing ice skates. His response to Bradley? Deal with it:

"You cannot listen to those fans because they pay their money, they can do whatever they want. But if you listen, they want to do it more," Soriano said. "But if you ignore them like `I don't care,' they want to get tired."