Cubs start dealing

Courtesy of wikipedia.com

When you're 15 1/2 games out of first place midway through the season, you start dealing whatever marketable players you have.

For the Chicago Cubs, that means moving Scott Feldman to Baltimore and Carlos Marmol to whichever Major League Baseball club is dumb enough or desperate enough to take him (in this case, it's the Los Angeles Dodgers).

The Orioles didn't have to give the Cubs too much to acquire Feldman, who owns 7-6 and a 3.46 ERA. All they had to do was give Chicago pitchers Jake Arrieta (career 5.46 ERA) and Pedro Strop (7.25 ERA this season), and they even received a backup catcher (Steve Clevenger) for their troubles.

Feldman's addition -- along with the anticipated return of Wei-Yin Chen -- should stabilize a Baltimore pitching staff that has been bleeding runs this season. The Orioles own the second-worst team ERA in the majors (4.43).

As for Marmol, the surprise is that any major league team wanted to take him off Chicago's hands. Marmol went from being a shutdown closer in 2010 to being a mop-up reliever with a 5.86 ERA this season. Why the resurgent Dodgers would want him makes no sense to me. They'll probably wind up doing what the Cubs had in mind when they designated him for assignment last week: releasing him.

I'm not sure these moves are the last major ones the Cubs will make before the trading deadline. There is still a possibility in my mind that they'll try to unload either Alfonso Soriano or Matt Garza, depending on what they can get for them.

Meanwhile, Feldman and Marmol now get to experience a pennant race -- something that the Cubs and their fans can only dream about these days.