Like Sammy, only smaller.

Such is the life of a Cubs’ fan. You get so used to complaining about things that when something you shouldn’t complain about happens, you do it anyway.

For years, Cubs’ fans have had two laments to cling to. First, and most important, is the regret that the Cubs haven’t won a World Series in (fill in the blank, and pick a big number) years. The second is that they’re cheap and never ever ever never sign the best free agents on the market.

One of those things is obviously a lot easier to address than the other, yet the Cubs never seemed too interested in trying.

When was the last time the Cubs signed the best free agent on the market?

What day was yesterday?

Alfonso Soriano is a lot of things. He’s athletic, talented, undisciplined, temperamental, versatile, fast, strong, fond of cats, long walks on the beach and Anne Murray music.

He’s also even filthy richier than he was yesterday when he woke up. He’s also a Cub.

Not even a year removed from sitting out a game in which he was in the starting lineup, even as the team was running on the field, he’s in a helluva lot better financial shape than the company that just signed him.

Eight years, $136 million dollars. For a guy with Shawon Dunston’s plate discipline and all of 159 big league games in the outfield.

So this just proves the Cubs are dumb, right? They finally get the go ahead to spend a lot of money and they piss it away on a wild-swinging, 31-year old facing yet another position change. Right?

Wrong, oh Smokey Link breath.

There comes a time when you need to sack it up and take a chance. For a variety of reasons (the last two World’s Champions, empty seats at Wrigley Field, declining radio and TV ratings, a very real need to pump value back into the franchise, etc.) the offseason of 2006-2007 is that time for the Cubs. They need better players, and lots of them. Who’s the best one on the market? The guy who just signed with the Cubs.

Soriano’s career stats are impressive, but show a somewhat limited player. He’s got a unique blend of speed and power, but his lifetime batting average is just that, average (.280), his on-base average is wanting (.325) and he strikes out a ton (836 times in 961 games).

But something magical happens when you let him bat first. The good player with power and speed becomes an elite player. The kind of player you pony up the kinds of cash the Cubs just did.

Bat him first and he gets on base more often (.354), his average goes up (.289), his slugging percentage goes up (.574) and he runs more often and with better success.

In the past three seasons, he’s spent the majority of his time in three spots in the lineup. Leadoff, third and fifth. How long does it take some managers to get a hint?

AB Ave OBP Slg OPS
First 706 289 354 574 928
Third 557 264 315 458 773
Fifth 573 272 317 522 839

He likes leading off, and he’s good at it.  The Cubs promised him that’s where he’d hit, and for once they made a sensible promise.  You’re paying Derrek Lee and E-ramis Ramirez a lot of money to be third and fourth hitters, let them do it.

Nobody’s sure where Soriano will play next year.  Oh, it’ll be in the outfield, but in front of which bleacher drunks he stands is still TBD.  If they don’t pick up another outfielder, apparently Alfonso will go to right field, with Jock Jones in center and Matt Murton in left.  Can you imagine the comedic potential of every flyball to left center?  I’m crying tears of agony right now just thinking about it.

Should the Cubs trade Jock (please, please!) then there’s a chance Soriano will play center, it would depend on who arrives to play right.

If the Cubs trade Matt Murton (for example, to the Indians for Jake Westbrook) then Soriano will play left and they’ll find somebody to play center with Jock spiking the ball into the right field turf for another season.  We need to make sure this doesn’t happen.

The Cubs can probably get Westbrook, or a pitcher of his ilk, without trading Murton and that’s what they should do.  Because a lineup of this:

Soriano
Murton
Lee
E-ramis
Barrett
Jock (or anybody else, really)
DeRosa
Izturis

Looks pretty good.  It’d look better without Jock or little Cesar, but hey.

The Cubs have apparently talked to Cliff Floyd about coming home and spending his DL time at Wrigley.  On the rare occasions that Cliff is up on two feet and taking nourishment he can share left with Murton and Jock will split center with the great Angel Pagan or somebody.

Let me just throw this out there.  If you like it, you can keep it, if you don’t, throw it right back.  If you’re insane enough to play Jock in center, why not make Felix Pie his platoon partner?  What better way to work a rookie into the lineup than hitting down in the order, only batting against guys who throw breaking balls that move towards him and flashing that world class defensive prowess?  It’s crazy.  Better he not arrive until somebody’s hurt and he’s counted on to play every day and sink or swim.

Dusty Baker’s not the manager anymore.  This kind of forward thinking might actually exist.

We’re losing the importance of the signing.  The Cubs were forced into by circumstance, but for once they responded.  This is not a signing that would have ever happened with Andy MacPhail in charge.  He’s the reason Jim Hendry didn’t do this earlier.  MacPhail wanted to win within a budget.  It was his job.  The reason he made the big bucks.  With him gone, and more importantly, because of the circumstances that led to his departure, we’re at a rare moment in Cubs’ history when you can be a GM with a balls-out approach and actually get the resources to pull it off.

The Cubs need to win.  Finally.  After a century of “wanting to win, sort of” they finally need to.  But that century of magnificent failure has free agents skeptical.  They had to prove they were serious.  To do it they had to overpay.  To their credit, they finally did.

The numbers are all in dispute.  Is it six years, $90 million guaranteed with options and incentives that could add two years and $46 million to the deal?  Who cares?  If this is what it took to get the Angels and Dodgers to fall out of the bidding (teams with yearly playoff aspirations, by the way) then that’s what you pay.  That’s what the Cubs paid.

This is nothing that the Mets didn’t do after 2004 when they “overpaid” Carlos Beltran.  In one move they filled a gaping hole and they legitimized themselves.

One thing you can guarantee.  If Alfonso is batting with two outs in the ninth in game seven of the NLCS, he’s not striking out looking.

Chicago’s a big town.  A big market.  It’s about damn time the Cubs start to act like it.  They’ve still got a lot of work to do and more needs to address.  But if they’re serious about avoiding the ignominy of 100 years without a World Championship, they’re a fair bet closer than they were two days ago.

For the Cubs–hell, for anyone for once–this is progress.