All you needed to know about the immediate future of the Cubs was this chaos theory chain of events that started when Corey Patterson flunked his MRI.

Patterson goes on the DL.
Tom Goodwin gets the starting CF spot.
Trenidad Hubbard gets promoted from Iowa to Chicago.
Dave Kelton starts in CF for the Iowa Cubs.

That’s right, if you have July 30 in your “Dave Kelton starts in centerfield” pool, you’re going to be a winner.

The Cubs had two serious needs before Corey wrenched his knee trying to avoid some sort of loving embrace from Tino Martinez on Sunday. They needed a third baseman and a leadoff hitter.

Now they need a third baseman, a leadoff hitter and a guy for the middle of the lineup. Gulp.

Last night’s lineup wasn’t that shabby. Granted, it looked good because Goodwin got on base four times (not likely to happen again), but there was no Lenny Harris in it and Hee Seop is starting to rake.

Today against Dontrelle Willis the Cubs will use their righty lineup and I shudder to think who’s in that thing.

The reality is that the Cubs need to find a centerfielder…stat. If you really want to contend this year, and there’s no reason not to when you’re only one game out of first on July 8, you need to find somebody who can play CF for the last three months of the regular season.

There isn’t much out there.

Kenny Lofton sucks. Though we know Dusty loves him, he ‘s got no arm and just like last year he milked a hot start as long as he could and now his numbers are crumbling apart.

The Mets will pay the Cubs to take Jeromy Burnitz, but can the Cubs really play a 240 pound man in center field? Especially one who will strike out 100 times from now until the end of the season?

The Royals won’t trade Carlos Beltran if they’re in first place and last I checked, they are. Plus, a trade for Beltran causes some problems because you go into next year with four guys for three outfield spots. Basically, if you sign Beltran you’re telling Moises that he’s going to be traded in the offseason. Given Moises’ proclivity for taking naps in the field, messing with him when he’s actually playing well seems disastrous.

Let’s get back to Burnitz for a moment. If the Cubs decide they can live with a linebacker sized outfield, why not go all out and trade for Juan Gonzalez? Can you imagine the hilarity that would ensue in watching routine flyballs drop in the gaps between Alou-Sosa-Juan? But how much fun would it be to watch that threesome bash in the middle of the order? What have you got to lose?

Juan cited three reasons for not accepting the trade from Texas to the Expos. He didn’t want to switch leagues, he didn’t want to play on AstroTurf and he didn’t want to move his family again.

Let’s translate that. He didn’t want to play for the freaking Expos. If you’re Jim Hendry and you make the call and offer the same package of three second tier prospects and the Rangers bite all but the major league minimum of his contract–what have you got to lose?

In fact, with the Cubs pitching staff you might not even need outfielders. Just tell Kerry and Mark and Carlos that they have to strike out EVERYBODY. They probably could if they had to. How do we know they can’t? Have we ever asked them to do this?

See. I’m a genius.

OK. But here’s what’s going to happen. The Cubs are going to make two trades in July. One will be for David Weathers (I’d bet my house on this), the other will be for yet another utility infielder (Tyler Houston, Mark Loretta…some other former Brewer?) And David Kelton will crank the Brant Brown experiment up and roam center after a couple of weeks of on the job training in Iowa. You can take this to the bank. It’s the Cubs. Why be bold when you can be bland?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big Kelton fan. He’s going to be the left fielder of the future and is going to hit…a ton. But it’s just so Cub.

You know that right now Hendry is trying to think of a way to convince Dusty that Bobby Hill can play center. You know he is.

Here’s a trade rumor that ought to be true, even if it’s not.

The Blue Jays send 3B Eric Hinske and LF Shannon Stewart to the Cubs for P’s Juan Cruz, Francis Beltran and the great Bobby Hill.

Stewart’s a free agent to be who the Blue Jays are resigned to losing in free agency. He’s got the wheels to play center (though he has the worst arm in the history of baseball–it makes Kenny Lofton’s look like Vladimir Guerrero’s) and he can leadoff or hit third. Shannon’s a stud. Hinske is the reigning AL Rookie of the Year, a former Cub and signed to an attractive contract. The Jays need to decide if Hinske will ever be better than he was last year (he won’t) and if he’s really that much better than Howie Clark who’s done a nice job filling in for him (the Cubs saw that first hand a few weeks ago).

Who knows?

What we do know fits comfortably in a thimble.

If you’re Jim Hendry you have three options.

1) You curl up into a ball and hide under your desk and hope that the kicking stops. In this scenario you don’t trade for anybody and you pray that Tom Freakin’ Goodwin has a career half-year and you somehow stay in the pennant race until the Bears regular season starts and the fans get distracted.

2) You do the typically Cub thing and you make a panicky, patch trade. It’s chic to say that the Cubs never try to win, but in reality they do try to win, but they do it by trading good young players for old guys who suck. In this scenario you trade Juan Cruz to Baltimore for Tony Batista and then Todd Wellemeyer to Pittsburgh for the decaying corpse of Kenny Lofton. You then go 84-78, finish six games out of first and watch Cruz and Wellemeyer win the AL and NL Cy Youngs respectively in 2005.

3) You do a very un-Cublike thing and you prey on the weak and the greedy. You trade Juan Cruz and Buck Coates to Anaheim for Darin Erstad, and you trade Jae-kuk Ryu to the Dodgers for Adrian Beltre. Erstad helps you win now and gives you the option to dump Moises Alou after the season and Beltre fulfills the nightmares of Dodger fans everywhere and puts up the first of many .300, 25 HR, 100 RBI seasons in 2004, while actually helping you win in 2003 because he’s not Lenny Harris.

Call me crazy.

Just call me.