The Chicago Cubs and Boston Red Sox are close to a deal that will send Coco Crisp to the Windy City for Jason Marquis and Sam Fuld. - source Chicago Cub Reporter

Not a terrible trade for either team, but a far better trade for the Cubs than the Red Sox. Coco Crisp will be effective as a back-up for the Cubs but Jason Marquis will be completely ineffective for the Red Sox. I understand that the idea is for him to step in and compete with Bartolo Colon for the rotation spot vacated by Curt Schilling and to serve as insurance against the back issues of Josh Beckett and Tim Wakefield, but I have no reason to think that a pitcher who has been a poor National League pitcher since the end of the 2004 season will be effective in the American League East.

Normally I don't feel bad for the Mets - and now is no exception, but today they added Moises Alou to the list of injured Met players, sending him back to NY for an MRI on what WFAN in New York is reporting as a possible torn groin (which always makes me shudder).

Just take a look at what's going on with the Mets only two weeks into the spring:

Jose Reyes (SS) ........ healthy
Luis Castillo (2B) ........ OUT -- knees
David Wright (3B) ........healthy
Carlos Beltran (CF) ..... OUT -- knees
Carlos Delgado (1B) .... OUT -- hip
Moises Alou (LF) .........OUT -- groin
Ryan Church (RF) ........OUT-- concussion
Brian Schneider (C) ......OUT -- hamstring
Johan Santana (LHP) ... pitching today, so presumably OK

Now let's look at the projected bench, too:
Ramon Castro (C) ........... healthy
Ruben Gotay (SS) .......... OUT -- ankle
Damion Easley (INF/OF) .. OUT -- ankle
Endy Chavez (OF) ........... OUT -- hamstring/ankle
Marlon Anderson ............. OUT -- bruised chest

Throw in El Duque who has yet to pitch this spring because he's old  and Pedro who has as much chance of making 30 starts as Carrot Top has of winning an Oscar and this is not looking good for the Mets right now. Though it is early and maybe they'll get through this early - but given their age and lack of depth I highly doubt it.

So I've been trying to be productive today, I really have. But it just isn't happening. Between the storm that kept me up all night and the Yankees being on TV right now, there's just no way I was going to get anything done. It was also pointed out to me yesterday that between football free agency, NHL trades, Brett Favre, and a host of other nonsense, I have been neglecting the New York Yankees. This must end and end it shall.

Before I get to the field I want to congratulate Hammerin' Hank for taking a nice little shot at ESPN and the Red Sox, calling Sox Nation a product of ESPN. And while everyone other than ESPN's Buster Olney seemed to take this in stride (Buster had a diatribe about how Hank is dillusional and needs to get over himself and how he (Buster) was a Dodger fan - me thinks he doth protest too much) I will say that the only way the Red Sox could be more popular with the empty suits at ESPN would be for John Henry to buy an Arena Football League Team and for Theo or Papsmear to appear on Dancing with the Stars. In any case, it is not worth anyone getting in a twist over, even the Sox are having some fun with it, sending Hank an honorary Sox Nation membership card.

As for on the field, this spring is more interesting than most recent ones, simply because there are so many unknowns. Over the last decade, spring training for the Yankees has been all about getting in shape and getting your timing down, maybe one or two spots were open at the end of the bench or the back of the rotation, but this year - even with most of the positions set, the players set in those spots are an unknown themselves. As I see it, here are the main questions.

1. The Kid Pitchers: I think Hughes is going to have a big year, not just a good year, but a big one. The question with him is going to be how much he pitches. Last year he threw just 70+ innings in the majors due to injuries, he threw another 37 in the minors giving him just over 100 total innings. The Yankees would like to limit him to about 150 innings in total, which is probably enough for him to get around 25 starts. Ian Kennedy threw about 50 more innings than Hughes last season and so the restrictions on him will be less, but - while I think he'll be good - I don't think Kennedy is nearly as good as Hughes. And if Mike Mussina stinks - which he probably will since he's at best a national league pitcher at this point - the two of them will be counted on a ton.

That brings us to Joba. While Joe Girardi has him working out as a starter right now, everyone is pretty sure that between having six pitchers and wanting to watch his innings Joba will start in the pen. If some of the other relievers (whom I'll touch on in a second) show that they can be trusted, Joba will head to the minors at some point to stretch out his arm and return as a starter for the stretch run. That leads me to think that the way the Yankees might get around the Hughes inning count is, if Phil is up near his limit, the Yankees might flip them, sending Hughes to the pen and replacing him in the rotation with Joba - or not. Only time will tell.

2. The Pen: Well alright, so Joba and Mo at the back of the pen are as good as anything that can be found on any other team - including Boston. People will say that Accardo and Ryan are just as good and I will say that some people need to get check ups from the neck up. I really like Ohlendorf and think that he will eventually be the 8th inning guy. Farnsworth - well - the best thing about Kyle these days is that he's a free agent after this season. I have no opinion on Hawkins right now other than that he's a low risk low reward signing. If he doesn't work out, the team is not so invested in him that they can't dump him. I'm a big fan of Jose Veras who has a lot of Armando Benitez in him, physically speaking anyway. He doesn't strike me as being as nuts as Benitez.

The Yankees have tons of other kids who are going to compete for roles in the pen at some point this season: Mark Melancon (considered the closer of the future) Humberto Sanchez, Steve Jackson, Edwar Ramirez, Heath Phillips, Scott Patterson, Chris Garcia, Jon Albaladejo, Jeff Karstens, Sean Henn, Chris Britton, Brian Bruney (who seems to have gone on one hell of a diet) Chase Wright - gone are the days of Aaron Small, Shawn Chacon, Scott Erickson and the rest of the retreads that the Yankees have had to run out over the years. Now the closest thing they have to a retread is Mike Mussina (are you picking up a theme about Mussina here?)

3. The old lefties: by the old lefties I mean Giambi and Matsui. Given the formation of the team right now, for them both to play Giambi will have to play first and Matsui will have to DH. Now, I know Giambi has been a first baseman and does have a glove, but in my opinion that glove is like Jessica Alba - better when counted on for decoration than anything else. Counting on him to play first is asking for two things, bad defensive play and a host of errors. That means either one of them sits or one of them gets moved. Of the two, Matsui is the one who is probably easier to move - though not by much considering that now that his iron man streak has broken he has gone the other way and always seems to be hurt. But wouldn't a team with no offense be interested in Matsui - the Giants for example? Would it kill San Fran to part with relief pitcher Jonathan Sanchez for Matsui? I mean for God's sake they have Benji Molina batting cleanup.

Now if Giambi can be moved to DH, the Yankees would then have to pick from between Shelley Duncan, Wilson Betemit, Jason Lane, and Morgan Ensberg as to who would be their first baseman. If it were my call, I would use Betemit, I really like his bat - though I would suggest that he give up batting right handed, he stinks at it. Platoon Shelley Duncan from that side and roll with it.

All of these measures are stop gaps. I mean the Yankees are shedding about 90 million in payroll after this season in the form of Giambi, Pavano, Farnsworth, Abreu, Mussina, and Pettitte and if you don't think that money is ear-marked for the likes of Mark Teixeira (and CC Sabathia) then you haven't been paying attention.

Interestingly enough, if Giambi doesn't get hurt - which is asking a lot - he looks poised to have a pretty good walk year. He's in fairly good shape (by Giambi standards) and seems to be hitting the ball pretty well early this spring.

4. The Bronx Runners?: Joe Girardi wants to turn the Yankees from the station to station team they had become into a more aggressive team on the basepaths. They have some guys with speed, but also have Posada and Giambi (the latter of which runs like Fred Flintstone). So can this team turn into the running gunning team Girardi wants them to be?

Alright, that's it for now. I'm legitimately afraid that Carlos Gomez playing CF for the Twins is going to eventually throw a ball so wildly it comes through my television.

IMPORTANT NOTE: If Favre retired because he just didn't want to play anymore than I take back everything I am about to say.

Chris Mortensen on ESPN and Jay Glazer here at Foxsports are both saying Brett Farve is hanging them up. And that's his right. But, if the rumors are true and Farve called the Pack to phone in his retirement as soon as he heard that Randy Moss signed with the Patriots, then that's a little bit of taking my ball and going home. Actually it is a lot of that. Brett has given a lot of good things to the Packer organization, but they have also made him a very rich man and stood by him when he was battling an addiction to pain killers.

Other notes:

If you watched the Bears last year you would have thought that the big problem was the QB. Well it turns out that the Bears disagreed with you. They brought back the QB and dismissed his receivers and have yet to replace any of them. So if Rex Grossman is going to turn into a big time QB he is going to have to do it throwing passes to Devin Hester. Good luck with that.

The J-E-T-S Jets Jets Jets have shelled out nearly $70 million in guaranteed monies over the last 72 hours. And outside of Allan Faneca I don't believe any of the players they signed are worth it. Ironically, had they kept Kareem McKenzie, John Abraham, Jason Ferguson, and Pete Kendall they wouldn't have had to sign any of the players they did and instead focused on positions where they still have holes.

So my plan was to not say anything about the Knicks until they were meaningful again. But I'm afraid that if I wait until 2025 I might not be around to do it. So here are some thoughts about the slow death that is the Knicks fan existence and some ways I would try to rebuild a once proud franchise.

First of all this Marbury/Isiah nonsense is just plain bizzare. And you know what, it serves Zeke right. When Marbury pulled his temper tantrum and left the team early this season Isiah asked his players what he should do with Marbury. To a man the answer was "bench him." Isiah started Marbury as soon as he came back. Since then this team has quit on the coach. The moral of the story, do not ask for the input of your players if you already have your mind set on a course of action. If he had just gone ahead and played Marbury players would have been annoyed but they would have gotten over that a lot easier than getting over the idea that they were ignored.

The key here is that if you ever wanted to watch a coach give a course on how to get fired, Isiah has given it to you. He has no consistency with his rotation; players can start one night and then not play at all the next month. All we know for certain is that, no matter how big the blowout is, Jamal Crawford is going to play 40 minutes a night and no matter how ineffective Eddy Curry is, Randolph Morris is not going to play at all (though he did play last night for only the second time all season). Other than that, your guess is as good as mine as to whether Renaldo Balkman, Jared Jeffries, Malik Rose, or Wilson Chandler will take of the warm-ups on a nightly basis. Beyond the rotation he has buried, both literally and figuratively, Eddy Curry - who just last year he was touting as the future of the franchise. And it isn't just Curry. Isiah has done a good job throwing the players under the bus on a few occassions, openly lusting over other players, and questioning his team's talent and heart on an almost nightly basis. I've got news for Zeke - if he doesn't like the players on the team he should tell the owner to fire the GM who brought them in. And, incidentally, didn't Isiah and Dolan put gag orders on Larry Brown when he did the same thing? Look, the bottom line is that since he got here Isiah has been blaming other people for the team's failings. First it was the bad team and bad contracts he inherited from Scott Layden, then it was the coaches, from Don Cheney to Lenny Wilkins to Larry Brown. He is out of people to blame. If he wants to blame the players then he has to blame the person who brought them in.

Anyway, we all know the problems, but the big question, the ultimate question is how does the situation get right. The ideal would be for Cablevision to sell the Knicks to just about anyone else and have that person hire me as GM and President because I am that damn good. But that probably won't happen. And, here's some really scary news for you; Jim Dolan has recently been quoted comparing Isiah and the desire everyone has for him to be fired as the situations of Tom Coughlin and Doc Rivers. That tells me that Dolan is now running this team out of spite. He wants Isiah to win so that he doesn't have to admit it was a mistake to hire him originally or lock him up last year. A very frightening thought indeed, because if Thomas is here for the long haul (as he seems to think he is) the situation is going to get a whole lot worse before it gets better. Isiah will use the expiring contracts of Marbury, Malik Rose, and Jerome James to bring in more horrid contracts. We know this will happen. But if Isiah isn't around, if it were my call, here's what I would do:

1. Keep all the expiring contracts. Don't get me wrong, I don't want Marbury or James around, but rather than trading them I would buy them out. Let them go elsewhere but keep their contracts on the books for cap reasons.

2. Use the lottery pick as a trade sweetener. Unless the Knicks wind up with the number one pick in the draft I would use the pick to get a team to take Zach Randolph's contract for expiring contracts. A team, for example, like the Magic who need a true four to pair with Dwight Howard, Hedo, and Lewis might be willing to take Randolph's contract if they could also get a top five draft pick to go with him. The Knicks have lots of young veterans and will have plenty of time to get more lottery picks in the near future. Randolph's contract grows each year (much like his waistline) if they are able to replace even $10 million of the $16 million he's due in 2009 with contracts that expire at the end of the '08/'09 season that would be a huge help. Couple that with the $21 million that leaves with Marbury, the $7 million for Malik Rose, and the $6 mil for Jerome James (if they buy him out) that's enough to drop them down into the mid 50 million range in terms of payroll.

3. Hope and pray that Eddy Curry and Q Rich pass on their player options for the '09/10 seasons. It won't happen, I can't see them walking away from 10.5 and 9.3 million respectively, but it would be nice.

For the record, I'm not sure how possible any of this is - probably not very. But the two things that HAVE to happen for the Knicks to matter again are Isiah must go, whoever takes his place as GM must have the authority to break it down and let these contracts expire without Jimmy Dolan getting involved. Short of that, it's going to be another decade of futility in the World's Most Famous Arena.