The sound of Jake Fox’s bat sounds crisp, and as old timey scouts like to say, it just sounds right. He’s fooled me plenty when it comes to figuring out if the guy got enough of a pitch to jack it out of the park, and he has a nice fluid swing.

As a prospect people were very excited about his power, and this year as a 25 year old he tore up the PCL hitting .421 in Iowa.

He’s not going to amount to much. I love Jake Fox. I love his swing. I love the way the ball jumps off his bat, but he hits very few line drives (evidenced by his small sample sizey 9% Line Drive rate) and 20% of his at bats end in strikeouts. He has looked good in limited playing time this year, he even knows how to put on his mitt(!), but he has no defensive position, and as evidenced by a frusturating loss to the Tiggers where the defense let the Cubs down, he can’t be on the Cubs.

He’s a DH, nothing more, and he has only one tool, albeit a very dangerous one. He can hit with the best of them, but he is not valuable to the Cubs.

I’m rooting for Jake Fox to have a big series against the Detroit Tigers for several reasons, the main one is that he is on the Cubs and him being extremely good in the series. More than likely it means the Cubs win it and answer a lot of questions about themselves.

The other reason is that I desperately want the Cubs to trade him and get optimal value for him while the proverbial iron is hot. Listen, Jake Fox is a commodity, a highly valuable one that can help the Cubs more in a trade than he can riding the pine and coming up with the occasional pinch hit. Lou hates pitchers, and he knows he needs another one. Jake Fox is a DH and, as I previously wrote, David Aardsma or Andrew Bailey, or someone might be dealt at the deadline, and the Cubs would benefit from moving guys that can’t play in the field for ‘pen arms.

This Cubs team isn’t being primed for an extended run, it isn’t being built from within the farm system, it isn’t going to be very good, very young, or very contract-friendly for much beyond this year. It’s built to win now, and the window might be tighter than Cubs fans want to believe.

The moves are obvious, and they should be to Jim Hendry. This team needs ‘pen help, and if it doesn’t get it and Marmol continues to suck, they ain’t winning anything this year.

And then this team will be old and bad, and by then it will be far too late. Win now, make the moves now.