You might not know this, but today is baseball's second trade deadline. Today is the day that all waiver-wire trades have to be made by in order for the players acquired to qualify for their new team's post-season roster. And this afternoon, the big one has already gone down: according to Ken Rosenthal, Steve Trachsel has been traded to the Cubs. OK, so maybe it's not such a big trade. But Trachsel has been pitching well lately (2.37 ERA in his last six starts) and he'll help shore up the back end of the Cubs rotation, which is currently populated by youngsters Rich Hill and Sean Marshall (well, Marshall is young, Hill is just inexperienced), neither of whom has done a lot of pitching this deep into the season.
There is one downside to this for the Cubs. They're giving up reliever Rocky Cherry as part of the trade (along with minor league infielder Scott Moore). With Cherry gone, we lose one of the funniest box score anomalies of all time. Whenever Felix Pie would pinch hit for Cherry, the two lines would read "Cherry Pie." And sadly, Warrant has now become even less relevant in our lives.
So far, this whole Lou Piniella managing the Cubs thing has more than lived up to expectations. We've already got 
