If you can't get better, get older

The Cubs made a hash out of a nine game western road trip that concluded yesterday. They won the first three games in Anaheim against a pretty awful Angels team, then went to San Francisco to play three against an aggressively mediocre Giants squad and somehow lost them all. Even a stop over to the Colorado moon base was only good for two wins, which seems like the bare minimum you should expect against the not-quite-historically-awful-anymore-but-still-really-terrible Rockies.

But hey, don't accuse Jed Hoyer of not adding to his roster. He continued his July 31 dumpster diving spree by climbing back into it on August 31 to exhume two more soldiers for the cause.

Today, rosters expand from 26 to 28, and the Cubs, who want to remind us over and over again how great their minor league system is, decided it was more prudent to add a couple of guys no longer good enough to play for the Guardians or White Sox.

Just like with his trade deadline "haul," if you squint really hard and huff some paint even harder, you can make a case why these moves might just work out.

It requires the kind of gee whiz optimism that would allow you to type this into your phone, unironically.

The case for Carlos Santana is that he's a switch hitter who can play first really well and has played 46 games in his career at third base, including one this year. He's also played some outfield, including two games in left, one of them was in game three of the Word Series at Wrigley Field in 2016.

He even caught a fly ball. Almost as many as Travis Wood caught out there. And probably more than Gary Matthews.

Santana would give you the option of having Seiya Suzuki play left against left handed starting pitchers with him DHing. (But since Ian Happ hit his first home run right handed yesterday, I'm sure Happer will be allowed to go o-for-60 the rest of the way.)

OK, so that all sounds good, right?

Sure.

So what's not to like about this?