Gary Matthews Jr. gets 5/50 from Angels

[NoDak]

Blowing it up and starting over was an option back in the late 90's and early 00's, when the Cubs farm was stacked and the major league roster was barren. That was not an option this year, not with a barren farm and major league roster with as much talent as its ever had.

 

Your roster doesn't need to be barren and farm system stocked to "blow things up" succesfully. You just have to be willing to go all out with it.

 

If I were Jim Hendry I would go to management and say, "If you want to make some serious money and have a competitive team, what if we do this:

 

I have a rolling budget. I will have $600M to spend over the next 5 years plus any cash that can be included in a trade. If I spend only $70M this year I can spend $150M next year. As long as I do not go over $600M."

 

If they agree to that I wait until about Feb/Mar after all the top free agents are gone and I open shop and say, "Come and get it!!!" I slash salary wherever I can. I tell teams I am really only interested in top tier prospects. Jones, Ramirez, Lee all gone. My goal would be to have a team with an average age of about 26-27 years old.

 

"Out of quantity comes quality" would be my motto and I would plan on having a wide open Spring Training with most spots open. I would try to have a really low pay roll and full of young players.

 

Then I would try to have my payroll as small as possible allowing me to store up cash for when it is really needed as the players develop.

 

The first year would likely be really ugly, but after that it could get really fun. We could really stack the farm system and have plenty of prospects left over for future trades when we are at a more competitive stage of the "success cycle." Further, if I can talk another team into giving me cash that would be valuable too since I could use that to go over the $600M cap from the original agreement.

 

After a couple of years if the team improved I could bring in high value free agents or lower the cost of acquiring young talent from other teams by also taking on their albatross contracts and absorbing them. Or I could then turn them around and trade the albatross contracts along with some cash to teams that this guy may well fill a need but the cost of the contract would be too high.

 

If the team did not improve I would look to trade off some of the prospects for major league talent or would have plenty of money to "break the bank" to get high priced free agents.

 

The cubs are in a unique position to be able to do this because, whether we like it or not, the seats will be filled with people at wrigley and many of those on this board would likely be salivating at the prospect of having this much talent in the minor leagues.

 

The problem with baseball salaries is far too many teams think they are just "a player or two away" from being competitive. I think they would be far wiser to see that very few teams have that status and they would be better served to save their money for when their teams are most successful and they are truly "a player or two away."

[nilodnayr]

That and communism are wonderfuly theories...the only problem is a little thing called reality (sorry Sulley).

 

Have you seen any other sports team, or even large busines for that matter use a "rolling budget"?

[Bluescale]

I have a rolling budget. I will have $600M to spend over the next 5 years plus any cash that can be included in a trade. If I spend only $70M this year I can spend $150M next year. As long as I do not go over $600M."

 

So what happens at the end of year 5, when the rolling budget has resulted in a $220M payroll? On average the team is getting $120M a year in your system. To keep things realistic, the GM would have to sitll operate right around that amount, or it would force a rebuild every 5 years. That might makes sense if you're a small or mid-market team, but not if you've got a top 5 payroll.

[Mephistopheles]

not to mention if you quickly expand the budget over the course of a year or so its going to be in the form of big name FAs (maybe some 3rd year arby players) meaning that your budget for year six and seven is already slammed despite not knowing what it is.

 

that is unless you are the marlins*

[TruffleShuffle]

I was not around last week, but I would just like to state that this might be the most mind-boggling contract I have ever seen in major league baseball.

[Soul]

2 great catches earns you $50 million in baseball.

 

I knew I went into the wrong line of work. Just knew it.