Cubs Long-Term Contract Situation

[Guancous]

For a big-market team like the Cubs, it's smarter to spend $120M on 10, $10-$14M guys than $120M on 20, $5-7M guys. $10M+ buys you guys that are truly impactful. You don't see a lot of impact FAs making salaries in the $5-7M range.

 

Ask yourself this: would you trade Aramis Ramirez for one DeRosa type and one Marquis type? I hope not.

 

That works as long as you sign impactful players. The article shows that Soriano has been exactly as productive as Cody Ross over the last three years. Let's hope that 2009 is an outlier but can you imagine paying Cody Ross $90 million over the next 5 years?

[Sever82]

And then even more comes off the books. Once you get past the next two season a really big chunk of the payrill will be gone. It's not like the Cubs are trapped in a hell of huge, terrible contracts for the long term. Once you get past the next two years it's basically just Soriano.

 

And Dempster and Zambrano, and Byrd. Still a fairly significant amount.

 

The problem is they have guys signed longterm, but not their best players. Ramirez and Lee are going to be gone or have big deals of their own.

 

It's not an inescapable hell, but it's a really big problem, that is going to take work to avoid.

 

I'm sure Byrd's 6 million or so will be a huge burden on the Cubs payroll. Zambrano's contract will be a burden but it also depends on how he performs, if he performs like the 18 win season he had a couple years back then it wont be such a burden. Same thing applies to Dempster, as for Byrd, i dont think you can count him in this category until you see how he performs. If he has a Mark Derosa type stint with the cubs, he'll be worth his deal.

 

 

As for Lee and Ramirez, Ramirez will probably get another decent sized deal for 4-5 years. As Much as i like the guy, i hope the cubs are smart enough to either trade him this season if they feel he'll opt out or let him walk and get the picks. Ramirez is too much of an injury risk to sign long term and you already have one in Soriano. Lee on the other hand will probably take a pay cut to stay with the cubs, he has been asked to wave his no trade to a west coast team and also to a winning team and he has declined both times and has been very public on his desire to stay a Cub.

[jersey cubs fan]

I'm sure Byrd's 6 million or so will be a huge burden on the Cubs payroll.

 

You aren't even coming close to addressing the topic that is being discussed.

[Guancous]

The only bright side to this situation is the resurrection of the farm system. Hopefully we'll be getting cheap production from Vitters, Castro, Cashner and the Jackson twins for years to come.

[Sever82]

I'm sure Byrd's 6 million or so will be a huge burden on the Cubs payroll.

 

You aren't even coming close to addressing the topic that is being discussed.

 

How am I not coming close, you're implying that Byrd's deal is going to be in that category of bad deals for the cubs in the upcoming years. Dont know how Byrd's deal fits into the same category of Zambrano, Dempsters, etc. When we haven't seen Byrd put a Cubs Uniform. The Cubs are in a bad situation with some of their long term deals but i wouldn't put Byrd in that category, at least not yet.

[biittner77]

Back to the original topic, I would say the Texas team that had to pay A Rod to play for the Yankees had to have the worst contract situation ever.

[Guancous]

Back to the original topic, I would say the Texas team that had to pay A Rod to play for the Yankees had to have the worst contract situation ever.

 

The Tigers are under some dire straits. At least their bad contracts end in October. Did you know that Dontrelle Willis is still getting over $10 million a year! I did a double take when I looked up his contract: http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=3163167