Rob

Ethier will cost north of $10 mil per season and command a multi year deal. He'll be 31, is already showing signs of decline, and cannot play the field passably well. That's not a guy you pay market rates for. I would feel more comfortable with Campana or Sappelt in a corner making the league minimum. Seriously. They might be about one win worse, but at least we'd have $10 mil we can spend on a rotation upgrade or something.

There really aren't many avaialble at all in the next few years, especially outfielders. The closest thing is Andre Ethier, which a lot of people here don't seem to care for too much. There's B.J. Upton, who's bat is serviceable for a CF, but not if you move him to the corner. This is why I wouldn't be surprised to see Theo chase some more ex-top propsects such as Michael Taylor, Michael Saunders,Travis Snider, or even Delmon Young if we can't get Cespedes. 1.) Andre Ethier sucks and shouldn't be a real option unless the deal looks like what DeJesus got. 2.) BJ Upton's value in a corner would be extremely similar to his value in CF. He'd be the best Cubs position player (Castro improving could change that, of course).

For the umpteen millionth time, the Yankees have Andruw Jones... who is better than Soriano at everything the Yankees might ask Soriano to do. They'd have to really want Burnett of the team to take a guy already made obsolete by another player on the roster.

Since we acquired him, I had already kinda figured him as a Polanco type. It looks like I wasn't far off the mark... though I'm certainly intrigued to see the comparison favors Torreyes.

I didn't miss the point. I just fundamentally disagree with the premise that I bolded above. I'm either a pessimist or a realist, but to me this Cub team had very poor odds of challenging for the postseason in 2012, short of doing some really stupid things to land more than one of the $100M+ guys. The Cubs won 71 games last year while getting 49 starts from Coleman/Lopez/Ortiz/Russell/Davis. Dempster had an ERA a full run over his peripherals. Randy Wells was never at full strength. And don't forget the Z debacle. Soriano and Soto underachieved. Colvin and Fukudome were sub-replacement level. Byrd's face got exploded. Some of these things happen over the course of a season. You hope you get unexpected production from elsewhere to compensate. But we didn't exactly get a bunch of that. Who is a real candidate to regress? Garza? There was enough talent that adding a few low cost pieces could have easily made the Cubs an over-.500 team. Hell, if we don't trade Garza/Dempster/Byrd/Others, I'd probably put us in the 78 win range right now. Nobody is saying that would have made us a favorite, or even given good odds of "challenging for the postseason in 2012." But the real potential of being relevant after August 1st is nothing to scoff at. (In an effort to avoid my point being misconstrued, I'm gonna state again that I don't necessarily disagree with the decision to blow it up. I'm just arguing against the contention that it was always a necessity.)

Signing Edwin Jackson or Roy Oswalt to a short-term (1 or 2 year) contract would be pointless given the Cubs' situation. It adds a few wins to a sub-.500 team. Who cares. The best you can hope for is to trade them later on. That may be one way to acquire prospects, but it surely must be the least efficient. Yeah, you completely missed the point. Had the Cubs front office wanted to, they would have been able to field an over - .500 ballclub while staying within the budget and without saddling the payroll with poor long term contracts. Is it the optimal way to acquire prospects? Absolutely not. But there would have been some semblance of competing during the process. And we'd still be able to make moves to leave us better off in the long run.

He kinda falls into a dead zone for me. I like boom or bust players like Lake. I also like high floor guys such as Clevenger. The guys with moderate at best upside who could still completely miss? Meh. Cardenas doesn't have big upside anymore. And he's not a great bet to be a better than average utility guy either. I'll probably have him pretty low.

So where are we putting Cardenas on our respective lists?

It's nearly impossible to speculate whether or not those guys would want to sign with us. And perhaps Theo and co. looked into it, they said no, and that's why we are where we are today. There's just no real way of knowing. But if I didn't know the market would do what it did, I'd have probably gone 3/36 on Jackson. For the record, I'd also have been willing to hand out the Darvish and CJ contracts (though CJ took a hometown discount, so he was never a real option at that pricepoint). Didn't realize our payroll was that high right now. I was still thinking like $105 mil, but I guess those tiny contracts to Maholm and DeJesus still count, don't they?

The problem with the middle ground is that it does impact the future somewhat negatively. Signing Edwin Jackson and Roy Oswalt might mean no money Jorge Soler. Holding onto Sean Marshall in hopes of competing would have meant no Wood/Torreyes/Sapelt. There's no Prince Fielder albatross contract weighing the team down, but it does still hurt somewhat. The Cubs front office decided they'd rather try to use their resources and try to get all the pieces to align perfectly during a future window. I don't have a problem with it either. But other paths existed.

I wouldn't go that far. There were ways to make this team a fringe contender in 2012 without handing out bad contracts. Go on. Which free agent contracts did you wish the Cubs had handed out this offseason? Of the biggies, CJ Wilson's deal is the easiest to defend, but that price almost certainly wasn't available to the Cubs. Reyes? Fielder? Pujols? How did you get from what I said to "Rob wants to sign 'biggies'?" I was talking about spreading the money around on marginal upgrades and making a handful of smart, low-cost trades. Targeting Edwin Jackson and one of Kuroda / Oswalt would likely be better in the short term than Wood/Volstad/Wells. Trading for Alberto Callaspo would be better than Ian Stewart, and only cost marginally more. This wasn't a 71 win team last season. There was enough room in the payroll to add players to take us to a mid 80's win team. That doesn't always put you in the playoffs, but it gives you a shot. I get why the front office decided to target a future window instead of opting to make slower yearly gains. And I don't necessarily disagree. But let's not pretend it was the only option.

I wouldn't go that far. There were ways to make this team a fringe contender in 2012 without handing out bad contracts.

I'm thinking you're a touch high, unless you're assuming we don't end up trading a couple of Garza/Dempster/Byrd/Soto

MLE's are like park effects. If you aren't hitting the ball out of the infield anyways, it doesn't really matter where you do it.

Well then we're obviously including DeWitt as the toss in for a Matt Garza to the Tigers trade. You broke the code. It was a tossup whether he deserved to get tendered a contract in the first place. It doesn't take much to shift the scales from there.

We were probably planning on keeping DeWitt around. I don't know if the Cubs would be responsible for the entire $1.1 mil. I seem to recall Todd Walker only got a portion of his contract when he was DFA'd in spring training one year despite having been offered arb over the offseason.

Nifty little move. Get a bit of upside, maybe save a bit of cash. Not the type of thing that makes or breaks an organization, but it's nice to see Theo and co. making the correct decisions even on the little things.

Funny story about why the article has a bit of a fantasy baseball slant... I woke up this morning with an extra dozen or so followers on twitter. Apparently people misread Goldstein's response to my question as him actually recommending me as a fantasy guru. I could have corrected them, but this seemed like more fun.

New article up on the front page! I was actually shocked at how similar the two are.

Age relative to league is extremely important.

We'll lose more games than last year. The Cubs have downgraded at 1B 3B and lost a valuable setup man. They've upgraded in RF and the starting rotation is vastly improved over the Coleman/Lopez/Davis/Ortiz mess accounting for 40% of our starts last year. Garza/Dempster/Byrd trades could change things of course, but the Cubs aren't really any worse off now than they were last season... and the farm system is slowly making significant improvements.

Does everyone who battles an addiction have to do it under the spotlight of news organizations pointing out each slip up? When you author a book, detailing your triumph over addiction, are not you at least partly responsible for part of that spotlight? http://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Belief-Finding-Strength-Come/dp/1599951614 At least he can write part II now. Seems like a legit reason to hate on him. It's not like they let guys who have experienced relapses lead AA meetings.

Agreed. Yup.

Apparently people are blaming the bartender.

It'd be a big deal for any team. High profile Cuban pitching talent hasn't really crapped the bed...not that I can remember. High profile? He's either the most high profile of the low profile Cubans, or the most low profile of the high profile Cubans. For $7 mil, I'd lean towards the latter.