The fact is, if this team is going to compete next year, wholesale upgrades are necessary. 1B is one of the best places to do so with the best available options, unless we want to spend similar money on a perenially injured Jose Reyes or a bit less on a 35 year old Carlos Beltran. Sabathia would also be an intriguing option, but a very expensive one, but The Tigers have shown us how valuable it is to have one shutdown ace no matter how meh the rest of your pitching staff is, of course we don't have the Tigers offense. I know, Penas a great clubhouse guy, but 10 mil is a steep price for a youth mentor. - The Tigers' offense has 5 of 9 starters currently posting above average OPS'. It's built around one superstar bat (Cabrera), a couple solid vets (Martinez, Peralta), and then a couple of upstart young guys (Boesch and Avila). I think the 2012 Cubs can pull that off if they added a superstar bat. There's talented bats in this lineup (Ramirez, Castro, Soto, and to a much much lesser extent nowadays Soriano), but no one to spearhead the operation of destroying other teams' pitching. you forgot to mention a closer who's been perfect, which helps them out-perform their pythag by quite a bit i guess what i mean to say is, i'm hoping for even better than a team that shouldn't even be .500