davell

If you're talking about the Cubs, we lose Grabow, Samardzija, Fukudome, Ramirez(team option), Silva, and Dempster has a player option. If you're wondering what's available through FA next offseason, the short answer is not much. But, 1B options could include Prince, A-Gon and even Pujols. I was wondering how much was coming off of our payroll. Thanks for the info. Monetarily speaking, its right around 43 mill, not counting Dempster.

And the Theriot experiment in Dodgerland is over, I would guess. I think this is way too much money to give a guy like Uribe though.

If you're talking about the Cubs, we lose Grabow, Samardzija, Fukudome, Ramirez(team option), Silva, and Dempster has a player option. If you're wondering what's available through FA next offseason, the short answer is not much. But, 1B options could include Prince, A-Gon and even Pujols.

I'd be on board with Webb. High-risk, high-reward type guy. Only starter available not named Cliff Lee that could wind up being our ace.

Any interest in him? Saw an article saying he's likely to be dealt anyway. I'm a big fan of Brett Jackson personally, so I'm not necessarily for a move to get Ellsbury. But, he's a 1st year arb guy and has played all 3 OF spots, so I guess he's an option. I think Hendry is probably interested at least, since he's a "leadoff guy" with speed.

1 year for 5 mill with a vesting option of 8 mill if he gets to 190 innings next year. Average pitcher we can now cross off our list anyway. Still see no reason for us to be involved with any mid-rotation guy. As for the Dodgers though, their rotation now sits up Kershaw/Billingsley/Lilly/Kuroda/Garland. I'd venture to say that's one of the best in baseball next year.

Damn, I wasn't totally convinced Canzler couldn't help us at some point.

I would have thought Rothschild had a lot to do with Dempster's revival as well.

I think the key here is who winds up getting left out, with no team left to sign them. Here are the 1B that are available as of now through FA. Adam Dunn Lance Berkman Adam Laroche Carlos Pena Paul Konerko Lyle Overbay Nick Johnson Derek Lee Russell Branyan Jorge Cantu Troy Glaus Eric Hinske Now, here are the teams that either need a 1B or a DH. Rays Orioles Blue Jays White Sox Braves Nationals Cubs Diamondbacks Basically, there are 11 guys to fill 8 spots. And that's not counting teams that may make a trade to fill their holes either. Plus, there's a chance that the Braves and/or Diamondbacks fill their hole internally. At any rate, I wouldn't expect either of them to fill the need with more than a stopgap that's going to be cheap. The teams I could see actually spending solid money on a 1B this offseason would be the Nats, Orioles, and White Sox. Meanwhile, the Rays are even more cash strapped than we are. If we're actually looking for the best bargain out there, I think we will wait until someone signs Dunn and Konerko. I think the rest of these guys will all get one year deals though. Because there's not a ton of difference between them and they won't all wind up with starting jobs once the musical chair game is over with. There's no reason for a team to cave in on this either. So, after those two are off the board, the thing we don't want is to be the first team to sign one of the rest of these guys. The first few to sign COULD get overpaid a tad anyway. Basically, assuming Dunn is off-limits, I wouldn't mind us waiting this out and letting one of Pena, Laroche, Johnson, Overbay, Berkman, or Branyan fall into our laps for an extreme bargain basement type buy. Then, if we're out of it come the deadline, we may even wind up with a solid trade chip on our hands, due to the price we paid. In the end though, it sucks we're in this position to begin with.

Archer apparently has good movement on his fastball, while McNutt's is a bit flatter (although McNutt controls his better than Archer). I'd probably flip those two and then throw Dolis into consideration with Lopez and Cabrera. Crud, I forgot completely about Dolis. I'd have probably had him in the same group with Lopez and Cabrera, but possibly a tad ahead of them. But, I don't think his velocity during the season was as high as it was last year in Instructs, was it?

Just fastball related, I guess I'd put McNutt, Archer, Carpenter, Jackson, Lopez and Cabrera, in that order. But, I'm not sure I'd differentiate much between the 1st 3 guys. Nor the last 2 either.

Rothschild said during an interview that he grew up a Yankee fan. Hopefully, that's what actually made him ask Hendry to let him talk to them. And not that he sees the writing on the wall here and wanted out. Either way though, I question Hendry not making the Yankees give up SOMETHING in return for taking a guy that was under contract.

Nah, it's not just this. I made that remark after the Rothschild news came out and vented somewhat. I also made it before the blurb showed up he only got 312,000. Which does show he must be pretty messed up right now. But, you can't say that it's not a concern at this point either. For a team that's supposedly "committed" to their farm system, we haven't exactly proved it whatsoever since Ricketts took over.

Rangers signed Loux today. Ricketts continues to show me that everything he's been saying is just talk.

Mark Riggins is our minor league pitching coordinator. I think people speak very highly about him, maybe that's who you're talking about?

That's my impression as well on Maddux. As far as Rothschild goes, I hate to lose him. I hope this doesn't have anything to do with money. At least nothing to do with us not matching whatever they offered him.

To be honest, I'm only warming up to him because I think he could be a guy San Diego's interested in. If we wind up not able to get Gonzalez AND Davis is our 1B for all of next season, I won't be too happy and we'll probably be a 70ish win team again. I definitely don't see why they couldn't get him and Johnson both. And still have some cash left over for their precious middle of the rotation guy and some sort of bullpen arm as well. (Or maybe not, since I'm against the rotation idea and only want a cheap bullpen guy to allow Cashner the chance at starting) Johnson is the perfect guy to give a heavily incentive laden deal to, if you ask me. If he'd take a low base(1-2 mill) the FO would hopefully jump all over him. I think this year has a delicate balance to it, in a way. If you add the right guys and get a few of the youngsters to take the next step, we can contend. It's probably going to have to be a couple of upside type additions and things break the right way, but it's plausible. But, along with that, you also have to be looking towards 2012 and after as well. Assume we're out of the race by midseason and San Diego decides to go ahead and deal A-Gon. I think we'd have to go ahead and try buying. This is out of JH's character, but necessary, if you ask me. Because Boston or whoever else is trying to deal for him is going to be looking at extending him and not letting him hit the open market. I don't expect alot of activity by us this offseason, but hopefully they're approaching it as a chess match and mapping things out well in advance.......

I certainly don't have an issue with adding Nick Johnson, as he's probably got the most upside of any 1B available, outside of Dunn, that's a FA. On top of that, I'm starting to warm up to Davis as well, as he could very well be the kind of player that San Diego could target eventually for A-Gon. If the reports are true that they would want guys who are either already major leaguers or are close to ready types. I could see them wanting Colvin and Davis, along with a top of the line pitcher from our system(Archer or McNutt) or Cashner as the main pieces in a trade for A-Gon.

Fair enough. I kind of thought that's where you'd go here. I just think there's as much risk involved in finding another guy from our system than there is in giving him the extension and then him getting hurt. I'll even admit I'm probably in the minority on this one. As bad as his motion appears to be, I think he's just one of those runner arms that defy people. Not something we'll know until(if) he ever really gets hurt. Like I said, my main reasoning here is because of all the money we've got coming off the books. I just figure it'd be better to keep him than it will be to find that money spent on 2 LOOGY's, a backup MI, a SP coming back from injury, and a speedy guy that can give us a spark. If I had confidence in our management, I'm sure I'd feel more like you do on this.(I know you don't have confidence in them either though) As it is, I guess I want someone who's at least a damn good player still here, than to see the savings spent on a bunch of crap as I'd expect it be.

Really? Because that is what the Cubs are doing right now. It is what both World Series participants did this year. And no, FRod is not still very good. He was very mediocre in 2009 and was nothing special this year. K-Rod doesn't really matter here, but looking at his numbers, I thought he was very solid in 2010. I guess we're disagreeing on what "paying someone" means. Yes, we've had Marmol cheap, but he's getting paid now fairly well. I'm just not seeing a guy in our system right now that looks to be his heir apparent. Cashner, maybe????? But, I'd much rather him be starting for us. Carpenter possibly???? He'll need to at least pitch in the majors first obviously. Aaron Kurcz?????Possibly a choice by the time Marmol's contract is up. But, has a long way to go. Who's your choice to close if we don't have Marmol? I totally understand your point and in a perfect world, we can get away with trading Marmol at the height of his value. All I'm saying is we should have someone capable as a replacement before we'd do something like that and in our exact situation, I'm not confident that we do. Therefore, an extension as I've mentioned(4 years at a discount) didn't seem like a bad idea to me, since we'd still have the money to go get an ace and a bigtime slugger as well with other contracts falling off.

Conceivably, you'd save a little bit for each of his next 2 seasons. Maybe he only gets 4 and 7.5 on the new deal, while through arb he may have gotten 5 and 8 or something like that. Then, you get him for 2 more years after that, hopefully at or slightly below his market value as a free agent. If he continues at his present rate, I'd guess he'd be a 12 mill a year type guy on the open market. The hope would be to get for around 10 or so. But, the main thing here, would be you'd only have him for 2 years outside of his arb clock. If you wait on him, you may get stuck paying him for 4-5 years outside of arb, instead of just the 2 and maybe not able to get the discount at that point either on money per year either. In the end, it all depends on how much Marmol values security as to whether or not he'd even be willing to lock himself down like this.

While I definitely agree that 1B should be a much higher concern monetarily than closer and I agree that in a perfect world, you shouldn't HAVE to pay for one, I wouldn't be ready to just hand off the job(and I even agree that it probably isn't MUCH different than pitching elsewhere in the game) to an average bullpen arm either. I do think that the whole mindset thing has some credence at least. If not, guys like LaTroy Hawkins wouldn't have struggled so much once put into that situation. All I'm saying here is that I don't think a team can get away with not paying for a closer at all. I agree it's not optimal to pay 10 mill a year for one, but I think I'd rather do that(assuming you're pretty confident in what you've got) rather than paying some cast off a mill or two for a season as a crapshoot you hope goes correctly. This, of course, comes with the caveat that we appear to truly be contenders at that point as well. If we're not, I agree whoeheartedly that paying a closer solid money is a waste. But, I am for Marmol, in this case, because I see us having lots of money coming off the books, some very solid cheap options that we can use for some spots and it would still appear as if we could address an ace, a bigtime slugger at 1B AND be able to keep Marmol as well. By the way, Francisco Rodriguez is still a damn good pitcher, he's just a lunatic. His contract may be a tad high, but he's very good. Also, I think Trevor Hoffman and Billy Wagner did enough over their careers to be considered elite.

Dead on. The risk isn't worth the reward. I'd also add that the Cubs need to add some starpower to be a serious contender, and if they have to do so in the trade market, Marmol could be an extremely valuable piece in that pursuit. I don't necessarily disagree with what you just said, but let me ask this: If Marmol stays healthy for the next 2 seasons and continues to basically do what he's done to date, do you re-sign him or let him walk and take the picks? And keep in mind that we may not have a closer in waiting, especially if Cashner winds up starting between now and then. To me, if we can lock down an elite closer now for a slight bargain(especially at the ages of where he'd have him, although I do acknowledge the injury risk), it takes us out of having to overpay for one on the free agent market

I don't think I've seen anyone actually enthused by the idea of us adding a mid level starting pitcher. I'm thinking just about everyone here thinks 1B is our biggest and most necessary hole to fill. But, since Jimbo evidently wants to address these non-needs(or lesser anyway) I think everyone is just praying he doesn't do something really stupid with his 1B choice for now and are hoping we have the ability to make a more substantial move at 1B at a slightly later time. While there may not be a thread specifically calling Hendry a moron for his priorities right now, I think we've all got such low expectations, that he's not going to change his course at this point and have tempered ourselves into just hoping for the lesser of evils when it comes to filling spots. I hate to say it, but I really don't care what we're going to do this offseason as long as there are no deals given out longer than a year. I'd almost rather just fast forward to the deadline or next offseason, which is sad since a few solid moves right now could propel us into contention in our horrible division. If we wind up with Chris Davis, Kerry Wood, and Kevin Millwood as our lone acquisitions this offseason, it's not going to surprise me. Nor, is it going to get us into contention. Maybe when Davis winds up struggling, Colvin proves he's not really an everyday player, Cashner is yo-yoed back and forth from the pen to starter a few times during next season, Millwood does nothing that Casey Coleman or Jay Jackson couldn't have done for alot cheaper, the team finishes up with another 70ish win season and Chris Archer is rushed to the majors earlier than he should have been, maybe then, just maybe, Jim Hendry will be shown the door.

Since it's not looking like Dunn is an option and it's not looking like A-Gon gets dealt until after he proves himself to be healthy, a one year stop gap is what we should be expecting. And even hoping for, if it means we'll have the flexability to go after A-Gon and/or Fielder when they come available at the deadline or over the next offseason. I'm definitely not enthused with Davis, but he's extremely cheap obviously, can play multiple positions and wouldn't hinder us making a move for a big name later on down the line. Worst case scenario for me is Pena, Laroche, Overbay, Huff, or Johnson signed to anything more than a one year deal. So, in the end, I guess I don't care who we have here at the beginning of 2011, as long as whoever it is doesn't prevent us from going after a bigtime 1B later on.