davell

I'd be completely fine with a relatively team friendly 4 year extension. If he's going to make between 4-5 mill this year through arb and likely to make 8 mill or so as a final year arb guy, if you could get him to take a 4 year extension in the 4/8/9/11 range, I think we'd have to do it. If he made it to the open market, he'd get alot more than that anyway.

We're right at 119 with no moves. We wound up paying out 132.5 last year.(which is what I see them using as the payroll last season, not what the season beginning payroll was and based on the numbers we're hearing about how much money we have to spend, it looks like it's the case) After the trades at the deadline, releases, Dempster deferring 3 mill and the M's paying their part of Silva's contract, we paid out 132.5 last season, including pro-rated signing bonuses, which we don't know how the Cubs account for those. Take the 5-7 percent decrease that has been talked about(supposedly to be put back into scouting and development) and it leaves us with 6-7 mill to spend this offseason, without moving salary away.

Chris Davis doesn't make our offense better. I'm glad we're at least going to sit down with Dunn. But, this type of trade makes sense from where Hendry is coming from(the wrong direction, as usual). He'll have some cash to go and waste on the pen and the middle of the rotation. And if the reports are true about only having 5-7 mill to play with, I'm betting we get a couple of backloaded specials from him to boot.....

The reason we won't venture too close to Lee this offseason is it won't look good if we spend 200 mill(or close to it on Lee) and then ask the state for 200 mill to help out with Wrigley.

Wel, at least we get a couple hundred thousand out of this somehow.

Personally, my answer is no. To me, Soto/Brett Jackson > Castillo/Trout. Mainly because I don't think I can turn Brett Jackson into a very solid hitting catcher if I have the second scenario in tow.

I've read this post twice and my first suspicions were correct; literally everything you said here is wrong Actually, its not but thanks for taking the time to contribute absolutely nothing to a thread. Sabathia has done nothing to make anyone think his contract is already bad, has he? Sure, it may come back to haunt the Yanks, but not right now it's not. If you get 5 good years out of 7, then it's not even all that bad, if you ask me. And in signing big name free agents, guys that truly are impact players, it comes with the territory. You're not going to get them, if you don't give them a deal for longer than where their true value lies. And, in the end, these are the types that separate you from being an average type team to being truly a contender.(not the Yanks per se, but other teams like Texas would fall into this for me) I don't think you can just say that Cliff Lee will be Barry Zito in 2 seasons either. He's in a league talent and performance wise that Zito has never sniffed. Sure, it's very likely that he'll regress some, but once again, if you can get 4 or 5 good to great years out of a guy like that, I think you consider it a win. But, you're not going to get one of the truly elite pitchers in baseball without giving him more than he's probably worth. I have zero idea as to how he's considered "overrated" either. You're going to need to explain how this is the case honestly..... As for everyone bitching about someone getting a million for being an average player, I'm trying to think of an instance of this happening. If it has happened, it's almost definitely because we have had someone in the minors that was considered just as good and we just wasted a little money to get the same production we could have had for cheaper. That said, I'd like to see an example of this from you.......

I think Fuld will be gone, Hil wil be non-tendered, then given a NRI to ST and we could lose one of Berg or Schlitter without it really mattering. It wouldn't shock me to see us take Gaub off the 40 man either, since he's had Blass disease and is probably not in danger of being rostered for a full year by anyone next year either. Basically, I think we're in solid shape as far as the 40 man goes.

I don't think our offseasons have moved slowly at all, until last year. Which makes total sense actually. We didn't have alot of money to spend then and we don't have it to throw around now either. So, we're going to have to wait out the big signings and see what, if any, bargains fall into our laps. More like a small market approach. I honestly can't say I mind either, given the current state of the team. I don't want any long term contracts given out right now(other than Dunn or Lee, but we don't have the money for them evidently) that could hamper what we can do in the future. We lose Grabow, Fukudome, Ramirez, Samardzija, and Silva after this year. Meaning we'll have 45 mill freed up at that point. That's when we'll go back to being agressive, in all likelihood......

On a different subject, but probably the best revenue stream the Cubs could have, at what point is it feasible for the Cubs to get their own network? Is this something that could happen within the next 10 years possibly?

Muskat tweet breaks this exciting news for fans of Nippon.

But, according to Stark, we don't have an interest anyway, because we have Castro at short and are unsettled at 2B and think we have to get a solid defender at 1B.

I think it speaks as to exactly how low all of our expectations are currently.

What about naming rights possibly? Would the outcry be THAT much to keep this from happening? I'm sure they could find a way to keep Wrigley in the title somehow. Only reason I ask this is because Citibank is paying the Mets 20 mill a year for the next 20 years.

Read a nice article on what the D-Backs would probably be wanting in return. Probably 4-5 players with 3 of them being major league ready or already in the bigs. They have holes in LF, the bullpen, the rotation and 1B, not to mention the hole trading Upton creates. We could definitely send them "major leaguers" anyway, as Colvin, Wells, Coleman, and Cashner could all be considered needs for them. So, maybe some package including some of them and maybe one bigtime prospect from us could get it done? Another thought was he could fetch an established big leaguer, 2 top 10 prospects and a lower level guy as well. Either way, we've got the pieces to make these type of deals. However, later on in the article, it mentions that the Yankees and Red Sox may be the only 2 teams around wiling to take on the risk of the last few years of Upton's deal. His contract is as follows, by the way: 4.25 in 2001, 6.75 in 2012, 9.75 in 2013, 14.25 in 2014, and 14.75 in 2015. The author acts like he's not going to be worth that kind of money at the latter stages of his deal, but since he's going to be in his prime at that point, I can't really see this as being a bigtime issue personally. Does anyone else? With our supposed money lockdown, this seems like the best chance we've got to get an impact player this offseason, who's actually affordable. I think you've got to take this kind of chance, don't you?

Can Miggy play anywhere other than 1B at this point? Would either be happy DHing possibly?

I think that's exactly it. What is he going to do, threaten to move the team? Close down the Cubs? Are people going to stop visiting the "3rd biggest tourist attraction" if the state doesn't give them money? What are the #1 and #2 tourist attractions? Are they raking in as much profit as the Cubs? I think Ricketts has no leverage and also these people are feeling Ricketts out. They aren't going to just hand out money to some guy who just spent close to a billion dollars on the team because he asks nicely. He needs to play hardball with them, but how? By not investing in the community. By talking with Milwaukee about playing a season there so they can do a more cost effective and comprehensive overhaul of the ballpark (taking away a lot of money from the area for a year). By alligning himself with the right mayoral candidate. There's a few things he can do. Good ideas for sure, but shouldn't he have thought about these BEFORE he asked for the money and said he has no other plans? Now, if he threatens leaving for a season or something like that, doesn't he just come across that much worse at that point?

Kalish and Kelly, along with Doubront possibly? If Upton is actually dealt, I'll be extremely disappointed if Hendry doesn't hook up with his boy Towers at some point to try and make something work.....

I wonder what kind of value he has around the league? Is he well thought of or is he considered a guy who's not likely to make our rotation next season? If he's got solid value, I'd be all for trading him anyway.

On MLBTR, I saw a mention that the Marlins and Rays were 2 teams that have shown lots of interest. An exec said that Nolasco and Morrison would probably get it done. So, I guess the question becomes what equals or beats that from our system? Nolasco's stats look pretty pedestrian other than one season, but his WAR has been quite a bit higher than I would have thought. Is he a bad luck pitcher? At any rate, he's about to get pricey, so he's probably not an absolute perfect fit for the D-Backs.(other than they could say they replaced Haren with him). I like Logan Morrison quite a bit, but am stil not convinced he'll ever hit for alot of power. He had an excellent debut this past year though. Still, I think a package of Archer, McNutt, or Cashner plus Colvin and one of Vitters/Lee/Guyer/Jay Jackson trumps that package from the Marlins.

I'l admit to not keeping up with this as much as I probably should have. Am I right in thinking that Ricketts has zero leverage here? He has no where else to go and appears to not have another plan at all, other than patchwork improvements, if this doesn't go through? I think they've been pretty creative in maximizing some new revenue streams, but without something like this to really boost things, I'm not sure what else is really plausible. Ticket prices are already stratospheric and there doesn't look to be alot of growth out there without something like this happening. So, alot of the profits are going to almost have to go back into patchwork improvements, if this thing gets shot down, right? Which could mean some lean years ahead on alot of fronts possibly.

Plus incentives that could equal another mill or so. Let the overpaying of relievers commence!!!!!!

Millwood or bust!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'd trade Soto for him There are better ways to get marginally better than trading Soto for Upton. That's where I'm at too.

The Dunn blurb is nice, but my guess is it's just recycled info from a Florida writer that doesn't keep up with the Cubs. I wonder what the odds are of Pena taking a one year deal are? I thought I read earlier that he preferred one actually, so he could rebuild his value some for his probable final multi-year contract.