davell

I wouldn't mind looking into seeing what it'd cost to pry Davis away from them at this point.

He wants 3y at 33m, and even the Yankees don't wanna pay him that. Plus from the sound of things I don't think the Cubs are actually looking for a leadoff hitter. Yeah, I think the Yanks were at something like 2-14 and they(Boras) came back at 2-20 or so, bu they already had a deal with Johnson. I think I'd rather have Damon at 2-20, than Byrd at 2-12 even.......And if our payroll is going to be around 140-145ish, we can afford to make that type of deal.

Netting 9 mill out of this deal is only better than DFA'ing Bradley if we truly make Silva compete and earn a spot on this team. If he's given the 5th spot, like I'd almost assume he will be, this is worlds worse than if we just let Bradley go......

Allright, so we're getting 9 mill, I guess.......It's still godawful. That said, I wish like hell I had any idea how the Cubs do their yearly payroll figuring.....How is this 9 mill going to count? Does this mean they average it out and now figure Silva at 2/15 with 7.5 counting each year? Does it mean they take 9 mill away from Silva's 12 mill THIS year? To where he's only counting 3 mill right now for the 2010 season possibly? The reason it matters to me is the fact that our payroll is supposed to be in the 140-145 range and depending on how this is figured, it could give us some flexibility to make a move other than just Byrd or Podsednik(please god no). Maybe we could still have the money to go get Orlando Hudson. At any rate, I guess I'm just trying to come up with some sort of potential positive out of this crap. And if anyone is going to the convention this year, it'd be nice if they could at least TRY to get Ricketts or Hendry to shed a little light on how these type of things are figured into the payroll.......

Wow. Out of all the comparable contracts for Bradley, we literally took on the worst one, by far. Whats even more sad, is Hendry IS good at making trades. Which goes to show exactly how badly they took themselves out of any sort of bargaining position, with this whole fiasco, starting with the suspension. I would have much rather just DFA'd him, than this crap. I can't even begin to fathom what kind of BS Hendry must be handing Ricketts about Silva......

I read an article that mentioned the Mariners are probably going to trade Jose Lopez over the course of the offseason.

Ellsbury's baserunning was worth about 5.6 runs last year, total. 7.5 runs year before last. His total offensive contributions (batting and baserunning) are in Kosuke territory, given about the same amount of PA. And last year at least, UZR had him as one of the worst defensive CF in baseball (along with Kosuke, Fowler, and Wells) How many of our top prospects would you give up for another Kosuke? But, wouldn't you expect Ellsbury to still get better, given his age? Add in his cost factor and I think he'd be a very welcome addition, especially given our payroll situation. That said, I don't see us going after him, nor San Diego wanting to part with him, IF they even acquire him.

Byrd has the same agents as Bradley does. Gotta wonder what they're telling him about Chicago as it is. I could see Jim paying up here, scared of what's left on the market, if he misses out on him.

Hopefully we "miss" on all of them.

The only thing that might derail that inevitability is Scott Boras pricing Ankiel as a young Joe DiMaggio. Nah, he'll just tell Hendry that not only is he a young Joe D, but he can also be our yearly rehab guy we sign as a pitcher. Hendry kills two birds with one stone here. Win-win folks. :ninja:

Is it time to question Ricketts yet? I seriously doubt Hendry would have let both Granderson and Cameron go off the board, if he had the ability to actually do something before the Bradley thing is resolved. Gotta wonder if we truly can not make a move until that's over with......Does Hendry deserve alot of leniency from Ricketts? Nah. But, if it's the case and he literally can't do anything until Bradley is gone, how is that helping us for next year, under any circumstance?(unless a reconciliation comes out of it and I don't see that)

I'm not so sure about that, especially since it now appears Drabek is in the deal. Eww, yeah. MLBTR says that Happ and Blanton took physicals so they might be part of the deal as well. Lee, Happ, Blanton, and Drabek for Halladay? The missing players involved are making this thing exciting Some Bigbird clone over on the Jays Scout site evidently broke this deal yesterday for them(from what I can tell anyway) and he's been saying that Drabek and Taylor are both in the deal since the beginning, even after no one else was mentioning Drabek at all and now they are acting like he IS in the deal. So this guy at least has some sort of contact, you would think anyway. He also said that Philly is doing this based on Lee's salary demands for next year. Plus, it looks like Halladay just signed a 3/60 extension as well.

I'm not so sure about that, especially since it now appears Drabek is in the deal.

I think I would have been allright with 2/15.5 honestly. Especially considering the ramifications of us missing out on him. Byrd is not high on my list whatsoever, but Ankiel and Podsednik would be awful.

It's a very interesting deal obviously, but I'm not sure Halladay is a true upgrade from lee, especially if there's prospects coming from Philly as well. My guess is that Philly can get Halladay locked up to a more team-friendly deal than what Lee would have agreed to.

Since it's been said in a few papers that Hendry is ONLY communicating with Bradley through his agents, the Levinsons, I kind of have to wonder exactly how far things have broken down between him and the Cubs. It truly may not be repairable and that would be a shame, because I don't see any chance of us getting anything nearly as talented as him in return. I know Hendry thought he was doing the right thing by suspending him, but I'm guessing he's regretting that at this point.....

I'd love to get Capps, but I think that there will be some teams out there wanting him as a closer, which will price him out of our very limited range......

Bradley IS a very productive player, although he was down a little this season in some areas. That said, if you combine the fact that he was down a little this year, is injury prone, has a horrible attitude, and the Cubs desperation to trade him all into one, it's pretty apparent as to why the Cubs are having trouble finding any takers.

Sure, that works if you could have actually gotten Dempster to sign for 4/40. My guess is there was zero chance of that happening. And if you let him out on the open market, then it's likely we may have paid more for him at that point. I thought I remembered reading that the Yankees were set to go after Dempster hard, if we hadn't re-signed him.

If we go out and sign Cameron at this point, I'll be thinking that the offseason is basically over. At some point, a team will at least allow us to not have to DFA Bradley and that's literally all I'm expecting from that at this time. I wouldn't be surprised to see it drag on into January or even February, but I don't know that I even see us getting a bad contract in return now. It could literally be a couple of AAAA players and us eating 3/4 of his deal or something else stupid like that.......Like I said, if we can go get Cameron, preferrably on a 1 year deal, my interest in this fiasco will dissipate pretty quickly.

why am i not shocked that a person who uses ERA to determine how good a reliever is would also use playoff appearances to measure how good a gm has been? Look at my post a few down from here......I'm of the same thinking as you on Hendry, for the most part, but do you agree with this assessment of his overall tenure? kind of, but you seem to only be looking at the present and not the future. a lot of the contracts he gave to help us make the playoffs then are starting to hurt us now, and it's only going to get worse. anybody can spend. it's a different thing to spend wisely. it's not as simple as "he brought in these good players". you have to look at HOW he brought them in, and at what cost to the future. we're really starting to pay for those division titles now and will continue to. i mean, how many times did we hear that the cubs were in "all out win mode"? they might as well have said "[expletive] the future, we're going to try to win one in these next couple years and then deal with the mess it created when the time comes." I agree that we've spent some money that we shouldn't have as well. But, I guess what I'm saying is we should probably let it bite Hendry, before we get rid of him. If(and its a big if) we make the playoffs in 2010, I'd be willing to give him the next 2 years(provided we make the playoffs once and the next 3, provided we made it twice, leaving it to that 4th year again, before I'd make a change, assuming he misses twice over that 4 year period. In the end, I agree completely with you that it looks really bad for us to make the playoffs that much over that period(in my scenario, we'd have to make it 4 out of 5 times and I don't see it) but our farm system COULD actually start to produce some quality for a change and it's possible that Ricketts has a change in philosophy that Hendry actually buys into that works. I don't think Hendry is the worst GM out there by any stretch, I figure he's completely middle of the road. If someone who's a slamdunk better choice than Hendry comes available, I'd scrap everything I just said, but if it doesn't, I'd be fine looking at it this way for the time being. Assuming that we continue to have a huge payroll advantage over our competition anyway......

why am i not shocked that a person who uses ERA to determine how good a reliever is would also use playoff appearances to measure how good a gm has been? Look at my post a few down from here......I'm of the same thinking as you on Hendry, for the most part, but do you agree with this assessment of his overall tenure?

For what its worth, I looked on Cots to see what the team payrolls of the Astros, Cards, and cubs have been since 2003, Jim's 1st full season in charge...... In Millions, starting in 2003 and going forward from there....... Astros-71, 75, 76, 92, 87, 88, 102 Cards- 83, 83, 92, 88, 90, 99, 88 Cubs- 80, 90, 87, 94, 99, 118, 134 The Astros were outspent every single year since then by the Cubs, only twice being within 10 mill of them...... The Cards had only spent 5 mill less than the Cubs from 03-06 total, so that's a wash. Since 2007, the gap has widened and now as far as I'm concerned, our thinking SHOULD change. Making the playoffs once from 2003-2006 wasn't good, by any stretch, but it wasn't god-awful either. I still think that the 2004 team was the most talented we ever had, but we fell short then obviously in which would have given us a 50% success ratio over that period, which would have been fine. With the way our payroll has grown recently though, I'm thinking we need to be a playoff team at least 3 of every 4 years. We need to use the Red Sox as a model from here on out, from top to bottom and hopefully this can become the case. Hell, if we make it in 2010, we'll have accomplished that over the last 4 years and we all know how frustrated we've been over that time. Should Hendry go? My answer is an unequivocal "yes". But only if we miss the playoffs in 2010. I want him gone personally, but if he makes the playoffs 3 out of 4 years, it's kind of hard to get rid of him, if you ask me. Even with the payroll advantages that we have currently, if he makes it in 2010(and I have serious doubt, as I'm sure everyone does) he probably deserves to stick.

He would have taken it and made more through that than what he's making at 7.5.......All this says to me is we are truly hamstrung financially this offseason and we prioritized an OFer more than we did a SP......Personally, I'd have kept Harden and made a concession in RF with a Hermida type guy, if we absolutely HAD to get rid of Bradley...... hendry also prioritized league average relief pithcing Very true. That 3.5 this season could have been helpful in keeping Harden, especially after dumping Heilman and Miles. Forgot about that one already.

He would have taken it and made more through that than what he's making at 7.5.......All this says to me is we are truly hamstrung financially this offseason and we prioritized an OFer more than we did a SP......Personally, I'd have kept Harden and made a concession in RF with a Hermida type guy, if we absolutely HAD to get rid of Bradley......