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Probably not a whole lot. They were willing to let him go for free off waivers a couple years ago. I think there could be a big difference now though. They've won a World Series since then, which makes it harder to trade some of the key components of that for little beause of the P.R. move. Also, his contract is not for nearly as many years now, which means they are in a completely different financial setting then they were 3 years ago. I'm not sure it has to be to the level of his talent, but it will take a person or two they really want in order to acquire Manny.

Last time I heard (which was a while ago) Glendon would have to be on blood thinners for 6 to 12 months-while on those blood thinners, if he got hit by a baseball off a bat it would be potentially fatal.

That might make more sense. They are talking though that they are going to get one of the Meche/Padilla/Lilly group-that's 1. Then they are going to add Marquis on top of that-that's 2. Of course, they are going to get their other starter through a trade. As for bats, they are trying to sign Soriano-that's number 3. After that, they are rumored to be signing another outfielder to give some time off to both Jones and Murton-if this person is a B, that's number 4. So that's 4 right there, and DeRosa makes 5, and Ramirez possibly makes 6. I haven't heard of differentiation between A's and B's as far as the quota goes-anybody have anymore info?

Is it just me, or does anybody else wonder if the quota system is actually enforced? For example, we have DeRosa as a signing, and possibly Ramirez. The team is looking to add at least 2 starters through free agency (3 overall is their plan) and 2 bats-that's probably going to be 4 extra A/B signings, and that's exactly what they've been quoted as hopeful to do that. If they do all that, then they will be above the supposed quota-nobody in MLB is talking about that at all though, and the Cubs don't seem to be worried about it either. So, does anybody wonder if it actually is an enforced rule or not?

It's their close games-8 of their 9 games have been 8 point or less games, and they have won 5 of those games. The other game? They got drilled 41-0 by Jacksonville, which is a big reason their stats are farther down then they probably should be. They have simply managed to play at exactly the level of their opponents every game. They did it against the Colts (with the help of an onside kick recovered, multiple 4th down conversions, and a kickoff return for a TD) and the Colts just barely survived. I don't think the Bears will have much problem with the Jets-the Jets rely on their short to intermediate passing game to survive, and I can see the Bears just completely shutting that down. I think it will be a Bears blowout unless the Jets find the way they have all season to make some sort of crazy play to stay in it.

Honestly, I'm more concerned with what contract he will get. If it's low, okay, it's not a bad gamble. It just seems guys that sign early in the FA process, don't sign for low dollars. I would agree with that, but the fact that the Cubs are considering him their third acquisition and their "bonus" starter seems to indicate that the contract would not be astronomical.

are you shameless or what? the yahoo site is not a ranking of players. you managed to leave out this little bit of information from the Fox article. the site you posted a few pages back wouldn't have happened to be mlbtraderumors, now would it? I believe the FoxSports article is talking about how DeRosa would be worth 8-10 million a year if he could sustain it-which he would if he could do that, but the great likelihood is that he won't be able to do as much as he did last year. So that point stands, as they only projected to have him make 4 a year. When looking back through the yahoo site, I did realize it wasn't a ranking of players. Sorry-but the point remains, because DeRosa was listed in the third tier of free agents, and Helms was listed among the leftovers. A higher tier is going to receive more money. As far as the site I listed a few pages ago, no it was not mlbtraderumors, as I stayed away from that site.

You think Soto would do better than Blanco regardless of the cost? How is that? Soto is very likely to hit less than Blanco does-even if Blanco regresses signficantly from his career year last year, Soto still only had a 739 OPS in Triple A, and looked lost at the plate in his very limited major league at-bats. If he played for the Cubs next year, I bet he wouldn't get above a .600 OPS. Do you think he's defensively better than Blanco? I doubt that as well. I can see why it can be argued that Soto for cheap is better than Blanco value wise, but I see no way that he's simply the better player.

Well, let's see. This site didn't have contract information listed with it, but it has DeRosa as the 17th best free agent, and Helms as the 81st. http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news?slug=jp-freeagents110906&prov=yhoo&type=lgns Fox Sports had Derosa going to the Phillies for 2 years and 8 million-Helms is nowhere to be found, and they list several on the other list. http://msn.foxsports.com/fantasy/story/5916868 I posted a site several pages back that had DeRosa going to the Padres for 2 years 14 million, but I don't remember what they had Helms at. This site also listed Derosa as going to the Phillies for 2 years and 8 million-Helms is not listed for a contract, just listed under other free agents: (Edit: Looks like it's made by the same people as from above-sorry, I'll list it only because it is a nice overview of free agent contracts) http://fantasybaseball.usatoday.com/content/column.asp?sport=MLB&column=14&articleid=26761 That's just a quick list. I knew I saw some others yesterday (especially some news articles) that said DeRosa and Helms were being pursued by some teams, but DeRosa would cost more on the market as he was more valuable.

Well, on every site I read at, DeRosa was projected to make a little bit more than Helms-so the fact Helms made 2.75 million makes the DeRosa deal look even a little bit better. I do agree on the third year thing though. It's not like he's ancient. Remember we were saying simular things about Jones last year. And look how that panned out. Maybe their scouts saw something about him we do not. Maybe they see, he can put up those #'s again. I'm not too upset about the third year. It makes it more of a risk, but it has more potential reward as well. I'm just saying that it wasn't necessarily needed in order to be able to sign him-it could turn out to be a good thing or a bad thing, and I think it will be somewhere in between. He can drop from last year's numbers and still be performing to his contract level, as then he'll just be like most of the second basemen around the league even if he drops 60 points.

Wasn't Oral Roberts though the 16 team last year that gave Memphis a game for quite a while and was expected to do that? The ones called before the game as the greatest 16 seed in tourney history and given a chance to beat Memphis? I don't know how many players they had returning, but they were a pretty good team-it will be an upset, but it's nothing like Wisconsin losing to North Dakota State last year, for example.

Well, on every site I read at, DeRosa was projected to make a little bit more than Helms-so the fact Helms made 2.75 million makes the DeRosa deal look even a little bit better. I do agree on the third year thing though.

Butler played pretty well. They lost a great deal from last year, but they also got a great transfer guard that can drive. That is huge for them-because he drives, and then he simply kicks to all their 3 point threats that they have every year. They also play tenacious defense at times-they really had Indiana bottled up for a while, although the horribly tight officiating had everybody on eggshells and most of the people on the bench most of the night (5 players on each side had 2 fouls at the half, Indiana had White, Calloway, and Ratliff on the bench for half of the second half with 4 fouls-and the game was not a physical game whatsoever!) It will be hard to tell with Butler when the officiating becomes more loose (favoring the more physical teams, and not the free throw and 3 point shooting teams). They do several things well though: pretty good defense, pretty good 3 point shooting, pretty good free throw shooting, and like I said 1 guy who can penetrate. With all that, they might be able to make up some of their athletic deficiencies and their terrible lack of size.

I'm not sure anybody is in the Elite in the East right now-it should be pretty wide open.

I'm guessing lots of people wouldn't mind Meche. The minding comes up if/when he gets a longterm expensive deal and is passed off as the big time pitching acquisition of the offseason. Meche is a fine gamble at the back of the rotation and for short-term. He could give you 180 IP and 100 ERA+. He hasn't shown that he's likely to though, and hasn't earned the premium that other guys have, by repeatedly doing that or better. 1 year, $5m, great. 2/12, okay 3/27, and nobody else comes in? Uh-uh. If a risk like Meche accounts for 8% of your payroll, you aren't spending wisely. Now, if Meche got 3/27, but they also added Drew, traded little for Westbrook and switched out Izturis with Lugo. Okay, I'll live with it. I think goony just summed up my feelings of the situation perfectly there. It all depends on the cost, the years, and how they view Meche in terms of the overall offseason.

Something like: DeRosa & Agent: Well, Jim, were looking for something in the neighborhood of 2yrs/3 mil Hendry: 3 yrs/13 mil and that's my final offer!!!! If Derosa was looking for 2 years/3 million, then he would be crazy also-there were teams out there that were willing to give him 4 million per (like I posted, there was one site that had him projected to make 7 per after this offseason :shock:). The only thing that this deal was a little above market value was the addition of the third year-otherwise it was about market value for him. Now, one could argue that market value is overpaying him (which could reasonably be true), but somebody was going to pay him similar money.

While looking for information on somebody else, I found somebody's predictions for the top 40 free agents-anybody glad they didn't pay him this? http://www.all-baseball.com/firebrand/archives/024536.html

As most people I think know, Meche missed all of 2 seasons with injury (2001 and 2002). He came back, and has been brilliant at times and terrible at others. Most of the criticism says that it is simply a lack of confidence with him-when he's on, he will throw a great number of ground balls. It is possible he is just starting to re-gain that confidence from the long injury, but it's hard to tell. He's one of those starters that has the potential to break through, but it is an absolutely huge risk.

I agree. Meche is a decent candidate to be one of the breakout pitchers with his stuff and coming to the NL, but there are also probably better candidates out there. It really depends on the cost-are we talking 5 million, or 9.5 million? One makes it a decent to good move, and the other one makes it a bad to horrible move in my book.

It's the "guys who can catch the ball" of 2007. Imagine for a second that the 2007 infielders all produce at their career averages in 2007, unlikely, but not absurd. Lee - 155 games, 123 OPS+ DeRosa - 100 games, 90 OPS+ Izturis - 100 games, 68 OPS+ Ramirez - 140 games, 109 OPS+ Throw in a bad-nutted Michael Barrett - 130 games 91 OPS+, backed up by Blanco - 50 games, 66 OPS+ Man, the pitching better be really really good this year. I think that's incredibly unlikely. Ramirez has been well over that figure for the last 3 years, and so has Barrett. The others have a chance of hitting their career numbers, but that is the low end projection for most of them. While I agree that the pitching needs to be good this year, it won't have to be as good as the numbers above would seem to indicate.

Do any of the pitchers prefer Blanco behind the plate? I can't remember if he caught any of the pitchers primarily or not.

This wasn't surprising to me at all-the Cubs were not willing to go into this year that they are trying to contend with a young backup catcher. I think Blanco is still better than Soto-is it worth 2.5 million? I don't know, but I'm fine with this deal-again, not enthused and jumping up and down, but not particularly unhappy either.

I don't think they are looking at Drew either-in my opinion, it seems to be Soriano or bust now.

This was completely expected, just passing it along as it has come through now. http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=2662633

I think the infield is done unless a trade just fell into our laps. This offense can still be pretty good though-sign either Drew or Soriano for CF, get a platoon partner for Jacque in right (or sign another second baseman, or use Jacque/Derosa/Theriot in a 3 way platoon at RF/second base). That would make the offense competitive, and then it would just rest on a huge amount of factors to see if the offense was good or not (only some of them need to come true) 1)Can Murton get even better this year? 2)Can Jacque put up close to what he did last year? (I certainly think he'll be better then his years in Minnesota-for the most part, his splits are horrible in the Metrodome. 3)Which Derrek Lee will we see? 4)Was Barrett's approach change to hitting to all fields the reason why his hitting improved that much, or was it simply a career year that will not be repeated? 5)Same question for Soriano as Barrett, or if Drew, does he get hurt during the year? 6)What does the middle infield put up? (probably at least the same as last year-Izturis will be at least a little better than either Neifi or Cedeno's numbers last year, probably at least a 30 point jump in OBP over either of those two. A reasonable projection for Derosa probably would be about Walker's numbers last year, with a slight dip in OBP from Walker and a slight uptick in SLG-that's a compromise from Derosa's numbers before and his numbers this year) The only one that we really know for sure how much they'll produce is Ramirez, but the Cubs should have an average offense at least if they make those free agent signings and even 1-2 of those 6 questions goes their way next year.