jersey cubs fan

A non-roster invite is exactly the type of gamble he's worth.

ugh, there's a headline on the tribune about the Cubs having interest in Varitek and Wakefield. Wakefield might now suck (but he probably does), however, Varitek is pretty much the epitome of replacement level play getting paid millions as a favor for his loyalty/championship aura. He's worthless to the Cubs.

Yeah, I don't know the details but my thoughts on what happened to Seattle during his reign was a solid but unspectaculiar franchise went to crap.

I don't know why in my mind he's already 33.

But there will be better times to sign FAs. Like when you're competing with Boston and the Yankees for those free agents. That's always fun.

You can only get big bats in three ways, draft/develop, trade your farm for an established one, sign free agents. The Cubs haven't drafted/developed big corner bats in over a decade and have none on the immediate horizon. They don't have the supply in the farm system to go out and trade for them. They need to sign one now, and then allow the new regime to draft/develop the replacements who will be significantly underpaid for the duration of Fielder's contract to offset costs.

go cheer on the A's.

Hey, you go play with your reasonable contracts in the corner and the rest of MLB will get going with reality. We may have different definitions of reasonable as mine might be slightly less conservative, but overall, I'm with davearm here. If you signed Soriano to his deal when he was 27, warts and all, you wouldn't have been upset during the timeframe of that contract. And while Fielder's warts may be the type you find on your hands, Soriano's were genital.

His age 24 season is every bit as close to the statistical prime of most players as his age 30 season will be. And he was good in it.

I love how you people try to hold his age 24 season against him. Shows how dimwitted the anti-Fielder arguments are.

You don't know what mediocre means.

All this is true, but there were three negatives to take into account. He was coming off a bad elbow injury, he was over 30, and his production came in a league that doesn't translate all that great in the states. He was a worthwhile target, but he had bigger red flags than somebody like Fielder. Oh, he definitely had question marks, but he's still indicative of how rarely the Cubs even looked at the right types of players during the Hendry era. Absolutely. They finally looked at a worthwhile candidate, but they were also forced to look at him because they couldn't develop anybody. And we're forced to go back out on the market four years later because they still didn't develop anybody. We talk a lot about how Castro and Soto represent the first impact players the Cubs developed in decades, and along with Barney and Theriot the actual numbers are at least better than they were 10 years ago (when Hendry was in charge of that by the way). But they still have developed anything resembling a corner bat. That is why you have to sign free agents. I'd love to never have to sign a big bat because they are expensive. But you need to develop them if you don't sign them, and with the new regime in place it's going to take 3-5 years before we actually develop one.

i'm not really saying what they should do, more what i think they will do. teams generally don't relegate high-paid star players to part time duty until their production has reached poor levels, and soriano isn't quite there yet. If Soriano isn't there, he's on the door step. Jason Veritek wasn't much worse for much longer before Boston relegated him to part-time duty. Posada has been basically a platoon guy/utility player for a couple years now making $13m. It is relatively rare largely because it's rare to have a replacement level guy with 4 years remaining on a huge deal. Eventually he will have to at least be platooned, there's very little chance of him starting everyday the rest of his contract or simply disappearing.

All this is true, but there were three negatives to take into account. He was coming off a bad elbow injury, he was over 30, and his production came in a league that doesn't translate all that great in the states. He was a worthwhile target, but he had bigger red flags than somebody like Fielder.

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From a strictly business standpoint, sure, that would have been smart. But in reality they had a lot of pressure to resign him, and the smart thing from that point would be to try and maximize his value, not completely [expletive] with him.

You also had most everybody in the 28-32 range, with Edmonds as the high end exception and Soto, I believe, on the low end. If the team was ever going to win, that was the year.

We only know the first part in hindsight. And Zambrano was freshly turned 26 and coming off 4 straight seasons of 4 WAR, two of which were 5. Yes, he was having a bit of a down year in 07, but to say that at age 26 it was clear that he was on the decline is wrong. Fukudome got more money than people expected and wasn't as good as expected. Didn't Fukudome reportedly take LESS money than what was being offered to him elsewhere to sign with the Cubs? Reportedly, yes. But the dollar figure was higher than most were discussing at the time. I think 4 @ 8-10m was thought to be his price, not 4 @ 12.

We only know the first part in hindsight. And Zambrano was freshly turned 26 and coming off 4 straight seasons of 4 WAR, two of which were 5. Yes, he was having a bit of a down year in 07, but to say that at age 26 it was clear that he was on the decline is wrong. Fukudome got more money than people expected and wasn't as good as expected. Like Soriano, he was already past 30 when the Cubs went after him, but he was a pretty valuable player for 3/4 of his contract. That was 4 years ago and yet we still don't have confidence in any prospect coming up and filling a corner OF position. When you are able to bring up prospects to take over for the declining overpaid vets, it really isn't a problem at all. They were desperate for corner OF help throughout the 2000s. Had they developed one freaking bat for the spot in all that time we wouldn't be freaking out about Soriano, let alone Fukudome's contract. They had DLee for a decade and weren't able to develop anything resembling a replacement 1B in a decade, that is why we are where we are at 1B. If they sign Fielder and he does suck in 5 years (doubtful, he may not be worth his contract but I doubt he sucks), I have confidence in this group to have somebody ready to at the very least platoon with him to make up for some of the flaws. If you have any confidence in this group's ability to draft and develop, there is no reason to be scared of a potential overpaid veteran 5 years from now.

No they aren't. They were instrumental in the only really successful team Hendry put together. Soriano is the one everybody focuses on because they are blinded by the dollar signs. But Dempster and Zambrano have both been worth a boatload to the Cubs while being here. Hendry messed up just about everywhere else. You don't put all your hopes on young arms and then hire Dusty Freaking Baker. The outfield was an absolute wasteland due to a lack of anything resembling a major league bat coming up through the system, which practically forced Hendry to sign Soriano that offseason. But again, Fielder is not Soriano. Soriano was a highly flawed hitter without a position who was in his 30's. Even with all his flaws, if you signed Soriano to that contract when he was Fielder's age, he would have lived up to the deal and you wouldn't be crying about him. Fielder is not Soriano.

If they didn't give out those big contracts they probably would have sucked in 2007 and 2008 as well as 2009 and 2010. The only way they got better than they were in 2005/2006 was by spending and they sucked back then for the same reason they sucked later, their GM was an idiot.

No we don't. So it's not a problem that we gave superstar money to Soriano and Zambrano, and gave $12 million a year to solid players like Fududome? We're just going to blame this mess all on John Stocksill and Jim Hendry signing guys on the margin like John Grabow? It's not great, but it's not the reason why they suck. They suck because the GM sucked at putting together a baseball team. And they won't suck just because they pay a really good player too much money. You suck when you don't have enough good players, and the Cubs haven't had enough good players in their system in a decade. They drafted like crap and focused on nonsense.

No we don't.

Others have pointed it out but it needs to be reiterated. The Cubs aren't in a hole because of big ugly contracts, the Cubs are in a hole because they were run by an archaic GM who absolutely sucked on putting together longterm plans. If Tom Ricketts goes through a divorce and loses the team (with the family ownership set-up this isn't even likely to be an issue if it comes up), or if they get their money caught up in a giant Ponzi scheme, then you worry about contracts killing the team. What killed the team was a lack of good baseball players, not too many good baseball players that were paid too much.

Really? I don't recall that at all.