CubfaninCA

One of the reasons I thought re-signing Rusch was a great idea was that Rusch/Williams could be added to Walker, Patterson and our prospects to acquire the players we need to fill some of the holes on the team. I really don't expect Rusch to be on the Cubs for the whole 2 years of his contract. Veteran, left-handed starters making $3 million would be desirable to 12-15 teams at a trading deadline or during the next offseason. Yep, Williams, Walker & Patterson should be able to get an impact bat.

Here's the article: ChicagoSports.com Very good. Can't get caught short again. Good to see Jim's building some depth and not relying on the Cubs weak minor league system. Hopefully, Mitre & Koronka (or whatever his name is) never start another game w/ the Cubs. Say goodbye to Jerome Williams.

That would cause another riot in LA. Do any of you folks on the West Coast get the Orange County Register? If so, did Jeff Kent ask for a trade today? I only get it on Sundays. Not a surprise if Kent wants out. Maybe the Cubs could get Kent, Lowe and Drew?? LA gets Castillo, Lowell & Delgado. Florida dumps payroll and gets Walker, Bradley, Choi and some other players. Am too busy @ work to put something realistic together, but can see a potential blockbuster between the 3 teams, as they've all dealt w/ one another in the past...

If LA gets Delgado, you may have something there. Dodgers fans want a big name.

That would cause another riot in LA.

Probably not all that much? LA isn't Pittsburgh. The fans are pretty ticked @ them for being too cheap. They'd have to get back some name players for Drew. if he was fired, in part, due to drew's contract, freeing up 44 mil for other purposes over the next 4 years might actually look like good thing for them. maybe they'd like to make a run at giles. Drew's contract was a small part of the the firing, if any. DePo was fired over the current manager situation and "breaking up chemistry" by dealing off or letting go of core players. Good luck @ making a run @ Giles when you have little to go w/ him. Winning 70 games can't be appealing. That team needs lots of help.

hyperbole If Prior, Z and Wood are all healthy, the Cubs can beat anyone. That's proven to be a big if. The law of averages are with the Cubs. Hopefully the baseball gods are too. Prior and Z should be fine. If Wood goes down again, I hope he isn't wearing Cubbie blue after 2006. Law of averages with the Cubs? I'm going to go out on a limb and say I wont expect anything positive about our pitchers pertaining to injuries. This is why Cardinal fans are sooo great. They're not negative. :o

Probably not all that much? LA isn't Pittsburgh. The fans are pretty ticked @ them for being too cheap. They'd have to get back some name players for Drew.

hyperbole If Prior, Z and Wood are all healthy, the Cubs can beat anyone. That's proven to be a big if. The law of averages are with the Cubs. Hopefully the baseball gods are too. Prior and Z should be fine. If Wood goes down again, I hope he isn't wearing Cubbie blue after 2006.

Why does LA not only trade him, but pick up some of his contract?? This isn't an organization w/ financial troubles. They just have pr issues.

hyperbole If Prior, Z and Wood are all healthy, the Cubs can beat anyone.

And, if he goes there, nobody should be surprised. The Cards are consistent winners, have an opening in OF, and have the cash to pay him. Exactly, but you forgot to add that they have the world's greatest fans. ;) They aren't invincible though. An injury to Carpenter and another starter brings them back to the pack. That rotation's due for some bad health.

Can't see 2 subpar offensive teams striking a deal.

I'd much prefer Furcal and Walker over Nomar/Cedeno and Walker. NoMah will breakdown by May and who knows about Cedeno.

The Cubs weren't going anywhere w/ the 9th overall pitching staff. Prior was barely above average after returning from injury. Yes, his ERA was alright, but he rarely lasted past 6 innings. Wood was non-existent most of the season. A team isn't going to do much when they're counting on Maddux, Jerome Williams and pitching prospects who weren't ready. The same case can be made for the offense as well. Pitching > offense. Prior and Wood carried a weak offense into the playoffs in 03.

With the exception of paragraph 3, Xactly. Gotta have a backup plan. Unfortunately, 29 other teams are eligible to bid on free agents.

The Cubs weren't going anywhere w/ the 9th overall pitching staff. Prior was barely above average after returning from injury. Yes, his ERA was alright, but he rarely lasted past 6 innings. Wood was non-existent most of the season. A team isn't going to do much when they're counting on Maddux, Jerome Williams and pitching prospects who weren't ready.

Has he learned nothing from last off season? Chemistry is such overrated garbage. Tell the 05 White Sox, 04 Red Sox, 03 Marlins, 02 Angels and the 96-2000 Yankees that.

Craig Monroe has decent speed and some power. Hendry might be liking that .825 ops from 2004. Brace yourselves for I~Rod & Monroe. DeFence! *clap* *clap*

This is the same budget that was dictated by the Sosa debacle. There were limited options at the time b/c free agency was coming to an end and all potential options had already been signed. Had the Cubs used any foresight, they would've known if they had to trade Sosa it would've been key to find a RF'er ASAP once they made the decision they were going to trade him instead of few possible options such as Burnitz. Hendry had to sign Burnitz, he had to sign him b/c the Cubs waited so damn long in trading Sosa and deciding not to sign anyone until after the trade was completed likely b/c of budget constraints and potentially eating more than they already did. The flaw isn't in signing in Burnitz, it's waiting till he's the last avail. option. Actually, I think the budgetary concerns were nonexistent. We picked up most of Sosa's salary anyway-did Hendry think he was going to be able to unload all of it on some other team, especially considering the hackjob the Tribune pulled on Sosa. If Sosa's 18m was a hinderance to singing a top flight RF, it would have been a hinderance if he were traded or not, so what's the difference? Beteween Hairston, Burnitz and Sosa's salary we ate, we lost money on that deal. I think the team uses Sosa's trade as an easy out to the question of: Why didn't you sign a FA OF? At the very least they could have brought back Alou. He signed, what, a $7m contract with a $6m option for 2006? The excuse for not bringing him back was that Hendry wasn't sure he could move Sosa, so he didn't want to commit money to Alou just in case. Then he signed Burnitz for $4.5. Hendry couldn't have found an extra 2.5m somewehre in the budget to accomodate that? It's in that chain of events like overpaying for Macias, Perez and, to a lesser extent, Blanco came back to bite Hendry. As irritating as Alou was to us (especially Tim), an Alou/Patterson/Whoever OF would have been light years better than the one we ended up with. At that time, they were coming to an end financially. They had to have known they'd be eating most if not all of his contract. But, the 7 or so mil did help land Burnitz and I don't think they would've been able to if they didn't get Balt. to pay part of Sosa's '05. We ate, IIRC, $13m of the $18.5m of Sosa's 2005. Hairston made $1.8m last season, and Burnitz signed for $4.5m. At best, that's a wash. The budgetary issue is a total red herring for a complete lack of planning from the second the final out occurred against Atlanta last October. Say what you will about the results that Hendry has produced but saying that he has a "complete lack of planning" is absurd. From all accounts Hendry is one of the hardest working GM's around, so I seriously doubt that he just sat around all winter without thinking about the direction of the ballclub. The difficulty in moving Sosa is highly underestimated. I think Hendry probably worked daily in trying to get this done. It also seems to me that he had a unofficial agreement with Burnitz that he would sign him as soon as he found a taker for Sosa that would free up the position and the necessary cash. Otherwise it makes no sense that Burnitz would be the only guy still unsigned considering the numbers he put up the year before and the fact that he did get interest from other teams. Hendry had been interested in Burnitz since at least two years ago when he was with the Dodgers. I can respect the argument that Hendry overvalued Burnitz and that was an error in judgement by him, but I don't buy this hyperbole about Hendry not having a plan. Hyperbole indeed. Hendry had a good plan for 6 of the 8 positions. Unfortunately, Nomar and Patterson were brutal. He had a so-so plan for LF, which failed miserably, until Murton came up and looked real good in September. He tried to fix the LF problem by trading for Lawton @ the end of July, but that flopped too. The plan for RF sucked, but AGAIN, what was out there?? If people think Burnitz was bad, look @ the alternatives.. Drew 72 games. Ordonez 82 games and a .795 ops. Sosa 102 games and .671 ops. Huff .749 and would have cost multiple prospects. Yes, they could have went w/ Alou in LF & Holla/Dubi in RF, but Alou missed 40 games and cost SF $13 million over 2 years and did Alou really want to come back or play for his father instead?? Unfortunately, Ichiro, Vlad, Giles, Sheff and Abreu weren't available. Shawn Green could have been had, but does anyone want to pay him what AZ did? Sure Hendry could have been creative and picked up a bat, but that would probably have meant dealing off Pie & another prospect. Of course, then he'd get ripped apart for not giving the kids a shot. The bottom line is that the season was over when that line drive hit Prior and Wood went down. An extra bat wouldn't have got the Cubs into the playoffs. How quick we are to deflect blame from Hendry. He is the GM and he is responsible for all of these moves. Even with Wood and Prior out which by the way both of them missed significant time the year before the offense regressed from 2004. What exactly did Hendry do to improve the team? Trade Bear Bay for a scrub? Try to improve the OF the day of the trade deadline which turned out to be a bust? Let Sisco walk? Sign Burnitz as our RFer? Hendry's gameplan was to get rid of Sosa. A lot of the blame SHOULD go to Hendry because he did a terrible job. No escaping it..we miss the playoffs next season and Hendry should be fired IMO. Jmo but once you start laying out alternatives given the budget then you'll have something. Alternatives such as "being creative" and "getting more for Sosa" don't cut it. About the only solid solution I've seen is bring back Alou, sign Eckstein and sign Kent instead of signing Nomar, Walker & Burnitz. Of course, who knows if any of the 3 would have signed w/ the Cubs. Altogether, what happened last offseason is nothing to get all bent out of shape over.

Hmm wonder if the Cubs could get in there & get either Floyd or Glavine???

Sure, but Eckstein was coming off 2 subpar seasons of .325/.650 & .339/.671... Yes, they could have gotten Kent, but he may have preferred coming home to SoCal and joining a playoff team. Hendry just failed in the crapshoot of free agency. I mean who foresaw Jermaine Dye posting a .846 ops after averaging .767 from 2002-04?? Fortunately, Hendry foresaw the ability of Lee, Barrett and Ramirez.

I also think he tried to get too much for Sosa and wound up getting too little. IIRC, there was a Cliff Floyd deal almost ready to go. That would have solved the RF problem. There was also a Wilkerson deal that would have had the Cubs picking up all of Sosa's salary. That seemed crazy then, but as it turned out, as you pointed out, we ended up paying it and then some in order to sign Burnitz. Both of these players could have handled an OF spot better than Burnitz, yet Hendry somehow thought he could do better. But all he got was a supersub and some minor leauge relievers. Didn't one of the Mets owners nix the Sosa deal?? Iirc it was after some steroid fiasco came out and Sosa was named. I don't recall the Wilkerson deal.

I wanted Drew or Beltran, but the budget wouldn't allow it. Perhaps the finger pointing should be directed @ the Trib, who makes a ton of money off this team. Basically, I was just pointing out that Drew wouldn't have panned out either. Also, I said in an earlier post that Kent and Eckstein would have been superior to Walker and Nomar, but I can't fault Hendry for going w/ Walker and Nomar. Now if he goes back to Nomar and Walker, I'll rip him apart. I can't recall when Jermaine Dye signed, but that would have worked out better than Burnitz. Of course, Dye could have got hurt again or given the Cubs a .780 ops. Altogether, it wasn't the Cubs year.

This is the same budget that was dictated by the Sosa debacle. There were limited options at the time b/c free agency was coming to an end and all potential options had already been signed. Had the Cubs used any foresight, they would've known if they had to trade Sosa it would've been key to find a RF'er ASAP once they made the decision they were going to trade him instead of few possible options such as Burnitz. Hendry had to sign Burnitz, he had to sign him b/c the Cubs waited so damn long in trading Sosa and deciding not to sign anyone until after the trade was completed likely b/c of budget constraints and potentially eating more than they already did. The flaw isn't in signing in Burnitz, it's waiting till he's the last avail. option. Actually, I think the budgetary concerns were nonexistent. We picked up most of Sosa's salary anyway-did Hendry think he was going to be able to unload all of it on some other team, especially considering the hackjob the Tribune pulled on Sosa. If Sosa's 18m was a hinderance to singing a top flight RF, it would have been a hinderance if he were traded or not, so what's the difference? Beteween Hairston, Burnitz and Sosa's salary we ate, we lost money on that deal. I think the team uses Sosa's trade as an easy out to the question of: Why didn't you sign a FA OF? At the very least they could have brought back Alou. He signed, what, a $7m contract with a $6m option for 2006? The excuse for not bringing him back was that Hendry wasn't sure he could move Sosa, so he didn't want to commit money to Alou just in case. Then he signed Burnitz for $4.5. Hendry couldn't have found an extra 2.5m somewehre in the budget to accomodate that? It's in that chain of events like overpaying for Macias, Perez and, to a lesser extent, Blanco came back to bite Hendry. As irritating as Alou was to us (especially Tim), an Alou/Patterson/Whoever OF would have been light years better than the one we ended up with. At that time, they were coming to an end financially. They had to have known they'd be eating most if not all of his contract. But, the 7 or so mil did help land Burnitz and I don't think they would've been able to if they didn't get Balt. to pay part of Sosa's '05. We ate, IIRC, $13m of the $18.5m of Sosa's 2005. Hairston made $1.8m last season, and Burnitz signed for $4.5m. At best, that's a wash. The budgetary issue is a total red herring for a complete lack of planning from the second the final out occurred against Atlanta last October. Say what you will about the results that Hendry has produced but saying that he has a "complete lack of planning" is absurd. From all accounts Hendry is one of the hardest working GM's around, so I seriously doubt that he just sat around all winter without thinking about the direction of the ballclub. The difficulty in moving Sosa is highly underestimated. I think Hendry probably worked daily in trying to get this done. It also seems to me that he had a unofficial agreement with Burnitz that he would sign him as soon as he found a taker for Sosa that would free up the position and the necessary cash. Otherwise it makes no sense that Burnitz would be the only guy still unsigned considering the numbers he put up the year before and the fact that he did get interest from other teams. Hendry had been interested in Burnitz since at least two years ago when he was with the Dodgers. I can respect the argument that Hendry overvalued Burnitz and that was an error in judgement by him, but I don't buy this hyperbole about Hendry not having a plan. Hyperbole indeed. Hendry had a good plan for 6 of the 8 positions. Unfortunately, Nomar and Patterson were brutal. He had a so-so plan for LF, which failed miserably, until Murton came up and looked real good in September. He tried to fix the LF problem by trading for Lawton @ the end of July, but that flopped too. The plan for RF sucked, but AGAIN, what was out there?? If people think Burnitz was bad, look @ the alternatives.. Drew 72 games. Ordonez 82 games and a .795 ops. Sosa 102 games and .671 ops. Huff .749 and would have cost multiple prospects. Yes, they could have went w/ Alou in LF & Holla/Dubi in RF, but Alou missed 40 games and cost SF $13 million over 2 years and did Alou really want to come back or play for his father instead?? Unfortunately, Ichiro, Vlad, Giles, Sheff and Abreu weren't available. Shawn Green could have been had, but does anyone want to pay him what AZ did? Sure Hendry could have been creative and picked up a bat, but that would probably have meant dealing off Pie & another prospect. Of course, then he'd get ripped apart for not giving the kids a shot. The bottom line is that the season was over when that line drive hit Prior and Wood went down. An extra bat wouldn't have got the Cubs into the playoffs.