SouthSideRyan

Carlos Pena made $800K in '07, and will make $6M in '08. $6.8M total. Lackey made $5.5M in '07, and will make $7M in '08. $12.5M total. You gave each $18.5M. I'd say they should be damn happy, and you should be looking for a new job. I'm pretty sure Lackey was signed to an extension paying him that. You're the one who came up with the # we had to pay all these guys.

Houston won't finish over 500.

How bout a forfeit lineup with a DH. Added OBPs just for fun. J Pierre CF (289) F Bynum LF (289) A Ramirez 3B (314) P Nevin 1B (316) J Jones RF (323) J Mabry DH (295) R Cedeno SS (304) T Womack 2B (342) H Blanco C (282)

I agree. He got ripped off. If he'd have waited for FA, he easily could have gotten $100 million over the 8 years. It has to be remembered that 3 of these 8 years are years in which the Brewers can pay him the minimum salary in baseball if they so desire (which goes up slightly with every year of experience). Then you have 3 more years in which open bidding can not drive your contract up, and your money is somewhat limited by a certain scale based on your performance. If Braun doesn't sign this deal, there's no way that he makes 100 million over the next 7+ years. He might have made 70-75 if he was really good, but that's kind of doubtful. He'll also be 32 when the contract ends and ready to sign his 100 million dollar deal then.

Hey, be careful giving credit to Hendry because the Hendry-haters will come after you. Yeah, CCP has been just ridiculed those 3 days that post has been sitting out there.

This completely misses the point. The Cubs don't need to do one of these early multiyear deals with Soto, in part because they've been 100% successful locking up the guys they want to keep when they're on the verge of reaching free agency. Ramirez was making less than what Soto will make via the arbitration process, assuming he continues posting .900 OPSs for the next 5 years. Same with DLee. Raimrez made $3M in his first arb year, and $6M in his second, as part of a 3-year deal he signed while in Pittsburgh. Then he signed a multiyear deal with the Cubs that spanned his final arb year and his first three FA years. Lee went year-to-year, getting $2.7M, then $4.25M in arb years 1 and 2. Arb year 3 was absorbed into the 3-year deal he signed after being traded here. Soto's level of financial security will be no different than these guys' were at the time they inked longterm deals with the Cubs, again, provided he remains healthy and productive. Now he may prefer to sign an early extension that locks him in through his arb years, but the Cubs have little incentive to give it to him. Except the incentive of paying less in the long run. Paying less in the long run is only one possibility. Another possibility is that the extension guarantees higher salaries than the player would've earned if taken year-to-year... possibly much higher. In the end, this discussion is moot without any hard figures. If Soto wanted to sell his next 5 seasons for $10M, then you have to take it. But if I'm running the team, unless I'm getting a real sweetheart deal like that, I'm keeping my options open and going year-to-year. If the guy blows up and winds up costing me more than I could've gotten him for, then that's a nice problem to have. What's not a nice problem to have is having $6 or $8M a year committed for another 2-3 years on the next Rocco Baldelli... or Mark Prior for that matter. Just imagine how much worse that Prior situation would've been if he was making Tulowitzki money. You can't really compare pitchers to position players. Pitchers have a much higher injury rate and are thus a much bigger risk. Is it your opinion that all of these pre-FA extensions have been bad moves? Because Berroa is the only one I can think of that hasn't turned out well thus far.

Gorzellany went to Marist High School Marist sucks.

Ronny Cedeno could sit on his couch eating lard for a month, step into the lineup and deliver a hit.

I can only laugh. This is so surreal.

Nah, Edmonds catches that because he plays ludicrously shallow.

So Edmonds got cheered?

That is, quite possibly, the dumbest thing I have ever read on this message board. You do realize that Braun had pretty much the best rookie season in the history of baseball, correct? And that if you look at his minor league numbers/hype that it isn't a fluke? Also, did CP even have a good August? Wasn't his "tear" the first half of 2003 before he blew out his knee in Atlanta? Thanks for the assist TT. Braun had ridiculous offensive #s last year, but it wasn't close to the best rookie season ever because he was historically bad in the field. Braun should improve in LF, but he's lost a lot of value with the position change.

Are you serious? Of course it makes a difference when a player dominates on your arch rival rather than some random baseball team. Most stupid posts don't deserve a reply but the above is so beyond stupid it demands one. You wouldn't want Fat Albert Pujols? I think he's talking about "hating" him.

I think at least one of those puns was intended.

I would love to see if Davey Martinez still has anything left. So would Cindy to be important, more important to be nice>

He wasn't a free agent.

Being fiscally responsible is not just for small market teams. The Cubs haven't really done this because they've had zero position players to even think about extending. There's a risk management element in addition to the fiscal responsibility element. The risk management element points to not offering the extension. The risk taken on in these contracts isn't that great. The players sign them because it sets them for life in case of injury or Steve-Blassism. Signing your best young players to these contracts isn't very risky from the team perspective.

If you were to ask Hendry why he signed Edmonds, he might quote your line here word for word. Don't you believe that he believes he is maximizing the team's potential? While the team is hot and winning, he went after a player he believes becomes an asset for the team and fills a perceived need since ST, which falls precisely in the bounds of your idea of team building. You can disagree with the scouting assessment of the move (whether or not Edmonds is an asset), but not the motivation. I'll never argue that Lou and Hendry aren't trying to maximize the team's potential. I think I'm well within my right to say they're idiots for the way they're going about it, no matter what the team's record happens to be. That's what I was arguging, not that the team seems content because they're winning. Although Lou's comments about Reed Johnson scare me that he seems to be content with the crap line he was putting up.

Midway through next season if he keeps it up. Get one year of FA, and an option after that.

He's not Reed Johnson. Or Kenny Lofton.

I think he meant traded for Jason Kendall.

I get so tired of people calling everyone that criticizes Lou or Hendry arrogant. Yeah I have trouble figuring out what being critical of hapless Cubs management has to do with arrogance. Because it seems petty when the Cubs have a .600 winning percentage, 2nd best in baseball. It's arrogant to think Joe Fan can build and lead the Cubs to better than a .600 winning percentage. People always state that the bottom line win record is what you use to judge a team's management. If you're inclined to dis Hendry as a GM, all you have to do is list Hendry's overall win/loss record as a GM as the thesis to emphasize the point, then throw out individual moves to support your case. But now that the team is winning, with a strong likelihood to maintain that success given the way its built, somehow the record is no longer the bottom line or central factor, and that is the disconnect. If this team gets to WS, that is how the management will be judged. Pie and Cedeno are young. They aren't going anywhere soon and their careers are not in jeopardy. As long as the team continues to win, the petty and overblown complaints will remain petty and overblown; particularly since Lou has proven to be a manager that will play anyone that delivers for him. The role players with the playing time right now likely play themselves back into role players, at which time Lou probably gives a kid a shot again. Reed Johnson's been playing his way into a role player for the past month. Lou's solution to put him back in that role was to get an old corpse to take his spot. Just because we're winning doesn't mean we can't be critical. Would Brewers fans have been wrong to call Yost functionally [expletive] while the Brewers were out to a 24-10 start last year? Yost didn't become a terrible terrible manager starting at game 35 last year, he was the whole way, the team was just playing very well. Maybe if Yost hadn't been an idiot for the first 34 games the Brew coulda won a few more games and they'd have made the playoffs last year. You should be worrying about maximizing your team's potential year round, not just when it starts to lose some games.

It works for everyone, you can't just take a guys road splits and count them as his true value. It is more extreme(ly bad to use) for extreme ballparks.

Edmonds probably knows the Reds are terrible.

What if he does both? No because then his legend will live on forever. if he "helps us" win a world series (depending on what that means) they can put a freaking statue of him in front of Wrigley and rename a street after him. until then, damn him and his half-shirts. But then the 2008 World Series wouldn't be 2008 Champion Chicago Cubs prevail. It would be Jim Edmonds dies on the field, oh and something happened, I don't know Jim Edmonds died.