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I think that's what the rumor is. Theo targeting Maddux as the new manager.

The ESPN.com story I read said he went to lunch with Bush, Wasserstrom, Fleita, traveling secretary Jimmy Bank and director of baseball operation Scott Nelson. That may be the guys he's with, at least.

I'd be fine with an opt-out for either after 4-5 years. It'd probably interest Prince more than Pujols since Prince is younger and is more likely to get another monster deal at 32-33 than Pujols is to get one at 35-36.

I wasn't trying to argue that BJax is/will be as good as Upton, just that I'm not sure the difference between the upside of the two players is great enough to give up all the cheap talent you listed and have to add the payroll. I really like Upton and would be all for targeting him, I'm just concerned that adding him, Pujols, and Wilson all together may be adding too much payroll and giving up too much cheap talent. I guess it's less of a criticism of your trade proposal and more a hesitation to give up that much cheap talent when we're adding two monster contracts at the same time, if that makes any sense.

Floyd's a good pitcher, but he's already a couple years into his prime and probably won't improve that much more. Targeting him is fine, treating him like Garza is a mistake. Garza was 2 years younger when we targeted him and just entering his prime, Floyd will be 29 (I think) next year. As for our prospects, if other teams don't value them highly you don't just keep adding undervalued prospects to a deal, you don't make the deal. McNutt was a top 50 prospect coming into the season and has #2 starter upside. Sczur was fantastic early on last season, but got fatigued late in the year because he went from a full year of baseball to a full year of football to a full year of baseball without a break. He has all the tools Brett Jackson has and a number of prospect sites really like him. As for Carpenter and Colvin, I'm not nearly as opposed to dealing them but when I think McNutt/Szczur is too much value then adding a high-end bullpen arm (potential closer) and a cheap 4th OF just makes it way too much. In Wilson's two years starting, he's been a 4.6 and 5.9 WAR pitcher. He's been better than Floyd since becoming a starter and even though he's 31, he only has 700 innings pitched to this point. That's more than 250 innings pitched less than Floyd. The mileage on Wilson's arm is pretty minimal for a 31 year old starter, meaning he's more likely to remain healthy and effective for the duration of a 4-5 year deal (I don't think it'll go to 6 years). And considering Wilson is just as good as guys like Cain, Hamels, etc., I have no problem pursuing the sure thing FA in Wilson rather than waiting and hoping that one of the big name guys will both become FAs and be better deals than Wilson is this year. Both of those happening is unlikely. Now if you want to talk about trading for John Danks, I'll be much more open to that White Sox starter - considering he'll be 27 next year and has been better than Floyd.

I don't really like Johnson that much. He was a 5.9 WAR guy in 2010, but other than that he's been between 2.2 and 3.6. That's not bad if you can get him cheap, but Barney was a 2.2 WAR player last year and has room to improve. Obviously you think a little more about Johnson if you deal Barney, but if LeMaheieu can give us a 1.5-2.0 WAR then there's a good chance he's not much worse than Johnson - and he's much cheaper. Also, with Barney and DJ you have upside (though not much with Barney), but Johnson is 30 years old so he probably is what he is at this point.

I love your first two targets, though I tend to think bidding will boost Pujols up to 10 years instead of 8. On the Upton trade, I'm concerned cost is going to bite us here. The great thing about Jackson is that he's cheap (and good, obviously) and we need cheap if we're going to have a shot at Pujols and Wilson this offseason. We'd probably be looking at $5+ million paid to him next year, meaning your scenario to this point has us adding $45-50 million (depending on how much you backload Pujols and CJ) while only shedding around $35 million or so. I really like Upton, but I wonder if his upside is greater enough than BJax to warrant giving up that much cheap talent when we're already adding two monster contracts. As for Burnett, I want no part of him. He's signed through 2013, while Z is only signed through 2012 and the $1.5 million we'd save next year isn't worth adding a bad pitcher for an extra year (especially when he's older and worse than Z). Giving up one of the best relievers in the game isn't appealing either. I'll admit that I don't know anything about the Yankee prospects you listed, but I know their system is pretty weak.

Just out of curiosity, what, in your opinion, is acceptable to talk about on a Cubs related message board if we shouldn't analyze prospects and get excited about a hire our owner just made?

I'd have no problem targeting Floyd in the offseason, but I agree we shouldn't give up 3 of our top 10 prospects and Colvin for him. I'd rather pay Wilson a boatload of money and keep the prospects.

This is true that they are both patient and disciplined hitters, but I've never said that's a guarantee for success late in the career. It gives you a much better chance of aging well, but never have I argued that all patient and disciplined hitters age well because there are always exceptions to the rule. The real problem with the Dunn comparison, however, is that he's had one bad year. He may not even be the exception if the BABIP normalizes next year and his HR/FB ratio improves the 11% it dropped this year. Just like writing off Carl Crawford as an awful signing because of one bad year is a mistake, assuming Adam Dunn is completely washed up because of one very unlucky year is a mistake.

I do realize that, I was just trying to assuage your fears of a 5/90 deal for Wilson. We can overpay for elite talent when we have quantity in the minors. And I don't know that we'll win the bidding either. I really hope CC opts out as I think he draws some of the bigger money interest and might take 1-2 teams out of the Wilson bidding.

I very much like scenrio 2. Baker and a Carpenter/J Jax/Flaherty type prospect sounds more than fair. I don't really like that. You look at the MacPhail promotion, we gave up an A ball prospect. At the time MacPhail was a young, hotshot executive who turned out to do a good job in turning the Cubs from awful to decent. It wouldn't surprise me to see something more than MacPhail garnered, but there's certainly no precedent for it.

Dunn has had 1 season of a 5+ WAR, a career wOBA of .375 and career OBP of .374 and he's 31. Fielder has had 3 seasons of 5+ WAR (one of those over 6), a career .391 wOBA and a career .390 OBP and he's 28. I'm really struggling to see how Dunn is anywhere near the player Prince is. Interesting to note, however, that Dunn still has a similar IsoD to his career level, but this year he had a BABIP of .240 with a LD% of 20.0. Looks like he had some major bad luck this year, especially considering his 9.6% HR/FB ratio, even though he's hitting the ball as hard as he ever has. Even if you view Dunn and Prince as similar players (they aren't), there's plenty of reason to believe Dunn simply hit a major patch of bad luck this year and could rebound with better luck next year.

That's pretty funny. In my defense, though, we didn't sign a young, outsider GM. We signed a young, insider GM. :D I did like the "there are only so many Theo Epsteins" comment. I clearly didn't have any idea how awesome Ricketts really was.

You just gave a pretty good argument in favor of going after Wilson. We have a number of potentially useful arms in the minors, but no star-potential guys. I realize minor leaguers bust, but if we sign Wilson then we don't need those guys to turn into front end starters. We simply need mid-back rotation guys and the openings for them won't start until 2013-2014 anyway (when Z, Dempster, and Wells likely go). If we had star-level minor leaguers, I'd be against giving Wilson money. But we have quantity over quality, so it makes sense to go sign the elite FA and fill in with role players for the rest of the rotation. Also, don't forget that Theo is pretty good at finding diamond-in-the-rough types.

Went back and checked and I don't know where I got the $180 number. I was thinking about your $200 report and if accurate I figured that'd be the 180 I was thinking about + front office salaries. Apparently I just made up the $180 number, though. Even still, with a $130 payroll, Pujols would be 23% of our budget and still wouldn't be quite 25%+ and there's really no reason not to up payroll as revenue goes up.

Keep in mind with a Pujols contract, if he's still extremely productive 5 years into his deal you might have the opportunity to trade him and not have to eat a huge amount of his money. I wouldn't bank on it, but the Angels took Vernon Wells' contract and gave talent in return. Somebody might be willing to take a still highly productive Pujols and his salary for little to nothing in return.

Ok, thanks. I was remembering him being at something like $18 or 19 this year, but was going off my memory from a number of months ago.

The numbers I saw reported in the Theo thread were $180 million total baseball budget (presumably $30 million for amateur/minors and $150 for MLB payroll) and $200 million total baseball budget (might be same report but adding in front office salaries, or it might be a different report entirely). Either way, even holding steady at $130 this year, Pujols wouldn't be more than 23% of our budget and then you'd expect payroll to rise in the future considering the revenue we should be bringing in.

Look at Cashner in the majors (or AAA) right now, McNutt/Whitenack/Struck at the upper end of our system, Wells/Liria/Peralta/Maples/etc at the lower end of it, and then at Theo, Hoyer, McLeod in the front office. We have an excellent chance of having Wilson, Garza, and then 3 cheap options to fill out our rotation. Paying lots of money to two elite arms and significantly less to the other 3 rotation spots is completely palatable for a big market team. Obviously we have to get the farm going for that to work, but there's a lot of options to make the majors and we have some of the best minor league guys in the majors in our front office.

As long as we keep our payroll around $150+ (which has been rumored the past few days), Pujols would never be close to 25% of our budget. If he were to make $30 million next year and we had a $150 million payroll, he would account for 20% of our payroll. If payroll holds at $130 million next year and Pujols makes $30 million, he would be 23% of our budget. Ricketts has given no indication he'll do anything but raise our payroll, so the percentage that Pujols takes of our budget will either hold consistent at 20% or less or it will drop consistently. And ARod is also heavily front loaded, by the way. He's actually a really good deal right now, I think making less than $20 million/yr.

I wouldn't do 5/100 for Wilson. I'd probably stop at 5/90 (18 per). I'm in favor of heavily pursuing Wilson, but not signing him at any cost. My argument has been that there's no reason not to pursue him.

He had a 5.7 and 5.0 WAR season while in New York and UZR didn't like his defense, his other seasons in NY and Texas were .2, 2.1, 2.3, and then he had a 5.3 WAR his last year in Texas when his defense jumped to 6.6. Prince has had three seasons so far that were higher than 5 WAR and the highest his UZR was during that time has been 1.7. Soriano's 7.0 WAR season with the Cubs was helped greatly by a 33.6 UZR. And keep in mind, Prince has been younger than Soriano was. Soriano was 27 when he posted his first 5+ WAR season. Prince was 23 when he posted his first 5+ WAR season. That's significant. If we give Fielder an 8 year deal, there's no doubt in my mind he'll decline during that contract. However, I don't see any reason to believe he can't improve going forward and he likely won't have the dramatic fall Soriano has because Prince isn't an impatient hacker that Sori is. Prince is a disciplined, patient hitter and that can help keep his overall numbers boosted a bit over a guy who relies on slugging and stolen bases for his offensive value.

Or he could be really productive like his 3rd most similar player, Frank Robinson (4.7 and 3.6 WARs at 37 and 38) who played well before the steroid era. Guys all throughout the history of baseball have been very productive well into their 30s and even their 40s long before the steroid era. Pujols is one of the greatest players in the history of the game and is a very disciplined, patient hitter at the plate. This isn't a guy you assume is going to follow the trends that normal baseball players follow.

ARod has never had the patience or OBP that Pujols has. Because of his IsoD, if Pujols can keep his slugging above .500 like ARod has, his value will be higher than the 3-4 WAR ARod has given the Yankees the past couple of years. And given that Pujols has posted a nearly 9 WAR on average in his career, I'd say he's the very definition of an exception to the rule. When you have a chance to get possibly the greatest baseball player to ever play the game, you do it.