WrigleyField 22

I for some reason though that although part of his salary was deferred, it was just deferred until the end of this year and would then be included with this years budget. Just basically a way to put off the payment rather than making it equal throughout the year. You may be right though.

It would be rare, but: 1. Few roster spots open 2. Many raises due soon 3. Money to spend 4. Uncertainty about revenue being reinvested. (So for instance with Ricketts, its fairly certain any money we don't spend will be put back into the club. If the owner was still the Trib, maybe not) Given those 4 parameters, front-loading could be advisable. Given our ownership, your statement is true for Cubs purposes. And of course there is backloading and backloading so much that its unrealistic to expect to keep up with your payroll. The latter is bad, obviously. I think if we wanted to get Pujols or Fielder, that could become a reality given a couple other needs we will have. I can't imagine Fielder's or Pujols' first year salary being smaller than $11 for Fielder or $15 for Pujols and not be a major detriment down the road.

Yea, its odd because backloading can hurt you, but looking at just next year, it doesn't effect us. It has probably had more potential to hamper us in past years, but our budget was sufficiently large enough to absorb the backloaded portions of deals alright. Length of contract has harmed, us, though really just Soriano. Front loading could be good if you were in a position where you for some reason have a lot of money to spend and very few open roster spots.

Yea, there is an autopick, but its not ideal. From the mock drafts I've done, the teams on autopick ended up with huge budgets and all the impact players off the board. If only one or two miss it probably won't effect it too much, but those guys should definitely manually put in some draft values to your preferences, and I'd suggest to aim high, particularly on the top 20 players. Also beware that after the starting spots are filled the autopick won't really bid based on position, other than not taking an extra kicker. So you don't want to end up with 4 QBs (or maybe you do, but its not likely), so you have to adjust your values accordingly.

Its not an ideal date for me being Labor Day weekend and all, but I can try to make it work. Sunday would definitely be worse.

Well if they want to be professional and courteous about it they'll do it asap so Taylor can move on to his next team with a couple weeks prior to the regular season. Or they can try and showcase him for a team that might be looking for an insurance policy at RB or if a team suddenly has a need because of injury. Even if its a 7th rounder, that's something. History makes me think the Bears would do the courteous thing, but who knows.

I could see letting them both go. They do hold value as utility guys though. And Baker particulary is a nice half of a platoon player if whoever our 2B is sucks (Darwin, LeMahieu, whoever). Dewitt would be easier to get rid of. Wells could be gone as well if someone beats him for the 5th rotation spot. Both of those savings would be pretty small though.

Yea I used Cots too. Dempsters is a player option. And I did include Z. Here's what I'm seeing, pre arb: $18.00 Soriano, Alfonso $18.00 Zambrano, Carlos $16.00 Ramirez, Aramis $14.00 Dempster, Ryan $6.50 Byrd, Marlon $7.00 Marmol, Carlos $3.10 Marshall, Sean $2.00 Silva, Carlos $84.60 My best guess at arb figures (I'm terrible at guessing) and FA retaining: $3.00 Samardzija, Jeff $7.75 Garza, Matt $4.55 Soto, Geovany $1.90 Baker, Jeff $0.80 Wells, Randy $0.80 DeWitt, Blake $1.75 Wood, Kerry $20.55 Thats only 13 players. Now maybe Zambrano is traded for a guy who we can plug into the roster and thats 14 guys, but we're pretty sure to pay the same net amount. So thats $105M for 13 players. I could see probably 8 non-arb players filling CF, 2B, SS, bullpen, 5th starter, bench roles. Estimated those at $4M, so we are at about $110. Thats 4 spots for starting RF, 2 SP, and maybe one other bench/bullpen role. Then budget is really a huge guess. With all the amateur money we spent, Ricketts could decide to have a $120 budget. Or he could keep it at the $134M it was at. Thats a range of $10-$24M. Trading Byrd for prospects would make it $16.5M-$30M. So the big questions are what the arbitration eligible guys get and what Ricketts sets the budget. What are people's thoughts?

There are a lot of variables to consider, obviously, but what do people think we'll have to spend this off season in FA? My assumptions: We will end up paying most or all of Z's contract. Dempster and Ramirez back on their option years. Marlon Byrd could be traded without eating any salary. (replaced by Brett Jackson) The last two big variables are what Ricketts sets the budget at and what the arbitration eligible players get (namely Soto and Garza). Just playing with numbers, we could have as little as $15M to spend or as much as $30M. I'm thinking $20-25 assuming we don't trade any higher salary players to clear additional room. And we'll probably have the following needs: Starting OF- I guess you could keep Byrd too, but our OF would look like Soriano, Jackson, Colvin, and Campana. I would live with a Colvin/Soriano split in LF. So you need to keep Byrd and one of him or Jackson plays RF or trade Byrd and look for a cheaper RF option. I'm going with the latter. Hand over the spot to Jackson 2 Starting pitchers. We'll have Garza and Dempster. The 5th spot could probably be handled with a spring training competition of Cashner, Wells, or other cheap guy in system. 1st Base. Obviously there is Pujols and Fielder. You could bring back Pena, but there isn't much opportunity to backload Pena since the deal won't be as long. Is it realistic to start Fielder or Pujols at a contract the starts at only 11-15M for the first year? That would leave us with enough room to fill out the other spots we need to fill. How much is the new GM going to have to spend, and will he have to severely back load contracts just to fill the teams' needs?

That's a weird way to say the Rays have more stats people in their front office than the Cubs. I read it as Rays stats guys > ALL Cubs Front Office guys, stats and non-stats guys. The Cubs have a small FO from what I understand though. Hell, don't the Cubs basically have one stat guy at the moment? So our new GM will represent a 100% increase of our number of stat guys.

They obviously aren't mutually exclusive, but something will give if a cost increases. Obviously the Cubs aren't going to suddenly have a $75M payroll, but $120-$125 isn't out of the question. And with our current contracts on the books that could exclude us from a big splash this off season. Long run, building within should make us a better franchise that raises even more revenue and spends more in development and free agency and we can have our cake and eat it too.

Psh, going to training camp with the rest of the team and coaches used to get Walter Payton out of shape. Obviously few will ever touch Walter in that regard, but grown men being paid millions should be able to get work in on their own just fine.

I disagree. The Colts could have easily picked Ryan Leaf over Peyton there. The Bulls had their selection made for them - like most NBA drafts. Well this is getting off topic, but thats just not true. That draft was a 50/50 split over who to pick amongst most people (media and teams included). You're re-writing history.

Touche.

Yea, its one thing to not get along with the guy flipping burgers next to you, its another thing when the guy next to you breaks the flipper over his leg everytime he burns a patty and now just walked out the last time it happened. You could use that exact quote to talk about Z and his emotions. He has passed the point of his emotions outweighing his work performance. If this was 2005 Z, I'd be inclined to still defend his presence on the team, but at this point, its kind of like "whatever". That 18M might as well be a sunk cost for next year. Anyways I'm fine with any trade that doesn't extend financial commitment past 2012 or increase cost for 2012. My hope would basically just to be expense nuetral.

Listening to the fans would be just about the worst thing the Cubs could do. BRING BACK THE RIOT BRO!

Because I've accepted that if we can't move him, we'll cut him. And every other team knows it too. I mean, fine we don't have to start at 18M, but its gonna take 14M+ IMO.

I say offer up 18M minus a minimum contract (essentially what we'd be paying him if we waived him and he signed with another team) and take the best prospect(s) anyone is willing to part with. Money wise it will be like we waived him, but we get a prospect, even if its a low ceiling guy.

Who was that? Mike Holmes? No idea I was watching from the 400 section. He was active though.

We need some safety depth too! (although 48 looked good on Saturday)

This talk of making Hendry a scouting guy is ridiculous. I think Hendry would just walk. If we're gonna keep Hendry but get him out as GM, there is only one way, and its up.

Well we aren't exactly deep at LB. He'd basically be competeing against a couple UDFA. May the best man win? Wait- Just realized they are talking about converting him to DE. What? He's like 230 pounds. If they are looking at DL I wonder if Woottons injury could be worse than initially thought.

Enderle looked terrible to me. Granted it was his first pro game, but moving ahead Hanie on the depth? Ugh.

I too would have a concern in the context of too many years, but not overall yearly value. And of course there's really only a few guys worth the real big money.

Lee Evans to Ravens for 4th rounder, moving on...