Cubs to Non-Tender Two
According to Wittenmyer, the Cubs will non-tender 2 of their 5 arbitration eligible players.
Hoyer says Cubs expect to non-tender two arb guys by tonight's deadline with hope of retaining them. Stewart and ...
— Gordon Wittenmyer (@GDubCub) November 30, 2012
The tweet seems to indicate Ian Stewart is one of those two, which leaves M. Garza, J. Samardzija, J. Russell or L. Valbuena as the other. It would seem obvious that Valbuena would be that other, as he's hardly a great loss if they can't resign him for less. I imagine the Cubs would be happy to sign Stewart back for less, but he may very well want to test the market.
Hardball Talk is running a list of non-tenders so far, a list of players the Cubs may look into signing, so keep checking back there.
The only other news of note is that Jessie Rogers will take over the ESPN Chicago Cubs beat from Doug Padilla next season, who is moving over to the White Sox. Rogers was covering the Blackhawks beat, which means he had a lot of free time lately.