2010 Winter Meetings Day One

Hard for me to argue with anything on Sickle's list. I still like Lee a little more than Jackson, but Lee may never have the power hitting of which Jackson.

I love it "Remember the cubs are extra active & entertaining after they’ve been fed"

At first, I thought he was talking about different Cubs........

And I'll add that I'd like to see us offer Cla Meredith and George Sherrill NRI spots to fill out the bullpen.

Can probably get him cheap anyway, since his other option is unemployment?

Oh boy!

To be a possible front runner for another rag-armed pitcher!

Question is: will this one be Wade Miller, or Chris Carpenter?

Any GM who trades anything for Loney, other than a bad contract should be fired the following day.

Mark Grace had, I believe, the most hits in Major League Baseball during the decade of the 1990s.

I wouldn't go that far, but I wouldn't freak out if they got him, either. I'm just afraid he's worth more to them than he should be to us (Hendry).

The best OPS+ he's had in a full season is 103. He ain't no Mark Grace. Maybe Bill Mueller without the 3rd basemen's glove.

Submitted by Tony S. on Mon, 12/06/2010 - 2:18pm.
And here's my biggest concern about Loney.

If Hendry only has like, at most, $7m to spend, everyone's reporting that Loney should make around $5m through arb.

With Hendry's "I don't like arbitration" stance, that means if they get Loney, I'd expect a 3-4 yr deal, heavily backloaded, in order to pay him less in 2010....?

AZ Phil, somebody? Thoughts, or am I worrying too much??

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TONY S: I suspect the Cubs 2011 payroll budget is probably right around what they actually spent on salaries in 2010, and that was about $132M. So if that is the case, then after the arbitration cases are settled Hendry should have about $13-$14M in 2011 payroll left to spend on a 1B, a RH set-up man, and either a mediocre "innings-eater" SP or a fragile surgery rehab project SP.

It's possible that Hendry could perhaps realize some additional 2011 payroll if he can find a taker for Kosuke Fukudome (even if the Cubs have to eat 2/3 of Kosuke's $13.5M salary). If Hendry can do that, he'd probably have about $18M to spend.

Also remember that every time the Cubs sign a FA they save about $335K in payroll, because a player who would have been on the 25-man roster making the MLB minimum salary ($400K+) gets bumped down to the minors and would get the lesser minor league split salary ($65K+) instead. So if Hendry can sign three free-agents, the Cubs save about $1M (3 x $335K) in 2011 payroll. So if Hendry can trade Fukudome (even if the Cubs eat $9M of Kosuke's $13.5M salary) Hendry could have as much as $19M to spend (again, that's presuming the Cubs 2011 payroll budget is approximately $132M, although it could be less).

The fact that Baker's best year with the team was his first totally goes over his head. The way to win is to keep your 65 win managers...just look what happened when Baker left, oh whoops, they won the diviision again. Based on recent past, the way to win is to hire a new manager, we just haven't been doing it often enough. If we hired a new one every year, we'd challenge the Braves' division winning record.

I don't doubt that Dusty and Ronny were actually good friends. But, to be historically accurate, Ronny turned on Dusty at the end just as much as everybody else. If I had buckets of time I could go back through MLB audio from 2006 and find out what exact day Dusty stopped being the "fine manager of the Chicago Cubs," relegated to "manager of the Chicago Cubs," but then again, subtlety was never exactly Ronny's strong suit.

Chris Davis is 24, Loney is 26

Are they paying him 3/44? Or is it a different guy with the same name?

(j/k, seriously though, that's been all over for a while, somebody was going to do it...)

Just saw that.... F*ck, seriously??

Is Martin going to start taking steroids again?

Well, regardless of Hendry, Padres GM worked for Epstein previously, and according to the same report you left out, Epstein had been "pursuing" Gonzalez for a year and a half.

Ohhhh Sweet Lou don't get trapped in the "kicking the tires" mentality.

The Cubs have built a nice little history or going, "Ohhh hey Cubs fans we tried to get (insert big name star) but he just wanted to much money."

"We tried real hard, but we aren't going to go compromise our values or our plan. So with that we have signed who we think could be just as good! We now introduce (insert half ass/probably closer to washed up than good players name.....you know guys like Cliff Floyd and Milton Bradley)."

Its a broken record, Cubs are always in on everyone and some how always come up short. Its because 99.9% of the time its complete propaganda bullshit from the Cubs front office to make you the fans think they are actually performing their jobs. Thats why the signing of Soriano was such a shock and it had nothing to do with putting a better team on the field.

Carpenter for Alonso?

Greg Maddux sat in on meeting with Pena's agent, Scott Boras.

Maddux is a former Boras client.

Per Levine radio report.

"Wrongway says WSox have signed ex-Cubs Daryle Ward"

Why? As minor league spare parts, I assume?

That'd be awesome. 2017 Nationals could be an expensive disaster.

can it be filtered so you only get, say Buster Olney when he has "cubs" in his feed? That wouldn't be too bad.