Cubs Roster Moves

As spring training approaches, the Cubs are pulling out the heavy weapons to fill out their roster. Jerry Crasnick tweets that the Cubs will sign Kevin Millar to a minor league deal with an invite to spring training.

The Hall of Fame made the right move, albeit the unpopular one, by announcing that Andre Dawson will be inducted as a Montreal Expo. Real Neal did the legwork for me using BP's WARP3 numbers:

Montreal: 43.7 Wins

Chicago: 18.1 Wins

Others: -2.2 Wins

Dawson may have been a more popular player in baseball thanks to his Cubs days, but he was clearly a better player as an Expo. Even if you divide his wins per season, it's 3.97 as an Expo and 3.01 as a Cub, so there's just no reasonable argument for Dawson as a Cub other than a popularity contest. Dawson did prefer the Cubs for what it's worth and says he may don a Cubs hat during his speech to acknowledge the Cubs fans.

Read the rest of this entry>>>

A busy day for Jim Hendry as he's now inked Chad Tracy to a minor league deal. He'll get a chance to compete for a bench spot in spring training.

Tracy hasn't played a full season since 2006 due to a number of maladies,  including microfracture surgery on right knee in 2007. He's also had oblique, groin and back problems. You wonder if he can even play third base or the corner outfield positions anymore.

His OPS+ and wOBA numbers since 2004:

Nothing too exciting here, but it's a minor league deal and Tracy may be more than willing to go to Iowa if he doesn't make the team out of spring training to try and jumpstart his career back to life.

UPDATE: Heyman tweets that it's for $3.3M with $2M in incentives based on games played.

Tim Brown of Yahoo breaks the story that the Cubs have signed outfielder Xavier Nady on a one year deal...dollar amount yet to be determined (likely in the 3-4.5M range according to Levine). Out of the names mentioned so far - Jermaine Dye, Rocco Baldelli, and Johnny Gomes, Nady was probably my preference on the assumption that he's recovered fully from his second Tommy John Surgery. According to Tim Brown, the physical is later this week but Nady's been throwing regularly and without problems. Before we get into the player, let's talk about the injury. Dr. Hecht in the comments dropped this note about having multiple TJ surgeries yesterday.

The basic operation takes a tendon graft from the forearm from a small tendon called the palmaris longus.

On a second surgery they have to take a graft from somewhere else. Other sites are available (the other arm or a tendon from the calf (plantaris) but that means he's gonna have two limbs involved to recovery. I'm not sure why his graft failed but it's pretty unusual for this to happen (expecially when it's not a pitcher). This would make me a bit leary too (Chad Fox alert!) but my guess is he'll be OK.

Read the rest of this entry>>>

The Cubs signed 5 of their 8 arbitration eligible players today.

Baker: $975,000, up from $415,000

Guzman: $825,000, up from $421,500

Gorzelanny: $800,00, up from, $433,000

Fontenot: $1 million, up from $430,000

Hill: $700,000, up from $475,000

That's $4.3M total for those 5, leaving Carlos Marmol, Ryan Theriot and Sean Marshall. The three will file their salary figures today and the Cubs will counter. Marmol made $575,000 last year, Theriot made $500,000 and Marshall made $450,000. Miles guesses Marmol will top $2M, Theriot will go over $1M and no guess on Marshall but I would guess right around $1M. Always a good time to remind everyone that Jim Hendry has never actually gone to an arbitration case ever with a Cubs player...the last Cub to make it that far was Mark Grace in 1993.

Miles also says the Cubs are interested in Jermaine Dye and Rocco Baldelli, but it all depends on the price.

Theriot asks for $3.4M(dear god, just cut him), Cubs counter with $2.6M. Marmol asked for $2.5M, Cubs put in $1.75M, Marshall asked for $1.175M, Cubs offered $800K.

UPDATE #2: Rob Neyer linked up to us and didn't cut my article to shreds. Neat.

UPDATE: Wittenmyer tweets that it's $3M for 2010, then $5.5 in 2011 and $6.5M in 2012...not terribly unreasonable and similar to DeRosa's deal from the Cubs (2.75, 4.75, 5.5M). Now only if Byrd could play as well as DeRosa did his two years with the Cubs.

The Cubs signed outfielder Marlon Byrd to a three year, $15M deal today. As one would expect with a Jim Hendry contract, it's backloaded to give the Cubs more flexibility this season. Specific terms have yet to be released.

Byrd will be penciled in to play center field and if or when he proves he can't handle that on a regular basis, he'll be a perfectly adequate 4th outfielder and the Cubs will continue their center field quest. $5M a year is actually a decent price for Byrd, but depending on the structure of the deal, the final year will probably be impossible to unload when the Cubs realize they're paying a back-up outfielder $6-$8M or whatever it ends up to be.

I gave my thoughts on Byrd earlier, but the cliff notes version is: decent offensive production for center fielder,  terrifying home/road splits over the last 3 years including a major drop in power, walks way too little and at best an average center fielder.

Feel the excitement.

Assuming no more than some bullpen and bench roles to be added, I expect the Opening Day lineup will be:

Theriot, Fukudome, Lee, Ramirez, Byrd, Soriano, Soto, Baker or Fontenot

I also expect Lou to start bitching about needing a left handed bat in the lineup by March 1st. He may flip the 7 and 8 spots and if Soto has a good spring and Byrd doesn't, they could flip as well. Here's hoping Soriano and Soto get their groove back.

Happy New Years Cubs fans!!!

(Give credit to QuietMan for the brilliant headline)

a lot of ground to cover here, let's get to it...

UPDATE: Muskat previews the Winter Meetings and says up to three teams are interested in Bradley. Talks have happened with the Tigers for Granderson but not looking good at the moment. Reed Johnson is welcome back and Mark DeRosa is out of the Cubs price range.

- Mlive.com has a pretty detailed report on the negotiations between the Cubs and Tigers so far for Curtis Granderson. The Tigers wanted Carlos Marmol or Starlin Castro as the headliner in a trade and they've been deemed untouchable (that always works out well for the Cubs). They did do some previous scouting on Jake Fox last season and he could of been of interest as part of the package, but they'll have to get him from the A's now.  Names like Josh Vitters, Jay Jackson, Andrew Cashner and Hak-Ju Lee are thrown around, but they don't quite bring the right mixture of major league readiness and prospectdom that the Tigers are craving.

- A very sketchy rumor of the Cubs having interest in Vicente Padilla.

- Chone Figgins to the Mariners for 4/36 according to Rosenthal. A bit pricey, but such is the cost of dabbling in free agency.

Read the rest of this entry>>>

Few details at the moment but Aaron Miles and Jake Fox plus a $1M are going to the Oakland Athletics for RHP Jeff Gray and two more prospects. Refresh for updates...

UPDATE #1: The other two prospects look to be 21 year old RHP Ronny Morla and 23 year old OF/1B Matt Spencer.

The Cubs added pitchers John Gaub, Blake Parker and Rafael Dolis along with catcher Welington Castillo and OF James Adduci to their 40-man roster. All five were eligible to be selected in the upcoming Rule 5 draft and the deadline was today to add them. Arizona Phil has been keeping track of this on the right sidebar of course. He had Matt Camp on his short list of players he thought the Cubs would protect - rather than Adduci - but he got the other four.

Besides Camp, I would guess that Steve Clevenger, Alessandro Maestri, Thomas Diamond, J.R.Mathes or Greg Reinhard might draw a little interest.

Read the rest of this entry>>>

The Cubs have traded RHP Aaron Heilman to the Arizona Diamondbacks for two minor leaguers, LHP Scott Maine and 1B Ryne White. No one on the Cubs or their fans is probably gonna miss Heilman so I won't waste much space on him, but it was a good way for the Cubs to get something for a guy that was probably a good bet to get non-tendered.

Read the rest of this entry>>>