Odds & Ends: Cubs, Byrnes, Orioles

I would be so pumped to see Willy Taveras get out of town.

I'm not totally opposed to offering Dotel arbitration either, as long as it doesn't impact their ability to fill holes in the offense if he accepts.

The Sox could certainly use the picks, and Dotel has been a pretty solid power reliever for them, but the Sox still have Thornton, Jenks, Pena, Carrasco and Linebrink in tow, so they really can't afford to spend $4-5M on another reliever.

But the Sox don't appear to have much financial flexibility after adding Peavy and Rios, so most of their cash probably needs to be allocated to adding an outfielder and a designated hitter.

"I would be so pumped to see Willy Taveras get out of town.""

I still can't believe that Willy Taveras got a two-year deal after the season he had in Colorado.

At least Aaron Miles had the good luck to make it seem like he wasn't an awful baseball player.

The Cubs have $8 million to spend? It looks like they may spend a coule million (this year) on Grabow, let's say $3 million to be safe. They need to non-tender Heilman, that's roughly $1.6 million, plus whatever portion of Bradley's contract they don't have to pick up, let's say $3 million there too. That leaves them with roughly $9-10 million to work with.

Personally I hope they don't pay Grabow that much, he's descent but there will be other effective, less expensive options available. Bradley's contract needs to be treated as a sunk cost, not eating the money but trading him to whomever will pay the most, and not expecting anything substantial back in return. Heilman seems an obvious candidate to not bring back, he's one of the least effective relievers on the team and one of the highest paid, in all he's not a good use of resources for a team with budgetary concerns.

For that matter they should treat Miles like Bradley and deal him to someone that's willing to pay any portion of his contract. Maybe they save $1 - 1.5 million subtract a player who's not likely to help the team much in any way going forward.

It'll be interesting to see what Hendry has planned but last years offseason doesn't inspire confidence. It was nice to hear that the Ricketts traveled to Boston awhile back to take a look at Fenway, hopefully they picked up some front office advice as well. With their resources if they could create a braintrust similar to the Red Sox they could dominate the NL Central for quite awhile. Here's hoping.

I really hate the idea of the Cubs taking a significant portion of their limited finances in order to spend it on the mediocre John Grabow, who hasn't posted a truly good season of relief since 2004, his ERA's have been exceptionally deceptive.

The Cubs are better off trying to sign a lesser name for $1-2M like Beimel, Shouse, or Mahay, or just forget about adding a second lefty to the bullpen in general, and let Marshall take up that spot.

The Cubs really need to focus on adding an outfielder and a middle infielder, not John Grabow.

cubs could also fill the lefty spot in the bullpen in-house with Gaub.

For Cub fans, it will be an interesting process to change the current situation. I don't want to hear it, either. It is reality. The Ricketts family has so much to do with so many things off the field as well as on it. They have to find a revenue stream for a ball in need of massive improvements. The ball park is 97-98% filled with ticket sales yearly. In a down economy, they have to generate money for all the amenities and improvements in the works. Plus, the payroll that is going sky high, before adding anyone else. Unless fans can fork over a ridiculous amount per seat, per game, they have to be creative. I hope the scouting and player developement side of things get overhauled sooner, rather than later. The fact is that people want Hendry gone, they want contracts like Soriano and Zambrano gone. They can't wave a magic wand and start fresh just because a new owner is announced. It's easy to sit back and say get rid of Pinella, Hendry, Bradley, ec. Those are real dollars someone eats. No way does a new owner come in and fire a guy like Pinella on his last year. No way he jumps in right away and eats Hendry's contract he just got extended. How much can an owner take on in his first year? Again, I wish a few things could be done ASAP, too. Some can, I am not setting excuses. Some will take more time and Cub fans have to accept it. So long as there is progress, I can accept it. It's frustrating sometimes.

I think that there's a big difference between what should happen with the Cubs and what will happen.

Obviously, I believe that Hendry SHOULD be fired, but I certainly don't expect it to happen, not after he built a 98-win team, not after he fairly recently signed an extension.

It's just frustration over all of the awful contracts that Hendry has handed out, and the fact that practically all of them include no-trade clauses, so the team's completely hamstrung when it comes to payroll flexibility.

And I agree, if Hendry makes mistakes, this will be his last offseason. There's way too much money being put into this team for the process to determine how to spend that money to be so flawed.

If the Cubs are going to settle for a GM that prefers more "old school" manners of evaluation, then bring in Kevin Towers, at least he has a good understanding of how to manage a budget.