According to Bruce Levine, the Cubs are meeting to determine the direction of the team. The trade deadline is just 5 weeks away and Gordon Wittenmyer says the Cubs will give the team a few more weeks to see if they can salvage the season.
REALLY?
Let's be realistic here. Even though the Cubs have played a little better as of late, they are still 32-46 on the season and 7.5 games behind the PIRATES, you know, the team that set the record for 18 consecutive losing seasons.
The latest Playoff Odds Report by Baseball Prospectus gives the Cubs a 0.2% chance of reaching the playoffs.
Its pretty obvious to me which direction the Cubs should go and I don't need 3 weeks to figure it out. The problem is that, even though the Cubs should be sellers this July, they don't have a lot of assets to sell. The general feeling around the baseball web is that the Cubs will not be able to move their high salary players (Alfonso Soriano, Carlos Zambrano, Kosuke Fukudome and Aramis Ramirez) and will be left seeing what the can get for the likes of Jeff Baker and Reed Johnson.
The good thing is that, unlike the Pirates, who, due to being a small market team, have had to rebuild through player development and trades, the Cubs will have money to spend after this season. For this reason, it should not take the Cubs 19 years to put a contender on the field. However, if Jim Hendry throws money around like he did in the past, we could be back in this same predicament in 4-5 years.
The Cubs should be shopping everyone on the major league roster excluding Castro and LeMahieu. That includes Garza, Marmol, Soto, Dempster and Barney.
ReplyDeleteThey need to be thinking about winning in 2014, not 2012.
I fear this offseason will be like Supermarket Sweep for Hendry and Co yet again, but I hope they focus on just CJ Wilson. 5 years, $70M is my guess at what it will take to get him on board. I would definitely do that. I would then call it quits for large contracts next season, and honestly just let the kids and unmovable veterans duke it out.
They don't need to fill the team now with large unnecessary free agent signings. Instead, those types of contracts should be handed out when the team is ready to compete and 1-2 guys will push them over the top.
Being a cub fan all of my life - what i would really like to do is see the cubs legitamitely build from within...allow me to elaborate. get rid of all of your "professional major league player" getting "solid prospects double a / triple a" then start playing them. see what you have - then replace the players that arent cutting it with new triple/double a's...ive seen the cubs litterally destroy "future prospects" by bringing them up then putting them down multiple times....its insane --- we have seen florida blow up teams, get prospects and make good drafts and win....why cant the cubs..... just say your going with youth and really do it for a change
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