12/02/2003 09:12:00 AM by Rob

If you trust Mike Kiley, and I do, this ain't good

Today's Cheap One features this update from Mr. Kiley, and if you're 2 la-zee to click the link to see for yourself, here's what he has:

- Cubs have made a THREE-year offer to LaTroy Hawkins
- Will use either Mitre, Wellmeyer, or Sanchez to fill one spot in the pen
- Plan on signing Geoff Blum (?) for the bench
- Plan on using Cruz as trade bait; but for what?
- Cannot find any takers for AGonz, so forget about Tejada
- Plan on re-signing Grud or Fernando Vina (??) to play second
- Nothing on catcher or leadoff hitter, esp. since Luis Castillo returned to the Fish bowl.

Okey-dokey. It DOES look like Derrek Lee WAS the big one, and that just SICKENS me!

First off, Hawkins. Remember all my ramblings about the $25M that could fix the offense?

Well, once you consider the price of retaining Wood and Clement, knock that down to roughly $19M.

Then, throw in Derrek Lee, who is bound to make $5M more than Choi. So $14M.

Suppose they bring in this Blum dude for another milldo. Then, last I heard, Hawkins wanted $10M for two years. I would assume then he would probably want $13+ for three, so that's another $4M.

So now we are down to $9M or so. This does take us out of Tejada territory, unless we could move Gonzalez, and that's not gonna happen.

Finally, we move to the key point of today's thoughts. If we re-sign Grud, then that means the Trib gets to put about $6M back in their pockets, and we can look forward to another year of wasted 2-1 and 1-0 losses by Prior, Wood, Z and Clement. But that would be better than throwing MORE money on the rotting corpse of Fernando Vina! The Cardinals AREN'T stupid! If he had anything left, they'd keep him. The league isn't full of ex-Cardinals coming back to beat their old club.

We have Cruz and probably Farnsworth to dangle as trade bait, not to mention our farm system full o' prospects. It is up to Hendry to figure out which of the prospects we can't afford to lose, and then use the remainder to go after Jose Vidro.

It fits in the budget, it works as far as team chemistry is concerned. I can't help thinking that we wouldn't be better off without Cruz and Farnsworth. The Expos are just WAITING to hear from us!

Do it! NOW!

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