Big Mike: The Cubs’ Off-season May Start Soon

So now the Mariners come into it, AJ. SI.com is reporting that Seattle and the Cubs are in serious talks about swapping two of the ugliest contracts of recent years, with Milton Bradley heading to the Pacific Northwest and Carlos Silva bound for Wrigley.

Hungry Jim Hendry might even save his job if Silva comes here and does anything. I mean it — the 30-year-old righthander, who has never been anything more than a barely adequate major league starter, could post a 6-8 record with a sub-5 ERA and Hungry Jim would be hailed as a genius. Which would be the ultimate irony because it was Hendry’s rashest decision ever — to bid against himself and give Gameboard a three-year, $30M deal — that got us into this mess in the first place.

I have to think that new Cubs’ boss Tom Ricketts is waiting to see how Hungry Jim extricates himself from this mess before making any decision on his future. If the Cubs, for instance, have to eat the final year of MB’s contract ($12M), then Ricketts must fire Hendry. In trading for Silva, who’s owed $24M over the next two years as opposed to MB’s $21M, the Cubs won’t have to send any cash to the M’s. The deal alone will be seen as a coup, addition by subtraction. As long as Silva doesn’t bludgeon Lou Piniella to death or isn’t caught fondling 12-year-olds, the Cubs will emerge winners in the deal.

Best of all, should the deal go down anythime soon, Hungry Jim and the Cubs can actually commence working on the 2010 team. Fingers crossed.

Big Mike: Making A Cadillac Payment On A Chevy

John Lackey is good. That’s as far as I’ll go. As I wrote earlier, I like good, smart pitchers. I’d rather have a staff filled with competent, cagey starters than one top heavy with an ace and a near-ace followed by a bunch of question marks.

Theo gave Lackey $17M/year for five years. The Boston boss can afford the investment even if Lackey breaks down or suddenly becomes more hittable. The Sox and the Yanks are the only two teams in baseball that can make such a deal with a pitcher of his caliber and not be financially hamstrung for a half decade. More power to Epstein and Brian Cashman.

Had Hungry Jim Hendry or Kenny Williams made the deal, though, I’d have called for their scalps.

Let’s take a look at your new mound star. He has excellent control, rarely gives up a home run and has a decent strike out rate. I’d be worried, though, about his hit-ability. For his career, Lackey has given up 9.1 hits per nine innings. He’s not dominating. At $85M, I’d want dominating. Then again, I’d never make an $85M investment in a pitcher in the first place, even if he gave up only seven hits per nine.

It seems that Lackey hit his peak in 2007, when he was 28, and now has settled in as a nice, plus pitcher. His value isn’t in being the untouchable force of nature that Pedro Martinez was. It’s that, with him, the Boston rotation is becoming full. It’s solid from 1 through 4 with only joker being Clay Buchholz, in the back-end spot. I agree with you — I’d turn the kid over to the highest bidder in a heartbeat in exchange for some more offensive firepower and then look for a number five guy at a bargain rate.

Here’s where I’ll give Theo even more credit. He was reported to be interested in Rich Harden. Thank your lucky stars Harden signed with the Rangers for one year plus a mutual-option second year with a $1M buyout. He’ll make at least $7.5M for 2010 and could, conceivably, earn $20 for the full two years. He ain’t gonna make the 20. Harden’s got electrifying stuff but his control blows and he kills bullpens. I’ve got to think that Theo knew that even better than I do and his purported interest was nothing more than smoke being blown by Harden’s agent.

Instead, Epstein gets a good, solid, dependable righthander. I like the additition of Lackey, AJ, I just don’t like the amount being sunk into him. But, If you’ve got it to sink, you may as well sink it.

Speaking of sinking, the Cubs are still looking for someone to take Milton Bradley off their hands.

Big Mike: A Crazy Idea

Oh AJ, Wrigleyville is wringing its collective hands right now. Fans, reporters, wags, wits and even teething babies are wailing because Milton Bradley hasn’t been traded to the Omsk Oblasts yet.

When he was suspended for the rest of the season in mid-September, it was automatically assumed Bradley’d be exiled forthwith. He’s one of the two most hated Cubs in my memory, the other being the non-hitting, nightlife loving, bird-flipping Todd Hundley. To hear some people describe the situation, you’d think the Cubs will be a shoo-in for the World Series if only they give Gameboard the pink slip.

True. There are more than a few who this moment are calling for the Cubs to forget about trying to trade him — never mind about trying to get a face-saving return in talent for him — and simply fire the fucker. That $21M Tom Ricketts and his sibs owe him? Heck, it ain’t nuthin’ but somebody else’s money.

Monday on Bleed Cubbie Blue, a poster opined that the Cubs ought to keep Bradley, inspiring some 450 comments as of this typing. Most of them were divided over whether they wanted to string up Bradley or the poster. Hungry Jim Hendry also came in for a bit of a tongue-lashing, as if he were intentionally trying to drive Cub-fandom to the precipice by not giving his worst free agent signing ever a free ticket for a doomed Space Shuttle ride.

Like all reactionaries, these panicky Cubs fans are blaming everything on one whipping boy. Lucky Bradley isn’t Mexican or Lou Dobbs would have jumped on him with both feet as well.

Milton may be the first player in history to unite the stat geeks and the “character” lovers. No matter that Bradley ranked second among Cubs regulars last year in On Base Percentage, the holiest of holies among sabermetricians, none but a lunatic or a masochist is calling for Lou Piniella to pencil him into the lineup next spring.

This time — and this one time alone — you and I are going to agree that stats be damned. I don’t care if Milton Bradley gets on base at a 50 percent clip next year (something only five players have done in a season since 1901), he’d better be doing it for anybody but the Cubs.

Oh, come to think of it, I’d take him if he reached base half the time. That kind of production would endear him to me even if he’d voted for McCain/Palin in 2008. Bradley’s not gonna post a .500 OBP, though. He may be a professional hitter, but he’s no Barry Bonds.

The upper limit of his OBP probably would be around .390 or even .400. Nice numbers. Beautiful numbers. Not worth the pain in the ass Bradley inevitably will be.

All that said, at risk of branding myself a masochist or a lunatic, there is one circumstance under which I’d keep Bradley.

It’s my considered non-professional opinion that the man is mentally ill. AJ, believe me, watching him interact with umpires, his manager, his teammates, fans and the press over the length of a year has convinced me that Milton Bradley is certifiably troubled. People want to dismiss him as an asshole or a bad man. These are easy ways out.

One night last season, while the Cubs were at bat during a road game, the TV  camera focused on Bradley sitting on the bench. He wasn’t due up that inning and the game, if I recall correctly, wasn’t all that important or riveting. You might expect a ballplayer with ten seasons’ experience in the big leagues to know that that would be the time to relax, mentally and physically, to conserve his energy for the coming pennant race (which the Cubs, improbably, still thought there’d be).

Yet Bradley sat on those wooden slats as if he expected a Johnny Wadd-model plastic dong to arise out of them and ruin his whole evening as well as the muscle tone of his anal sphincter. No lie. The man was a rubber band pulled way too taut. It looked, even on the TV screen, as if every muscle in his body was flexed. His eyes darted madly, not focusing on anything, not seeing the field or the human beings sitting near him. His look was that of the speed freak or, more likely, the madman.

On those rare occasions when he was videotaped answering reporters’ questions in front of his locker, those eyes darted around just as wildly, never focusing on a specific questioner, apparently only on alert for the man with the knife whom he was sure was going to plant it in his back.

Maybe Milton Bradley is too mad to play the game of baseball or even to hold any kind of a job. But pro sports is notoriously tolerant of personalities who’d be fired from any other kind of a job. Dick Allen wouldn’t have lasted a week in an office. Jimmy Piersall would have been homeless. Ray Lewis would be serving a ten-to-life rap — instead, he’s an All-Pro. Maybe Milton Bradley’s demons exceed those of a chain-smoking degenerate gambler with a death wish, a victim of a nervous breakdown or a man who opted to celebrate his appearance in a Super Bowl by participating in a murder.

He may be mad as a hatter (although his sins haven’t turned me against baseball the way Ray Lewis’s have football). Bradley hasn’t got enough control of his emotions to avoid injuring his knee severely just trying to get close to an umpire so he could argue with him. He’s destructively impulsive enough to be thrown out after his first at bat as a Cub in Wrigley Field. He’s burned more bridges than any ballplayer I can think of, including Piersall and Billy Martin.

But what if his demons can be controlled by drugs? What if Hungry Jim Hendry decides to convince Bradley to see a shrink as opposed to trying to convince another team to take the problem off his hands.

What if Bradley has social anxiety disorder, like Rickey Williams? Paxil helped Williams. Would it help Bradley? How do we know Bradley isn’t battling panic disorder, like Jim Eisenreich did? What if he’s bipolar? Would Zoloft, Prozac Weekly, or Wellbutrin help? Or even some pharmaceutical cocktail?

Maybe the guy needs help as opposed to a trade. What a story it’d be if Bradley, under a regimen of antidepressants and psychotherapy, got on base 40 percent of the time next year, helping the Cubs make the playoffs. Nobody would call him an asshole or a bad man then.

Big Mike: Hermida’s A Smart Pickup

Further proof that Theo Epstein is brilliant — the acquisition of Jeremy Hermida.

 

I love this kid. He’s been playing in a park that kills him. Epstein bought low and there’s next to no risk. If he doesn’t work out, release him. I’d been hoping Hungry Jim Hendry would pick Hermida up for a couple of years now. But, no, he was too busy showering Milton Bradley and Aaron Miles with millions of dollars.

 

Jeremy Hermida may or may not work out for the Red Sox, but his acquisition is the difference between the Carmines (two World Series victories in the last six years) and the Cubs (zero World Series victories since proto-humans descended from the trees in the African savannah some four millions years ago.)

Big Mike: Anything Left In The Wells?

As I wrote yesterday, I love this time of year in baseball. I’m already over the Cubs‘ latest disappointing season. Anything can happen now. The Cubs have just as much chance to play in the 2010 World Series as a dozen other teams.

And, as I wrote yesterday, step one in getting there is dumping Milton the Monster. Now, who in the hell wants to take on a guy who’s owed $21M over the next two years and has a rep for alienating everyone who comes within 10 yards of him?

Maybe someone who needs his very potent bat and has an even more onerous contract they want to shed? How about the Blue Jays?

I mentioned Canada yesterday as a potential destination for Milton Bradley. Now comes a report from Toronto (via Bleed Cubbie Blue) that the Blue Jays and Cubs just might be talking about a deal wherein Bradley and centerfielder Vernon Wells swap uniforms. Blue Jays accountants would be ecstatic with the deal because, according to reporter Bob Elliott of the Toronto Sun, the teams would split the difference in salaries owed the two. Wells has $107M due to him over the next six years, the remainder of  a ridiculous extension ousted general manager JP Ricciardi signed him to three years ago. Subtract Bradley’s $21M from that and you have $86M — meaning Toronto would pay $43M of Wells remaining salary.

Wells, for a brief shining moment, appeared to be on his way to becoming one of the top ten players in the game. His 2006 season was a marvel: he hit home runs, was an all-star, won the Gold Glove and earned a few MVP votes. Ricciardi rewarded him with a deal worthy of one of the ten top players in history.

Then Wells became very pedestrian. Many of his woes could be blamed on nagging injuries. Even his fielding has suffered. The Hardball Times ranked him the third worst fielder in the game, relative to position, this past season. Yuck.

That deal, among many other sins, got Ricciardi fired.

Wells, though, might be a decent risk for the Cubs. Throw him in Wrigley Field’s more cozy centerfield, meaning Kosuke Fukudome goes back to his more natural position in right, and maybe Wells doesn’t look so bad. Plus — and I’m remembering Andre Dawson’s move from Montreal to Chicago — maybe playing on natural grass will restore the spring to Wells’ legs.

baseball-reference.com, using its Batting Similarity Scores metric, compares Wells most closely with Reggie Smith through ages 29 and 30. Smith, it must be noted, turned in several sweet seasons after he hit 30. Why not take a chance on history repeating?

Like I say, anything can happen.

Big Mike: Milton The Monster

Wrigleyville (the community of fans as opposed to the neighborhood around the ballpark) is abuzz with speculation about whom the Cubs will get in exchange for one Milton (no middle name) Bradley of Harbor City, California.

Shoot, I thought all mass murderers or assassins had middle names. Isn’t that what Milton Bradley is? For all the bile spewed in his name since his very first game at Wrigley Field as a Cub, Bradley has to rank among John Wayne Gacy and Richard Franklin Speck as a local villain.

Of course, he’s brought much of the odium on himself but the rage expressed at Bradley is alarming. I mean, jeez, he’s just a ballplayer, albeit one with a paranoiac streak and who can’t control his rages and alienates just about everyone he’s ever shared a shower room with. It’s not like he lied to the country to whip up war fever or is mad because taxpayers won’t pick up the tab for an eight-figure bonus he thinks he should get.

Still, don’t count me among the Bradley defenders. (Then again, are there any Milton Bradley defenders anywhere?) I’m one of those numbers-crunching stats geeks old-time baseball fans like to pillory. I’ll always look to a player’s BAbip, VORP, WARP2, OPS+, UZR, and occasionally his pH level rather than fairy tale attributes like “character,” “ability in the clutch,” and (ugh) “scrappiness.” I have no idea what a “gamer” is but I do know how many Runs Created each player on the Cubs roster was responsible for in 2009. And Milton Bradley is one fine ballplayer based on any metric you can name.

That said, there’s no place for him here next year. If you can find anybody who’ll disagree, then you ought to play the lottery.

Gameboard is owed $21M for both the 2010 and ’11 seasons. The other 29 GMs in MLB know Jim Hendry has to exile Bradley from Cubville. So you might think Hungry Jim is over a barrel. He may have to eat up to $10M of Milton’s remaining pay and accept some other team’s albatross in the bargain. You may be right. Yet, there’s always someone who thinks he can handle the other guy’s problems, especially if that problem is good for a plus-.375 on-base percentage. Might someone be willing to swap some usable talent for him?

The Mets are said to be sick to death of both Jose Reyes and Carlos Beltran. The Rays are stuck with Pat Burrell’s big contract. The Blue Jays may want to rid themselves of Vernon Wells’ bloated contract. Then there are the Red Sox who always are on the lookout for hitters who produce, leaving others to fight among themselves over the Boy Scouts.

Some say Hendry ought to agree to a deal with the first team that offers to take Bradley off his hands, no matter the return. But reporters like Ken Rosenthal and Bruce Miles claim their sources tell them Hendry already has received more than courtesy calls regarding the wayward rightfielder. Even if Hendry takes his time to sort through whatever competing offers there may be, he has to close the book on Bradley before or at least early on in December’s general managers meeting. The Cubs absolutely cannot stand still as they did in the 2004-05 off-season while trying to exile Sammy Sosa. Not only did they get next to nothing back for a man who’ll waltz into the Hall of Fame, they were unable to pull the trigger on any other signings that might have actually improved their chances the next season. In the weeks leading up to Sammy’s foregone departure, other teams snapped up the likes of Beltran, Magglio Ordonez and even Roger Clemens. I’m getting aroused just thinking about any of those three on the Cubs.

Anyway, Hungry Jim has about five weeks, max, to peddle Bradley. If he doesn’t do the deed by then he may as well hang on to him, which means a lot of unneeded clubhouse drama next season. Whereas clubhouse drama doesn’t necessarily preclude the winning of the World Series, as the mid-70s A’s or late-70s Yankees proved, it doesn’t make the task any easier. And, it must be said, the 2010 Cubs will not compare favorably with either the of those champs.

Had I magic in the snap of my fingers, I’d put together a package of Carlos Zambrano, Milton Bradley and Sean Marshall for Beltran and Reyes. Everybody’s happy that way — the Mets get rid of a couple of guys whom they (wrongly) consider lacking and they get the stud pitcher and outfield masher they so crave. The Cubs, meanwhile, wave bye-bye to their most villified player since Todd Hundley as well as a guy whose mound blow-ups are becoming increasingly intolerable. Plus, they get a brilliant switch-hitting leadoff man shortstop and slugging centerfielder, neither of which they’ve had since the Fillmore administration. Sigh.

Will it happen? Hell no! But that’s what I love about the hot stove season — I can pretend it might.

Big Mike: Big Name? Big Deal.

Okay, the Cubs are gonna announce today that Rudy Jaramillo is coming aboard as the highest-paid hitting coach in the game. North Siders are now forming lines in front of the Wrigley box office for their 2010 World Series tix.

As I’ve indicated before, Hungry Jim Hendry loves — loves — big names. In the tight little world of hitting coaches there is no bigger name than Jaramillo’s. Will his hiring mean a goddamn thing in the standings?

Jaramillo has been the batting pedagogue at Texas since the early 90s. His charges have won 17 Silver Slugger awards and four MVPs. Bruce Levine credits Jaramillo with jump-starting the careers of Sammy Sosa, Mark DeRosa, Gary Mathews Jr., and Milton Bradley although, if memory serves me correctly, Sosa had a fair season or two with the Cubs before he closed out his career with the Rangers.

And therein lies my point. When you traffic in Big Names, the hyperbole has to match — even if it’s utter bullshit. The truth is, no one has any idea what effect Jaramillo has on hitters other than to make sure they don’t lose their way from the dugout to home plate.

What I do know is that the Ballpark in Arlington (could they possibly have come up with a more generic name?) is one of the top hitters’ havens in the bigs. According to ESPN’s 2009 MLB Ballpark Factors study, the BinA ranked in the upper quarter of parks in terms of increasing run scoring. And it ranked third only to Angels Stadium and that new telephone booth in the Bronx in home runs.

In addition, three of those four aforementioned MVP plaques were copped by Alex Rodriguez and Juan Gonzalez, neither of whom, I’d wager, was in dire need of a hitting coach.

So methinks the beckoning fences of the Arlington playlot and the innate abilities of his pupils had as much or more to do with the Rangers’ bat-swinging success than the soothing encomiums of one Rudy Jaramillo.

I also suspect that if the Cubs score one run more in 2010 than they did in 2009, Jaramillo will be hailed as the second coming of James Clerk Maxwell. Such are the rewards of possessing a Big Name.

Big Mike: My Heart Bleeds Only For Me

I agree 10,000 percent with your last point. And I wonder if I hadn’t made myself clear in my Nomar post. Hendry was jobbed on that trade. Not necessarily because of anything he gave up (primarily Francis Beltran — ugh! — and Brendan Harris — meh) but because he thought he was getting Nomar Fucking Garciaparra, the great shortstop.

What he really got, as I implied, was nomar garciaparra the fairly decent hitter and liability in the field.

My feelings on Hungry Jim have changed through the years. That’s probably because he’s the most Jeckyll and Hyde GM I’ve ever seen. Within his first two years on the job, he flushed Todd Hundley off the roster and swindled the Pirates and Marlins out of corner infielders who each can be reasonably argued as among the greatest ever in Cubs history at his position. Hendry exiled the drunken, bitter, impotent Son-of-the-Sainted-Randy to LA for Eric Karros and Mark Grudzielanek, who played key roles on the 2003 division champs. That summer, he shipped a minor league catcher, a grossly overhyped Triple A second baseman and an eminently forgettable major league infielder to Pitt for Aramis Ramirez, whom the Bucs had soured on for reasons known only to a team that has spent the last 17 years under .500. A few months later, he sent Hee Seop Choi to the Fish for Derrek Lee.

So for a brief shining moment, I hailed Hungry Jim as a cross between Branch Rickey and Isaac Newton.

But then…, but then, but then. Hungry Jim, the big boss man of the Cubs allowed Johnnie B. Baker to cripple Mark Prior and Kerry Wood. Hendry signed everybody and his brother on the team to big, fat, long-term, no-trade-clause contracts and now he’s stuck with them. He showered Alfonso Soriano with gold through 2014 (when he’ll be 38 years old, unable to run around the mound — much less the bases, and still incapable of laying off the outside curve.) He allowed Baker to miscast LaTroy Hawkins as a closer. When the time came to dump Sammy Sosa, Hendry did everything he could — up to and including releasing security video of Sammy ditching the last game of the season — to destroy whatever trade value he had left. After losing out on free agent Rafael Furcal, Hendry panicked and traded a trio of decent minor league arms for the indecent Juan Pierre. Then he upended the roster of a team that had just won 97 games to sign the Lee Harvey Oswald of Major League Baseball, Milton Bradley (I didn’t do what they say I did…, I’m a patsy!)

Every night before I go to bed, I pray to the god I don’t believe in to make Jim Hendry suddenly want to up and join the Peace Corps.

Yeah, you’re right. To say, as you did, that the Cubs have not shown savvy in acquiring players (even allowing for the aforementioned glaring exceptions) is to utter the understatement of the century. And, yeah, I’m jealous as hell of a guy for whom 95 wins isn’t enough.

That said, let’s get down to cases. Is it possible for the 2010 Cubs to win anything near 95 games? Phe-e-e-e-w!

I’ll go so far as to say I’d bet the new home deed that they won’t. They can, though, win 85 to 92 games — anything within that range might well be enough to cop the NL Central. And, as I’ve said many times before, once you get into the playoffs anything can happen.

They need, as even a teething baby knows, to get rid of Gameboard. When Bradley was suspended for the remainder of the season in September, players literally lined up to tell reporters how much they approved of his banishment. That’s unheard of. It’s also prima facie evidence they see his mental illness (trust me on this diagnosis) as an unneeded distraction.

If they can palm him off on a sucker, they need to find a second baseman, a shortstop and a centerfielder. Yuck. Conventional wisdom holds that the core of a good team is up the middle. And if Geo Soto doesn’t lay off the post-toke munchies, they’ll need a catcher, too. Yikes!

Did I say 85-92 wins?

Well, yeah, I did. They have a terrific starting staff, even if it is nominally led by the puerile, bullying, prickish knucklehead, Carlos Zambrano. Ted Lilly really is the ace of the staff (his signing is another example of Hendry as Dr Jeckyll.) Ryan Dempster is a decent number three and Randy Wells appears to be a nice end-of-the rotation guy. Sweet Lou will choose between Tom Gorzelanny, Sean Marshall and Milo Samardzija’s bastard son for the fifth starter spot — not a bad choice to be faced with.

The bullpen looks fine as long as Hendry can re-sign lefty John Grabow. Carlos Marmol now seems to be taking to the closer’s role better than the set-up man’s. Angel Guzman and a slew of live-armed kids (Berg, Caridad and Stevens) will fill out the pen.

The entire staff ought to keep the team ERA hovering around 4.00, which should be good enough as long as the Cubs can find a way to score runs. If Soriano and Soto bounce back nicely, D-Lee doesn’t suddenly grow old before our eyes and Aramis simply does what he’s been doing for seven straight years, that division title is no pipe dream.

My fingers are crossed that — in lieu of some shocking blockbuster deal — Ryan Theriot and Jeff Baker can man the keystone without embarrassing themselves. As for centerfield, well, um, Hey AJ, you got a mitt?

Big Mike: My Heart Bleeds For You, AJ

Poor AJ. His boys won 95 games in 2009. Apparently they were the wrong kind of wins. Or something.

I would have sawed off my right pinkie for 95 wins (not my left pinkie, though, since I’m trying to learn how to play the guitar.)

Are your fears for the Flaming Hose really warranted? Ortiz’s RBI were “quiet”? Bay “put up terrific numbers but… he’s a bit overrated”? Papelbon “gave up walks or hits and often had difficulty finishing batters off”? Ellsbury “can be pitched to by better pitchers”? Sheesh!

Whaddya want 105 wins?

I suppose the answer yes. Who wouldn’t want 105 wins? But no one — repeat, no one — can construct a team with the expectation that they’ll win 105. Not even the colossus that occupies new Yankee Stadium won 105 (of course, they did knock off 103 opponents but let’s not quibble.)

Have the Red Sox and their fans become — dare I say it — too demanding? It seems a short half decade ago, il Nazione del Calzini Rossi would have been thrilled to string up 95 fascisti. Now, 95 wins — bah! A bag of shells.

Were I the majordomo of the Sox, I wouldn’t worry too much about Papelbon’s walks or hits (his WHIP stood at a fine 1.15.) If Bay’s putting up terrific numbers, I’d say, Keep it up, Jason my boy. As for Ellsbury’s problems with better pitchers? Um, I’d guess the reason those guys are “better pitchers” is because they get most guys out, period.

I would fret a little about David Ortiz. He’s now 34 years old and weighs 230 pounds — at least that’s what the Red Sox web site claims. His bathroom scale might dissent. His best years are like a big ass — behind him. Then again, most AL teams would drool over the prospect of their DHs putting up mediocre Ortiz numbers. The Boston club really ain’t got much to worry about does it?

Sometimes fans and even GMs can overreact. Take last off-season. After the Cubs had led the National League with 97 wins, they went out and jumped in front of that speeding bus from LA. Fans boo-hooed as if the Cubs had gone sub-.500. Lou Piniella suggested that maybe the team needed a left handed bat to counteract teams loading up with righthanders against them — as the Dodgers did. Hungry Jim Hendry promptly turned over 40 percent of his roster, mainly in an effort to afford the $30M/3-year deal he bestowed upon Milton Bradley.

Pardon me while I have a seizure. Gurgle, gulp, ack-ack-ack. The memory of the Bradley signing is now a lesion in my brain that occasionally causes electrical disturbances among my remaining several hundred neurons. Ah — all better now.

Hendry dumped Mark DeRosa, Kerry Wood and Jason Marquis, all in an effort to squeeze Gameboard into the budget. The 2009 team could have used a nice fifth starter like Marquis (who, by the way, went to the all-star game.) They would have benefitted greatly from DeRosa’s 23 home runs, especially in Aramis Ramirez’s absence. Wood? Well, he stunk the joint up with the Tribe but he still was better than the execrable Kevin Gregg.

Be careful what you wish for, AJ. What’s Theo Epstein to do? Look for a centerfielder? Yeah, you could do better than young Jacoby. You could grab Carlos Beltran from the Mets and hope he thrives in Fenway. But at what cost?

Should Theo let Bay or Drew walk? Whaddya gonna do then? Play Joey Gathright and Rocco Baldelli?

In terms of planning, a good GM walks the tightrope. He (or she — Kim Ng, I hear, is in the running for the Padres job) can’t rely on an unchanging roster year after year. He also can’t swap his assets like so many baseball cards.

The Big Mike Philosophy of Building a Baseball Team, taught at the better universities around the country, holds that the GM should build his team with an aim to win 90 games. If your team is a consistent 90-game-winner, you’ll be battling for the division title every single year. And while the team may occasionally dip to 84-78, it’ll just as often rise to 96-66. That’s definite Champagne territory.

Now you may say 96 wins is fine for the Minnesota Twins or the Colorado Rockies but the Red Sox share a division with the Yankees. Okay. Let the Yanks spend $200M every year and win the East. It’s no dishonor to sneak into the playoffs via the Wild Card. In fact, the Red Sox of 2004 rode that ticket to their first World Series win in 10,000 years (that ancient triumph over the hated Jericho Palms!)

Just because New York assembled an all-star team and danced to the division title doesn’t mean Theo (and you) should panic. Theo (and you) should start planning for a future without Big Papi but the current lineup built around Pedroia, Bay, Youkilis and Martinez (assuming everybody’s re-signed) is scarier than a Glenn Beck commentary.

Boston is a lock to win at least 90 in 2010. Even if David Ortiz’s bat continues to soften and Josh Beckett’s back continues to throb, the Red Sox, along with the Yankees and Angels, will be the cream of the league. You worry too much.

Me? I’ve got Bradley in right field, Carlos Zambrano on the mound, and a century-plus of losing on my mind. I worry.

Big Mike: The Nomar Trade

MLB Trade Rumors, one of my favorite sites, talks today about the Red Sox shortstop hole since the team traded Nomar Garciaparra to the Cubs in 2004. According to mlbtr, the Cherry Hose have used 19 shortstops in the intervening years. Yikes.

The Nomar deal was Jim Hendry at both his best and his worst.

I heard about the deal on the radio on a Saturday afternoon, the day of the trading deadline, moments before a game against the Phillies. The Cubs, of course, were scuffling to return to the post-season after they, gulp, had come within five outs of the World Series the previous year. In fact, Sports Illustrated’s baseball preview issue that March had featured Kerry Wood on the cover along with the heart-breaking prediction, “Hell Freezes Over: The Cubs Will Win The World Series!” The dopes.

Nomar Fucking Garciaparra! I could not believe my ears. He was one of the holy trinity of shortstops of the late 90 and early aughts. He, A-Rod and Jeter. The three had revolutionized the position. Oh sure, there’d been slugging shortstops before — our very own Ernie, Milwaukee’s Yount, the Tigers’ Trammell, and the Orioles’ Ripken, but they were anomalies, outliers. No team had a right to expect its shortstop to slug 30 homers or hit in the .370s. But Nomar and his fellow Short-sketeers did that kind of thing and more.

Nomar Garciaparra. The Cubs were nine games over .500 that day. They stood in second place 10 games behind the surprising Cardinals. There was still plenty of time to catch the Birds or, failing that, to win the Wild Card. All the Cubs had to do was make the post-season. With that starting pitching — Wood, Mark Prior, Carlos Zambrano, Greg Maddux and Matt Clement — the Cubs would scare the poo out of all comers in the playoffs. The shortstops prior to the deal had been Ramon Martinez and Alex S. Gonzalez. Nice fellows, I’m sure. Loved by their families. Upstanding citizens. Horseshit shortstops.

Jim Hendry smelled blood that Saturday and arranged the mother of all four-team trades. Working with Theo Epstein in Boston as well as the Twins and the A’s, Hendry snagged Nomar Garciaparra. The team was complete. Not a hole in the lineup.

When Hendry sets his sights on a target, he’ll move heaven and Earth to get him. When Johnnie B. Baker seemed to have fallen out of favor with the Giants at the end of the 2002 season, Hendry bided his time as all the other candidates he’d interviewed for his vacant manager’s position took jobs elsewhere. No one could say if the Giants would retain their World Series skipper. But Hendry still waited. Some ten days after the Series ended, Hendry and Baker held a press conference together.

After the Cubs had stunk up the joint in 2006, finishing last with a 66-96 record, Hendry identified Lou Piniella as the man who’d lead them out of the darkness. Lou, who was 62 at the time and happy doing occasional color commentary for Fox Sports, was persuaded to come aboard thanks to Hendry’s silver tongue and TribCo’s fat wallet.

Then Hendry spied Alfonso Soriano on the free agent market. Possessed of rabbit speed and Paul Bunyan power, Soriano was the jewel of the 2006-07 off-season. Hendry outbid the Angels and others for his services over dinner one November night. He told Fonzie they wouldn’t leave the table until the player had shaken on a deal.

Last off-season, Lou hinted to Hungry Jim that the Cubs might want to add a little left-handed thunder to the lineup. Whereupon Hendry inked Milton Bradley, who’d just turned in the season of his career.

It’s refreshing to have a Cub honcho who’s greedy, impatient, unafraid to take a gamble,  and doesn’t care how much he has to spend to bring a winner to Wrigley. And Hendry is nothing but greedy, whether it comes to Jack Daniel’s, crullers or big-name outfielders.

On the other hand, with the arguable exception of Lou, each of the aforementioned coups looks like the result of a man picking answers out of a hat. Yeah sure, Baker was known as a players’ managers who could handle moody superstars but he also had a rep as a destroyer of young arms. The core of the team Hendry entrusted Dusty with was that young pitching staff. Oops.

Soriano was hoped to challenge the 40-40 barrier every year for the foreseeable future when he became a Cub. But his are a young player’s skills and he was already approaching his mid-30s.

Bradley, of course, has long been known as the loose cannon of the big leagues. Yet Hendry still exposed him to the pressure cooker that is Wrigleyville. That big left-handed bat, impaired by several mini-nervous breakdowns this past summer, produced a single home run and a paltry nine RBI.

Even the Lou hiring can be second guessed. Piniella remade the team in his image, sure, refashioning the attitude in the clubhouse in the process. But when the Cubs backslid this year, the old goat seemed as interested in the proceedings as a freshman in algebra class.

So, yeah, the Bosox have burned through 19 shortstops since they exiled Nomar to the North Side. But they knew that despite his big name, Garciaparra was about finished being Garciaparra. He was rapidly and dramatically becoming just another ballplayer. They found a willing taker in a man who loves Big Names.

The Red Sox, though, have won the World Series twice since that deal. The Cubs? Well…, you know.