On Windows
Over at Goat Riders of the Apocalypse, ajwalsh wrote a couple of days ago about how the Cubs’ window is closing. Even if the Cubs don’t win a thing this year, I don’t think the concept of a “window” really applies to this team.
The Cubs payroll presently stands at $138 million, according to Cot’s MLB Contracts’ spreadsheet. Most of this year’s team is going to be back next year; Kevin Gregg, Reed Johnson and Rich Harden are the only main contributors on this team that aren’t under club control for next season. A few players become arbitration-eligible and their price tags will go up, but right now the Cubs are obligated to pay out $120 million next season. They could conceivably sign a couple of pieces in free agency if they need to without increasing their payroll from this year, or even decreasing it slightly.
Pretty much everything that could go wrong has gone wrong for this year’s team. Harden has been lousy. Dempster has a broken toe and is out a month. Zambrano went on the disabled list. Aramis Ramirez was on the disabled list for a long time. Bradley, Soriano, and Fontenot have all been very bad. Lee looked washed up for a month before he started hitting. Soto fell off a cliff and then when he started to come around, got hurt. And in spite of all of those things, the team is a little bit over .500 and competing for a bad division.
I suppose the question one needs to ask is, is what happened to all these players representative of their talent levels as they age, or is it a fluke? For Bradley, Soriano, Lee, and Ramirez, the answer is probably a little of both. They’re all getting older and are going to miss time and their skills will decline. But the declines we’ve seen from Bradley and Soriano strike me as fluky. Both of them will finish with disappointing numbers on the season, and everyone will revise their expectations next season down somewhat as a result. But Bradley will be 32 next season and Soriano will be 34. Neither’s career is over just yet. They won’t necessarily be as good as they have been in their careers, but they probably won’t be as bad as they have been, either.
So, assuming that those two, and probably Soto, won’t be as bad next year, things already look a little better for next year’s Cubs team. Factor in the fact that the team is very unlikely to give as many at bats to someone who has been as bad as Fontenot - you could sign someone who will produce better for virtually nothing, and that’s more improvement. I’m not saying next year’s Cubs team will run away with anything, but it will have enough talent to compete, even if there’s not money to go out and get any major pieces.
Going into the 2011 season, the payroll situation changes significantly. Soto, Theriot and Marmol will all continue to get more expensive, of course, but after next year, Derrek Lee’s contract is over, as is Ted Lilly’s. The Cubs’ obligations are down to $96.3 million. Suddenly, the situation starts to look a lot more flexible. The Cubs may be able to go out and get an impact free agent, even if they want to reduce payroll some from where it is now. Of course, they will need to make up for Lee and Lilly’s production, but that’s possible. And for 2012, the team only has $54 million committed - nearly $90 million less than it’s spending this season. With that much potential room to spend, it’s next to impossible to predict what the roster will look like just three years from today. Let alone in four years, when the team only has $19 million committed out of what could potentially be a $150 million payroll.
The Cubs may not win anything in any of those years. They could make bad decisions, or they could get unlucky, or both. The Reds or Cardinals could turn into world-beaters. But the Cubs have the ability to carry a big enough payroll that–even assuming no significant contributions from the farm system–they ought to be able to compete year in and year out, as long as Ricketts is willing to continue spending.
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Bradley will be 32, sure, but the man couldn't stay healthy when he was in his mid-twenties, why would we suddenly expect an improvement in his durability as he gets to the age where guys can be expected to start breaking down? Even if this year's struggles at the plate were a fluke, I'm not buying that Bradley is a difference maker on this team. Which, while we are on the subject, I have always maintained that Bradley is basically a more brittle, angry form of Mark Grace. He's never driven in more than 77 runs in a year (and it's not like he only played on crappy offensive teams either). That is not a run producer and we are on the hook with him for 2 more years.
Soriano is getting nothing but older (I would not be shocked to learn that he was actually 34 three or four years ago), and his skills will continue to wear down. This is like watching Sosa deteriorate all over again. He has ignored coaches his whole career because his talent allowed him to swing freely at balls out of the zone, and lollygag on defense and still manage to be a productive player. As his reactions slow with age and the lingering injuries that now pop up with him on a fairly regular basis continue, there are going to be more stretches where he can do nothing right than the hot stretches that made Hendry wet himself to the tune of $136 million. When guys like Soriano and Sosa start losing their skills, they don't become crafty veterans that can still hurt you with the knowledge they have built up over the years. They just start to suck because they never learned a damn thing because they didn't think they had to. Watching Soriano for the next 5 years is going to extremely painful.
Soto underperformed for years in the minors. He started to crank the ball in 2007 and then broke out in 2008. He seems to be reverting to his pre-2007 performance, whether it is by virtue of his weight, his pot-smoking, or the fact that he was never as good as we thought he was last year. Whatever the reason, there is no real logical evidence to suggest that the good Soto is the real Soto.
That is going to be a lot of dead roster space that will not be easily remedied or replaced, especially when guys like Lilly and Lee will also either be leaving or demanding even more money than they make now.
I'd have to say that the window of opportunity for the Cubs is closing, and may have already closed.
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1) I don't put a ton of stock in RBIs. A "run producer" is anyone who can get on base or drive runs in. Bradley is one of baseball's better players at getting on base.
2) Soriano already got caught lying about his age once. I can't imagine they're not sure of his real age at this point, so I'm not really worried about that. And a lot of that seems to be questioning his work ethic, which goes against everything I've ever heard about him - supposedly he's one of the hardest workers on this or any team.
3) I would imagine Soto is not as good as he was last year, but I don't think he's as bad as he has been so far this year, either. That really holds true for all three players - I'm not saying Soriano or Bradley will return to career norms next year, but I strongly expect that they will both be above-average at the plate. I'm pretty sure players rarely just fall off and stop being productive at all in their early 30s - decline at that point is usually a curve, not a collapse.
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