As of now it’s already been a fairly successful offseason. We just signed Japanese player Kosuke Fukudome for four years. Fukudome will play either right field (his natural position) or center, where he have a bit of a hole. The kid we want to play center, Felix Pie, is a great fielder but couldn’t hit a lick last year. If he can climb to even a .250 batting average, though, we’d have a simply terrific defensive outfield with him, Fukudome and Alfonso Soriano.
Fukudome hasn’t played in the US before, so it’s possible he’ll be a bust. I doubt it, though. His power number will recede in larger American parks, but then the guy he replaced, Jaques Jones, only hit five home runs last year. More important, Fukudome actually gets on base, having a very impressive near .400 OBP. Hopefully that will remain the case here. If he gets on that often, we should be in good shape. Plus he’s a good outfielder, which is the area the weak-armed Jones was particularly a liabilty at.
Moreover, we didn’t really overpay for him. Early rumors indicated offers of up to $15 million a year, but in the end it looks more like $12 million. Still a hefty amount, and a gamble, but a reasonable one, considering that Tori Hunter got $18 a year in his recent signing. Moreover, the earlier trading of Jaques Jones and reliever Will Ohman freed up about $6 million off next year’s payroll, so that mitigates Fukudome’s salary, at least in 2008. With the Tribune raising ticket prices a hefty 20% (ouch!), they still have a lot of money to add to the payroll. I’d imagine they’re about at the $105 million mark right now, and wouldn’t be surprised to see that climb to $115 or $120 million, should players they really want become available.
It’s interesting to watch general manager Jim Hendry (sure to be out the door once the Tribune Corp. actually sells the Cubs, presumably in 2008 some time) and manager Lou Pinella work together. Hendry likes to work closely with his managers and give them what they want. This proved ill-advised with Lou’s predecessor, Dusty “The Fraud” Baker. Baker’s tendency to adopt a mediocre journeyman player each year (Jose Machias, the infamous Neifi! Perez) and ill-advisedly overuse him forced Hendry in several instances to trade said player away as the only way to keep Baker from misusing them. Watching the manager and general manager at cross-purposes was not much fun.
In contrast, Pinella seems focuses on *gasp* getting guys who can PLAY BASEBALL, which I assume is the reason Hendry focused on Fukudome as the team’s number one goal this offseason. In severe contrast to Baker, Pinella seems to be jettisoning everyone who plays dumb ball, even when they did a lot of good things in other areas, like the recently traded Jaques Jones. This only makes sense. I’ve been saying for a while now that in the post-steriod era, with homerun numbers magically returning to normal, we’d be seeing a retrenchment to more traditional styles of ballplaying. Pinella seems to agree.
We still have holes. Another starter is almost essential. We could, if one pops up, use a better center fielder, since I’m not certain Pie can hit any better. Although again, having Fukudome on the team, with his very high *gasp* on-base percentage numbers–not a stat Dusty Baker was overly concerned with–mitigates that, and I could live with Pie if we have to. And an upgrade to the infield would be OK, too, although not entirely necessary. Certainly we should be right in the playoff hunt next year, and with more reason than the bad team that beat worse teams this year.
Probably the thing that looks best for us, especially if we make another move or two, is that it took Lou two months last year to whittle the Dustyitis out of the team. We had a simply ghastly record in April and May, and then played significantly better (if not tremendously well) after that. This year Lou has the team he wants and has assembled right out of the gate, and although I don’t have the numbers before me, I’d imagine that playing just .500 ball for the first two months would automatically put up us eight to ten games over where we were last year at that time.
Go Cubs.
