We open our main offseason roster management program with a bit of a blockbuster with the Cubbies:
It might seem odd that, in the middle of a purported rebuild, we swap two younger guys for two older guys. To a point, actual age means very little to me in and of itself. The four main things I look for in a player are talent, cost, future value and suitability.
The outgoing guys are talented and cheap, no doubt. But they fell short in the latter two departments for one reason or another: Harper is still a fair way off being of much use in the bigs, Backman is too one-dimensional defensively at a position we have too many players, Guidry still has some good years left but was taking up a CC slot I feel we could do with having up our sleeve and Sixto is pretty much done.
With Bert we get a slight upgrade to Ron now and three full years of use, one more than we would have had with Ron on his extant contract. UL was a reluctant offload a couple seasons back and we prefer having him as our starting SS and Dale Berra in a roaming IF backup role with Phil Garner and, to a lesser extent, Tim Foli. In the end, the retentions and cash mean the net increase to our payroll from this deal over the next three years is minimal, especially with Wally entering his arb period.
With Kong moving to everyday 1B duties now that Al Oliver is gone, the exit of Soxto leaves us a couple OFs short. We'll be getting one in the Draft as you'll see in a bit, but we still needed a three-slot depth guy and acquire a cheap one via the FA market on a 2+1 contract with an AAV of less than $300k:
Purely a low-cost glove-based depth signing and nothing more. Little chance of that third year ever coming to pass but thought it worth a $30k buyout risk.
Finally, we make a fairly sizeable investment in an SP. Jerry Reuss is in his walk year and won't be renewed and this acquisition will allow us some short-term flexibility and long-term stability in our pitching staff.
Don will hopefully give us exactly what we need from him: multiple seasons of solidly unspectacular mid-low rotation innings.
So just the one transaction ticket left and we'll almost certainly be saving it for a rainy day.