Wood signing shouldn't excite Cubs fans
Comments (...)To many fans, the high point of the 2012 calendar year for the Cubs probably happened Friday. Yeah, the Cubs are now peaking in January instead of April.
Radio announcer Pat Hughes introduced players during opening ceremonies of the Cubs Convention. The last name he called off was Kerry Wood, who'd been a free agent until, it seemed, just minutes earlier. Predictably, the crowd went wild.
As perhaps the most jaded member of the Cubs fan base, I groaned inwardly when reading the news on Twitter. Can someone loan me a time machine so I can fast forward to a day when we have something more substantial to celebrate than the signing of an aging middle reliever by a team that could flirt with 100 losses during the coming season?
There is one thing I'll say about the Wood signing — it means Theo Epstein's first offseason will produce at least one player whose name the average bleacher bum recognizes. Baseball nerds like me may have heard of Chris Volstad, David DeJesus, Travis Wood, Paul Malholm, Alfredo Amezega and Andy Sonnanstine, and we're certainly familiar with Anthony Rizzo, but that doesn't mean Joe Six Pack is the same way.
Epstein and company added (and subtracted) a lot of players before retaining Kerry Wood, and they all fit one (or more) of three adjectives — unproven, mediocre or bad. None are a lock to do anything of merit for the Cubs, ever. Most are likely to contribute forgetable performances to a losing Cubs team or two and be discarded after that.
Yet every transaction Epstein has made, except for the retention of Kerry Wood, has done one thing very well. Each has fit into his plan, which is to build for the future. With the exception of Rizzo and possibly of Volstad, none of the guys that have been added this winter can be classified as a building block, but none cost the Cubs much of anything, either in terms of players or in terms of dollars.
Epstein didn't need his Yale education to figure out that he'd inherited a mess from Jim Hendry. It seems obvious to me that he had a few goals for this offseason. One was to move what he terms "sunk costs" off the payroll, and another was to find cheap, short-term alternatives. The acquisition of young talent obviously is and will remain an aim for the organization, but I think Epstein knew better than to think the Alfonso Sorianos on the roster would bring back premium prospects.
Some payroll was freed up due to Aramis Ramirez and Carlos Pena leaving in free agency, and Epstein got another "sunk cost" off the books — and Vostad's young arm in return — by trading Carlos Zambrano to Florida. So far, moving Soriano remains a work in progress, and it looks like the Cubs will hold onto Ryan Dempster through the completion of his 2012 option year, but there is light at the end of the Cubs' once-congested bad-contract tunnel.
I'm guessing even Epstein is surprised by how well the Cubs have done at adding cost-effective hole-pluggers in his first several weeks. DeJesus and Malholm both signed what the stathead community rather overwhelmingly approved as good contracts for the team. Volstad and Wood are young enough that they're years away from free agency. The only way they can make big money soon is to pitch well enough that they get it in arbitration, which of course the Cubs would welcome.
Then there is Rizzo, who is the crown jewel of Epstein's first Chicago winter. Normally I wouldn't be in favor of trading young pitching for a first baseman coming off a .141/.282/.242 debut. But Andrew Cashner is coming off of an injury-plagued season and projects as a reliever, not a starter, going forward, and Rizzo is plenty young and talented enough to bounce back from his horrible cup of coffee last season with the Padres. He's still regarded by many as one of the 50 best prospects in the game. He's a big get.
The Cubs insist that Rizzo will start the season at Triple A, so you won't likely see the results of that trade for awhile. You will see the results of many of Epstein's other moves, and they probably won't be real pretty. That doesn't mean Cubs fans should look at this offseason as a failure. On the contrary, we may look back at this winter as an organizational turning point for the Cubs — and not because they re-signed Kerry Wood.
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