i wanted the picks more than wood…

becuase it is extremely obvious that we could not afford him even on a one year deal….

absurd.. i am kind of upset. but as i posted elsewhere this is good for kerry.. now that other teams dont have to worry about losing a pick he is the most attractive closer… go get that paper kerry

I’m pretty much baffled.

Gregg is going to pull a ‘Bob Howry’, Ceda is going to pull a Ricky Nalasco and Wood is going to have a stellar year closing out ballgames, JUST LIKE HE DID FOR US LAST YEAR.

Putting the whole ‘Kerry Wood not going to be in a Cubs uniform’ deal aside….. we don’t even get the draft picks as a little compensation.

Ridiculous.

Hendry has overspent massively on medicore to above-average players. If Lee, Soriano, Marquis, and Fukudome were earning a salary that was even remotely correlated with their production level, the Cubs would have been able to keep Wood with no problems.

Hendry caused this, and he deserves all the criticism he’s going to face when this house of cards collapses.

AND he may have accepted arbitration which would limit the team’s exposure to one year. AND if he rejects arbitration we et compensated? I think this was a no-brainer and to top it off our brainless decision maker is quoted abut how he needs experienced relief pitcher.

Maybe Pinella will be right and Wood will perform poorly in 2009 but it’s the wrong decision. The GM has to set the tone here because Wood can help this club and he’s been one damn fierce competitor for this team and its fans. If i am choosing between Pinella and players like Wood then I would have canned Pinella the day after the season ended if that’s what it comes to.

Maybe Pinella will be right, but to me it underscores that we have a GM ho does not set the tone for this club. We need a lot of luck to win this way.

i was pretty sure there would be a gentlemans agreement that wood would not accept if offered so we could get the picks.. appearently we could not get that assurance

Why couldn’t have that been worked out?

… none of this would have happened had Jim Hendry not had a guiding principle of spending like a drunken sailor on shore leave.

… by saying that there were other priorities.

We can still work out a deal with Woody. My guess is by the third or fourth week of January.

He’s gonna be lights out, the next Krod. Im sure they had the same reservations about him replacing Percival a few years ago, but that worked out well….their stats are fairly similar through their first 2 years as strictly set up men

It would have been nice if the spending spree had resulted in at least one star player, but, there you go.

imagine the first game blowing HR he gives up

he didn’t choose to come here.

But if he turns out to be a 2009 Bob Howry you can expect that he’ll need a few bodyguards.

But I’m not sure this is exactly a scientific sample of the feelings of average Cub fans.

I suspect that most people will notice that Gregg is wearing a Cubs uniform. As Worf noted, that should be good enough for all of us. Hell, if we can cheer for Jim Edmonds…

I certainly hope that does not happen. That would be childish. If the guy is in a Cub uniform on opening day you cheer for him just like the other players in a Cub uniform.

Wouldn’t we have to be leading late in a post-season game for the bullpen to be a factor? (Sorry, I had to point it out, pls don’t hate me, etc.)

I want Wood back as much as anybody, but there are other issues that need addressed too.

if Jim Hendry is shopping for a LH bat – does the $ for that bat require dumping Marquis first?

In other words, do we have 10 M to spend or 10 M + whatever we don’t pay Marquis next year?

Or do we have nothing left and can’t make any moves until payroll is cut?

Things like this do happen. Who’s to say how many other teams have done things like this with players? We just don’t know.

and until we know how that $ is spent (assuming it is), it’s hard to tell if this will be a net positive or not…

but using Wood as the sacrificial lamb is garbage.

In fact, Jim Hendry may not know until ownership is decided.

Meanwhile there are plenty of things about the Wood situation that stinks beyond just the monetary explanation.

This may not be on Jim Hendry at all. It has been speculated and it must be answered if this is on Lou not wanting Wood back.

Kerry did say that he thought this was coming all year long. There was no reason to think it was coming back when Fukudome was hitting and it didn’t look like we’d need to add another LH RF.

and I think as we see the Cubs now unable to afford someone like Wood or an upgrade in right field, it becomes clear that Hendry is fiscally inept and only knows how to spend money. Last year was not money well spent. It was not a choke job. It was, for the second year in a row, an offense not meant to succeed in the playoffs against top notch starters. It is a team with not enough left handed hitting. It is an all-or-nothing offense and offenses like that do not tend to do well come playoff time.