At this point in the season, people begin bandying about talk of the various Free Agents that will be available in the upcoming offseason.  While we all have hope that this season will be the one we've all been waiting for, that doesn't mean that we can stop planning for next year.  I'm sure Hendry and the FO have been doing just that, even with the uncertain ownership situation.  This post and related discussion to follow (I hope everyone chimes in for a while) is intended to recap the Cubs contract/payroll situation, and discuss the options available for 2009 and going forward. 

Contract info is from Cot's- http://mlbcontracts.blogspot.com/2005/01/chicago-cubs_112114177768677294.html

First I will list the salaries for players under contract or club control (guaranteed renewal, or arbitration) for next season.

Starting Pitching:

Z: $17.75M in 2009 ($17.875M in 10&11, $18M in 12, $19.25 vesting player option in '13)

Lilly $12M in 2009 (and $12M in 2010)

Marquis $9.875 in 2009

Harden $7M club option (I am considering him as under contract, it has been previously discussed that there is a loophole where he could demand a trade as a player w/ 5 years service which he will have following this year...but there is no way that scenario actually happens.  I think it was just something where the blogger who wrote about it needed something to complain about, as they were used to always criticizing Hendry, and couldn't admit that he has done a great job recently.  Tangent over.)

Rich Hill, if he ever can get the magic back, would be a minimum contract next year as well.  Other rotation options for next year discussed below-

Bullpen:

Marshall: I love him as a starter personally, especially because he should be making about $400K next year.  Don't know where to find service time info updated to this year, but at the beginning of the year he had 1 year and 132 days, so he needed to be in the majors for nearly the entire year to get arbitration.  Pretty sure he was in the minors for enough time that he won't hit arbitration, I don't know how much he would even make in arb- it wouldn't be terrible if he did but would be more expensive than $400K for sure, maybe about $1M?

Cotts: arb-eligible, he's been solid so I'd say he will get a raise from $800K, probably something around $1M or slightly over?

Wuertz is in the same boat as Cotts, not nearly as good this year though. He is currently at $860K and I'm guessing he'll get about that (there's some %-max for arbitration pay cuts I think?), Cotts sucked in 2007 and got the $800K for 2008 so that's probably a good guess for Mike.

SHARK- First glance looks like he'll get about $2M next year, I shouldn't try to read anything else into his contract as it is just weird. 

Gaudin- He'll be somewhere around $2M.  Note that Gaudin, Cotts, and Wuertz are all under Cubs control in 2009 and 2010. 

Marmol- he'll be slightly over 2 years service time.  $400K give or take the cost of a few of Soriano's suites. 

Guzman- if he is able to pitch, he could be a great bargain for the minimum. 

Hart- also an auto~$400K guy. Ascanio and Piggy also would qualify if brought up to the majors, and those two along with Billy Petrick are the only other 40-man bullpen arms under contract...well except for Harben who has 0.000 service time and i think that he may FINALLY be removed from the 40-man following this season.  One would hope.   

Also, I'm guessing Randy Wells could get a look as a pen arm for the minimum, depending on our needs he could be servicable middle relief at the cheapest possible price. 

Hitters:

Soto: oh yes. i love the thought of a top C making less than a half mil a year in 2009 and 2010. And under club control for 3 MORE years. 

Theriot: also making the auto-renewal amount for one more season ($428K in 2008).

Blanco: $3M club option ($300K buyout) in 2009. Also whoever put the award bonuses in Hank's contract must have an outstanding sense of humor, the thought of Hank White as an All-Star or Silver Slugger is hilarious, and I hope he is the WS MVP and gets that additional $150K.  Hell, I'll send him my entire net worth (which is significantly less than this amount) if he hits the game winning hit in the WS clincher.  Also I will have likely had a heart attack from seeing him come up to the plate in such a scenario, so I better go write a will or something.

DeRosa: $5.5M in 2009.

Dome: $11.5M in 2009 ($13M in 2010, $13.5M in 2011)- I really really really hate the backloading of this contract, unless Dome does what some 2nd year Japanese imports do and really figures out MLB in year 2; he only was paid $6M this year so hopefully we get 2x the value next year. 

DLee: $13M in 2009 & 2010.  

Soriano: $16M in 2009, $18M in 2010-2014.

A-Ram: $15.65M in 2009 ($15.75M in 2010, $14.6M player option in 2010, $16M club option)- The player option is actually his option to void contract after 2010 and become a FA, don't know what the odds of him doing so would be. 

Cedeno: arbitration eligible in 2009, so he'll become a bit more expensive if retained.

Fontenot: auto-renewal, 2 more years pre-arbitration, which is nice.

Pie: Apparently we still have this guy.  He has accrued very little service time, and we will see if that changes.  All other minor leaguers such as Fuld, HOFF, Jake Fox...basically everyone who sucks but gets a horde of fans from a brief cup of coffee glory, they all have mere days of service time.  As none of these players will likely ever reach even the 3 year barrier, this is not really too important to know, but I mention it anyhow. 

 So you stuck with me through all of this...what does it all mean? 

Before you count the club control guys, we have $108,275,000 currently on the books for next year.  This is Z,Lilly,Marquis,Harden,Lee,ARam,Sori,Dome,DeRo- 9 players. Notice this is almost as much as our current payroll, even with several FAs coming off the books.  Backloaded contracts...it is strange that we should hope for inflation in this case, at least baseball inflation. 

Adding in my rough estimates for Soto, Theriot, Fontenot, Cedeno, Marshall, Wuertz, Cotts, Gaudin, Marmol, Shark, Hart, Pie, and Hoff leaves us with what we'd have without signing or trading anyone.  This would fill 22 of the 25 roster spots and mean Hoff replaces Ward; Marshall is #5 starter, Pie in CF, no backup C yet, and we have 6 relievers at this point with Wuertz/Hart replacing Wood/Howry...a downgrade even if HR Howry continues.  The cost of all this?  Somewhere around $118M, and if we pick up Blanco's option to fill the C spot we're looking at an additional 3- $121M.

Especially if Pie is allowed to play, we will re-up Reed, at something like $2M for a year.  He'd be worth that, but anything more and I'd have to say no. 

Resigning Wood would be nice, but that should be dependent on his asking price.  Someone could throw money at him, and I'd think a 3-year deal or so might be necessary to get him back- I just don't know if we could do a 3/30 without moving some serious $$ off the rolls.  Dumping Marquis would make this more feasible. 

Thinking about it like that, there doesn't seem to be any way we could resign Wood and Demp- anybody have any guesses at the market for Dempster?  My guess is 4/$60M, hope we can get a slight discount and make it a deal...but I am flexible as to whether we should resign him or not.  Hopefully Wellington Castillo can fill the backup C spot for cheap, saving us $2.7M after we buy out Blanco, but you never know how that will work. 

So after all this rambling, my initial conclusions are that:

We owe a lot of money next year.

We can't afford to let anyone but Pie play CF (or Pie/Reed platoon)

Drop Hank White and let him bask in the glow of his World Series MVP as a retiree.

I hope the Starting Pitcher market continues to go crazy, because my ideal scenario there would be: Dump Marquis, Sign Demp for a not-absurd amount.  Although those two might kind of be impossible to have the necessary market so that both occur...i guess one or the other is good enough.  If we can "trade Demp for Marquis", we would then have Z/Demp/Harden/Lilly/Marshall

Then any additional cash would be directed towards relief, as the other obvious hole would be Wood's departure.  This is where someone like Ceda/Guzman could help, because if one of those two is back of the bullpen quality, having Marmol/Gaudin/Shark(who would probably start in AAA stretching out?)/(Ceda/Guzman) would give us 4 back of bullpen relievers, with Cotts also being a very solid lefty.  Then Hart/Wuertz/Wells/whatever could clean up, and bullpen could be solid. 

Adding Wood would be great and vastly improve the pen as well.  But I'm not gonna overpay unless it's an area of need...so we'll have to play it by ear. 

Cliff Notes: We have massive payroll commitments for 2009, but are in decent shape overall and there should be ways to make the necessary additions.  Let's discuss and I hope this can be a long-lasting and intelligent discussion on any and all contract issues!