Year End Thoughts

David Pinto chimes in with some observations on the Randy Johnson trade. Pinto suggests that trading young lefty starters for 40+ year old pitchers is usually not the best way to go. That’s not true for these Yankees:

...the Yankees are no longer in the mode of the early 1990's where they are willing to sit back and let their prospects develop. They want to win today.

In this page’s opinion, the same holds true for the Cubs, albeit for a different reason. The Yankees want to win today because they have effectively an unlimited budget. Why wait for prospects to develop when you can buy All Stars today?

The Cubs need to win today, not because they have unlimited funds (they could, but Trib Corp. won’t approve that), but because they have a window of talent right now that won’t be here forever. Mark Prior, Carlos Zambrano and Kerry Wood are three talents that come together once a generation. You can win multiple titles with these three men. These are talents that cannot be acquired via free agency unless you are the Yankees. The Cubs have them and have to win with them. They won’t be able to replace them.

Then you look at this probability. The likelihood is that all three will not stay healthy for the duration of their careers. Reasonably, you have about a 4 to 5-year window in which you can rely on these three talents.

The Cubs have used two of those years up.

This team is missing an outfield and a bullpen. They have a fading right fielder, a proto-typical centerfield/leadoff hitter who is abusing his talent by trying to be what the fading right fielder was (and earn that level of contract), and no left fielder. They have a setup man who can’t close and not much else that is reliable in the relief corps.

They have reams of talent in the minors, much of it they will never be able to use because of the presence of Prior, Zambrano and Wood.

The Cubs must use these young players as chips to go acquire players like the Yankees are doing with Randy Johnson. This is what kills about Carlos Beltran being traded to the Astros last year. The Cubs could have outbid and won the deal from the Royals, but the Cubs were too stingy with their prospects. The Astros got a playoff slot and the Cubs lost a year of their window.

They must win now. It’s gonna get much harder to win when the Big Three are gone. And without unlimited budgets, these three will never be replaced. If that means giving up too much to get a Juan Pierre or a Billy Wagner, so be it. It would be worse to miss an opportunity.