We had heard rumors for a couple of weeks that the Cubs were “close” to re-signing lefty reliever John Grabow to a two year contract, and today, they did, and we found out how much 70 innings of sub 3.50 ERA will get if you’re lefthanded.  Apparently it’s $7.5 million.

Provided that Jim Hendry is the guy chasing you with a pen and a contract.

I actually think Grabow is kind of good.  He’s a nice piece to have in a bullpen.  But at a price.  And that price is not $3.75 million a year.  Especially when your new owners have told you that the payroll doesn’t get to go up too much this year.

Especially when you have a history of overpaying…well, everybody, and your job might not be there for you next year if you keep that kind of thing up.

So the only thing I can surmise is that either:

a) Jim Hendry has no clue what players are actually worth on the open market, or

b) He wants to get fired.

I can pull out stats that show that Grabow isn’t a Mike Remlinger-esque reliever who though being left handed isn’t effective against left handed hitters.  Because in his career it is true that lefties have a slightly higher batting average than righties do against him (.263 to .254), he’s far more likely to strike out a left handed batter than a right handed batter (3.24K/BB v. lefties — 1.45 K/BB v. righties — 194 K’s in 518 at bats v. lefties — 196 K’s in 957 at bats v. righties) and most importantly his on base average and slugging averages allowed are lower against lefties than they are righties.  (OBA .329 v. LHB, .345 v. RHB — SLG .378 v. LHB, .395 v. RHB).

So that’s the good news.  The dopes who will yell, “He’s WORSE against lefthanders than righthanders!” will be wrong.

The bad news is that he’s not that great against either.  He’s a solid, average, big league reliever.  The kid of guy you can win with in the middle of your bullpen.

But there’s no way in hell that he’s worth $3.75 million a year on the open market.  There will be relievers hanging out at Home Depots in Arizona and Florida hoping that a pitching coach will pull up in a pickup truck during the first few weeks of spring training.  And the guy who is assembling the Cubs, with a severely limited ability to add payroll is doing shit like this?

This is when people who advocated the Cubs hire a vice president with actual baseball experience to be the guy in between the Beaver and Hendry have a point.  They said that Hendry needs a boss who can tell him, “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

Here’s a better point.  If your general manager needs somebody else to tell him when he’s about to piss $7 million up a rope, you need a new general manager.

The thing that people in baseball, writers and fans will tell you they like about Hendry is that he’s aggressive.  He figures out what he wants and he charges after it.  After years of the ubercautious Andy MacPhail it was a nice change of pace.  One of MacPhail’s mantras was to never work out a contract until you had to.

It was prudent when nitwits were screaming that he should sign Kerry Wood to a big contract after his rookie year, just because.  I still remember Rob Goldman throwing a tantrum on WGN one night because MacPhail had said he was “years away” from having Ed Lynch (guh) work out a long-term deal for Wood.  Now, I’m sure Goldman was preoccupied, what with his pants around his ankles and his AOL Messenger lighting up with the love thoughts of a 13 year old girl (who turned out to be a 42 year old sheriff’s deputy), but that was the mood of some Cubs fans at that time.

WE ALWAYS LOSE GOOD PLAYERS!  PAY HIM!  PAY HIM!

Of course, Wood wouldn’t throw a pitch that next season because he blew out his elbow in spring training. So MacPhail was right.  Often times, waiting is the best thing to do.

As long as you don’t just wait, but you eventually do something.  And that something isn’t take 37 days to finalize a trade for Fred McGriff.

Hendry has none of his old boss’ passivity in him.  He figures out what he thinks the Cubs lacked the season before and he storms after it.

“We were too damned slow last year.  I’ll send three of my best pitching prospects to Florida for Juan Pierre!  Then I’ll get a big bag of cash and throw it at Rafael Furcal.  Then we’ll be fixed!”

“We were too damned right handed last year.  I’ll get Milton Bradley and Aaron Miles and let little Fonty play second.  Shit, this is going to work!”

If there ever had been a time to sit back and wait for the market to sort itself out it was last year.  There were three huge free agents and then a bunch of “meh”, and there were a lot of teams with no ability to add any payroll whatsoever.

The smart teams sat back and waited for the bargains to start dropping in their laps.

The Angels got a pretty good lefthanded bat for almost nothing when Bobby Abreu couldn’t find a job.

The A’s got a good shortstop for less than that when Orlando Cabrera couldn’t find one.

The Dodgers signed Orlando Hudson for a song.  You get the idea.  The Cubs could have signed those three guys for about what they gave Milton Bradley on average for three years.

That contract is one of the worst in baseball history.  You think I’m exaggerating.

Milton Bradley had never had more than a one year contract in his life.  No team was willing to give him three years last offseason and he only had one offer from a team of two years (the Rays offered him two years and $13 million).  Hendry gave him two years, with an easy option for a third at a total of $30 million.  Who the fuck was he bidding against?

He gave him an extra year and $17 million extra.

As bad as the Alfonso Soriano and Barry Zito contracts are, other teams were making long-term, big money offers when the Cubs and Giants upped theirs and “won” the player.  Both contracts have turned out worse than most feared, but at least there was something resembling a shred of a reason for their terms.  (They weren’t good reasons, but they were at least reasons.)

Not Milton.  Nobody was offering him that deal, or anything close to that.  You can argue that Hendry should be fired for offering him more than two years and $15 million.  And that’s without the hindsight of the disaster that Milton’s 2009 season turned into.

It’s like going to a car lot and seeing a car with a $25,000 sticker on it and having the salesman tell you, “A guy just left who is willing to pay that for it.”  So you counter by offering to pay $87,000 for the car.

This offseason figures to be more of the same.  Teams are cash-strapped.  Players saw what happened last offseason and are scared shitless about being teamless when spring training starts.

And Jimbo is off to a great start.

But it’s not like we haven’t seen it before.

In the winter of 2005 he gave Jock Jones a three year contract when no other team offered him more than two, and that team was the Royals and Jock told them he didn’t want to play there.

In the winter of 2006 he gave Jason Marquis a three year contract when no other team offered Marquis a second year.  None.  Nobody.

The best thing to do this offseason is to wait.  At least on free agents.  A trade might pop up that you’d be nuts to pass up, but this offseason, with the lack of any top notch free agents that fit the Cubs need or payroll, you have to wait, and you have to maximize the money you have to spend.  This is not a good start.  This is a horrible start.

This is the kind of start to an offseason that says, “I don’t know what I’m doing.”

UPDATE: I hadn’t hit “post” yet and I found out that the Cubs had sent the bobbleheaded Aaron Heilman to Arizona for two prospects.  Now that’s good.  That will clear a little money on the payroll.

Aaron Heilman sucks, and all that stuff.

It still doesn’t mean that John Grabow’s worth is $3.75 million per year.

But yeah, I’m glad (and I’ll bet Lou is ecstatic) that Heilman is gone.