Aramis gone, Dempster exercises his Hendry clause

I gotta say I'm pretty bummed about Aramis testing out free agency. To decline $16MM, to me, says I'd rather take a pay cut and play for someone else than stick around here and play for your sorry ass team. Aramis had provided some of the most clutch hits in the last decade. The one that sticks out to me the most was back in 2008 when he hit a walk off HR against Milwaukee right around the 4th of July. Right then I knew we were a real team, and promptly got swept out of the playoffs. I also remember his lack thereof in the 2008 and 2009 playoffs, but right now we're going to remember the good times. More seriously though, Ramirez was our best hitter for the past five years or so, and I think he was better than Lee except for his near Triple Crown season. The good news about this is it frees up a huge amount of money for new management, the bad news it means we lose the anchor of our lineup for the past few seasons, albeit only when he was healthy. He'll get his money as the best 3B out there, but please god don't sign within the division.

On the other hand is Dempster. The good news with him picking up his option is that he will eat innings as we trudge through next season. The bad news (and there's a lot more of it) is his ERA has gone up the past 3 seasons and jumped almost two full runs from 2008 in his first full year as a starter to last year. His WHIP has jumped from 1.210 to 1.448 and gone up every year in that time frame as well. He's undoubtedly in the twilight years of his career. It's almost certainly his last year with the team unless he wants to take a giant discount after next season, and hopefully he plays well in his contract year and we get anywhere close to a pitcher worth the $14MM he will make. Despite being a year older and his performance steadily decreasing, he can come back in great shape and give the Cubs one more serviceable year on the mound. Unfortunately for him I don't think Epstein's analysis incorporates Harry Caray impressions when he evaluates who to keep in 2012. And even then David Holland is obviously the better choice in that category.

The Hoyer/Epstein reign has begun.