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The open checkbook has been closed on the North Side of Chicago.  A more cost-effective and potentially crippling strategy may have been put in place.

Today the Cubs traded Aaron Miles’ lifeless corpse and the able bat of Jake Fox to the A’s for prospects.  The only apparent motive for the trade seems to be to save on the funeral costs for Miles’ career and save the $1.7 of the $2.7M that the Cubs were going to have to pay a guy who looks more like Mickey from Seinfeld than a baseball player.  The Miles contract was an albatross when it was signed and getting rid of him may be just as damaging.

In order to get the A’s to bite at the deal the Cubs tossed in Jake Fox, a flawed but talented player who can hit the hell out of the baseball.  Fox has value.  In return the Cubs received a 28 year old reliever with a whopping 30 innings of major league experience.  This is the only player being added to the 40-man roster out of the deal.  The other prospect of note is a 23 year-old utility outfielder/corner infielder who is according to the Tribune, “a more athletic Fox”.  Mind you this kid was in “A” ball this year and won’t be major league ready for a couple of years.  For a Cub team with a rapidly closing window this seems like a step back.

Jake Fox will take his bat to Oakland next season. Fantasy players take note.

Look, I consider myself a Jake Fox fan but it was clear his future was not on the North Side.  Jake Fox is built for the American League and the DH spot; it’s where he was destined to end up.  I love his bat but he wasn’t going to ever have a spot on a team that has bad contracts all over the outfield and good players at the corner infield spots.  His glove isn’t good enough to play the field everyday.  The point is, I was prepared to move on without Jake Fox.   I wasn’t prepared to give away a useful player to simply be rid of Aaron Miles.  That is not the recipe for success in any professional sport.  Cheap homegrown talent is at the core of championship teams in all sports.  The troubling trend here is that the Cubs have gone from spending their best young talent to acquire players to spending them on ridding themselves of crappy free-agent signings.  The problem with this team is that there are crappy free agent signings all over the outfield.  If this isn’t an indictment of the General Manager than what is?

The short-sighted fiscal responsibility over young talent trend isn’t limited to the Miles/Fox trade.  The Cubs didn’t offer Rich Harden arbitration on the off chance he would accept arbitration over signing with another team for a muti-year deal.  As a Class B free agent the Cubs would have received a draft pick as compensation.  Instead they are looking at internal options for the rotation spot (Could be a “shit or get off the pot” year for Jeff Samardzjia, methinks).  The Cubs of recent vintage would have not been afraid to roll dice on an arbitration decision and the opportunity at a sandwich pick in the upcoming draft.  With a farm system that is bereft of talent, any pick is valuable.

Let’s not forget that the Cubs also have the business of excising the boil that is Milton Bradley’s contract.  The Cubs have said repeatedly that they will not eat all the money in the contract to get a trade done.  That may just be posturing in attempt to not eat the entire deal but these recent moves make you wonder.  Will the Cubs be willing to throw in  prospects in lieu of spending additional dollars?  Do they even have any more prospects anybody would want?

The Cubs organization needs to strike a balance.  They cannot allow themselves to patrol the no-mans land that is having no prospects while trying to cut spending.  This team has so much money spent in long-term deals that they don’t have any choice but to throw good money after bad in hopes they finally find the right formula.  This is the world that you have created for yourself.  Until Josh Vitters and Starlin Castro are ready to take the Cubs into the next decade you need to spend, spend, spend. I assumed that Mr. Ricketts understood that when he bought the club.

In a separate but completely related story; ticket prices are going up at Wrigley Field next season.  The beer better be cold.