Marmol stays and closes. Howry stays and sets up. Eyre excercises his option and stays. Hopefully, Wood resigns and stays filthy. If Hart doesn’t make the rotation, he makes the pen. Marshall is the long lefty. He’ll need to gain weight, but Eyre and Ward can help. Weurtz stays.

That’s 7 guys. I figure we can fullfil the rest with a combo of our farm guys and possibly some free agent reclaimations. I’m too lazy to look up who’s available. And I’m not including dempster. Jason Kendall killed him and is currently using his scalp as a mop.

Here is a radical idea: Steve Stone for pitching coach. First, it would make him a lot less available to the local media during the season so we would hear less of him and what we did hear would be typical pitching coach pablum and not the “whose picking up the dinner tab” bitch whinery we now got as the Scores baseball expert. Second, we would all know once and for all if his broadcast booth sagacity could be translated into success for a ML pitching staff. Time to put up or shut up Stone Pony. If it doesn’t work, dump him and let him earn a living posing for Playgirl: The Post-Menopausal Edition.

Bullpen Ace – Marmol. He has the kind of filth that can get you out of a bases loaded, no out situation giving up 0-1 runs more often than most.
Closer – a healthy Kerry Wood, with Howry on his off nights
Long Man – Marshall if not starting

After that, most of the changes are matchup driven, so I don’t care as long as it’s not Ohman.

well, if we’re spitballing here, assuming we keep our rotation as is, we acquire mariano rivera as our closer, we get maddox back again (allowing him his choice of pitch for a year or become the new pitching coach) leave marmol as our set up man, and rock all around.

failing that, we make kerry wood gain a mess of weight again, acquire david wells and bob wickman and watch all of the hits get sucked into our bullpen’s collective fat.

in all seriousness, if we were to turn maddox into our pitching coach, i think every single cubs fan would be ecstatic, no matter the record. reacquiring him in any capacity would be a great move for the new owner to show his devotion to the fans and team.

I like the idea of Howry as closer. He’s just good enough to do it and apparently his arm can handle pitching 38 days in a row. Let Marmol pitch as a set-up man. I’d rather see him be used to get the tough outs and sometimes go multiple innings. His arm is also likely to hold up better if he sees longer appearances, but not as frequently.