I see next year as a bridge year to a big offseason after the 2011 season. Fukudome, Lee, Samardzija, Grabow, and Silva will probably be gone. Lilly's already gone, and if we don't pick up Dempster's or Ramirez's option, we will have somewhere between 80-100 million dollars of payroll gone right there.
Assuming we can get a better GM by then, that's a lot of money to work with. Along with some big prospects that should be ready by then (Brett Jackson, Chris Archer, Jay Jackson, possibly Josh Vitters and to a lesser extent, Chris Carpenter) with other pretty big prospects right around the corner (Hak-Ju Lee, Junior Lake, Trey McNutt, Dae-Eun Rhee), and the prospects on the team now (Cashner, Castro, Colvin), we should have a decent core of players to work with.
The Cubs' should have enough spare money by then to sign at least two big time free agents, like Adrian Gonzalez and a top of the rotation pitcher. I'm just hoping for Hendry to spend as least as possible this offseason so we have enough money to sign someone like Gonzalez in 2012. But he'll probably screw it up and spend 15 million on bullpen pitchers this offseason.
