Operation Overhaul, Take III

So where do the Cubs go from here?

Perhaps the luckiest guy in this whole deal is general manager Jim Hendry. Not only does Hendry get to hire his third field manager, he also gets to oversee his third rebuilding program within a decade.

This wasn't supposed to happen.

At the start of the 2007 Cubs fan convention, Hendry boldly proclaimed: "We're going to get good, and we're going to stay good."

Underwritten by a bottomless checkbook, Hendry and his bosses spent themselves silly and came up with a couple of division titles in 2007 and 2008.

But the one thing that's eluded Hendry has been sustainability, whether it was after the 2003 division title or the '07-08 run.

The Tribune Co. money ran out after 2008, but the Cubs can't really use that as an excuse, considering the team that just left town, the San Diego Padres, has a player payroll about $100 million less than the Cubs' payroll for this year.

Not only that, but some of the contracts Hendry and his bosses gave out (Alfonso Soriano, Carlos Zambrano, Kosuke Fukudome) continue to haunt the Cubs and their new owners and will continue to do so.

So let's take a scatter-shot approach to what lies ahead for the Cubs, as they try go from what amounts to a first-year expansion team today (40 percent of the roster is made up of rookies) to a respectable team once again:

Getting to work: Perhaps realizing his good fortune, Hendry said after trading Derrek Lee that it was time to stop feeling sorry and get moving on the future.

"The overall situation we're in kind of makes us all somewhere between miserable and sad every day," Hendry admitted.

Moving forward this season, it appears the Cubs will do what they did in the second half of the 66-win 2006 season and concentrate on scouting potential free agents and trade targets.

"We're going to have some conference calls soon," Hendry said. "We've got some meetings here later in the week in the front office with Oneri (farm director Fleita) and Tim (scouting director Wilken), and we're going to start mapping out some strategy for August and September and as we go into the winter.

"We just have to get our heads up and start grinding it out and accept the fact that everything we do forward here has to be conducive to what's best for us going into the off-season."

The money factor: In November 2006, the Cubs gave Soriano an eight-year, $136 million contract, simply because they could. Jason Marquis got three years and $21 million.

After 2007, Fukudome got four years and $48 million. Even as the money was beginning to dry up, Hendry found $30 million over three years for Milton Bradley.

The days of free money are over, and the Ricketts family's got the debt burden to worry about from the purchase of the team.

The Cubs will not reveal what their player payroll will be next year, so as not to tip off the competition. They were at about $145 million to start this season.

About $96 million is tied up for next year in Soriano, Zambrano, Aramis Ramirez, Fukudome, Ryan Dempster, Carlos Silva, Marlon Byrd, John Grabow and Jeff Samardzija.

Healthy raises for arbitration eligible players Carlos Marmol, Sean Marshall and Geovany Soto will get the Cubs well over $100 million. Youngsters Starlin Castro, Tyler Colvin and others will play for however much over the minimum the Cubs decide.

So there should be enough money for Hendry to add a starting pitcher and at least one reliever. The Cubs would like to move Fukudome, but they'll have to pick up a sizeable chunk of his $13.5 million.

Maybe then, they can get a bat.

Building from within: The Cubs are getting a good look at their farm system now. Hendry has said the Cubs are three to four moves away from being contenders again, and the Cubs may need the system to produce to hold the outside procurements to that number.

"I used that number, basically, if we look at it realistically, if we feel some of the young kids have come up and played well, maybe we can fill in a few spots in the pen or the back end of the rotation with somebody from the system by next year who would minimize the number of people you have to get from outside," Hendry said.

"Whether it's three, four, five outside moves, I don't know. We're going give some other people some looks here the rest of the year."

This is Hendry's third shot after he took over in 2002 and rebuilt after 2006.

And everybody in baseball knows what happens if you don't connect on your third strike.