Familiar Faces Return to the Cubs

In 2010, Koyie Hill received 231 plate appearances, during which he posted a .214/.254/.298 line (good for an OPS+ of 44). You can't find that level of offensive production just anywhere - well, actually you probably could, even if you just picked some random guy stocking shelves at Target. You'd think a major league player who couldn't hit at all would at least be a good defensive player, right? Think again - Hill only threw out 18% of the baserunners who tried to steal against him, although to be fair he held onto the ball while allowing an opposing team's baserunner to score from third base only once all season.

So after a performance like that, you'd expect the Cubs to say goodbye to Hill, but not only did Jim Hendry offer him arbitration, he signed Hill to a contract that actually increases his salary from $700,000 to $850,000 (that's a raise of over 20%). It's not a lot of money, but it's hard to take the Ricketts family's cries of poverty seriously when they let their GM re-sign a sub-mediocre veteran instead of giving the backup catcher's job to a minimum salaried player (see Castillo, Welington, or Ramirez, Max, both of whom are already in the Cubs organization). A possible light at the end of the tunnel - before the 2009 season, Hendry signed the eminently replacement-level Paul Bako to a free agent contract, but released him during Spring Training. Perhaps history repeats itself here.

In better news, 2008 cult hero Reed Johnson signed a minor league contract with the Cubs and will be invited to Spring Training. The Cubs have a crowded outfield, with four players (Soriano, Byrd, Colvin, and Fukudome) already penciled in for 2011 (barring a trade), so Johnson will likely be competing with Fernando Perez (who came over in the Garza trade) for the 5th outfielder spot. Johnson brings with him a decent .748 career OPS (94 OPS+), a solid glove, and a penchant for making spectacular defensive plays (like this, and this - I hope Ryan Dempster bought him a couple of nice dinners for those catches). It's a good, low-cost, low-risk move, the kind of thing Hendry should be doing more often.

So in summary, it looks like Hendry went .500 on his signings today, which will be a better record than the Cubs end up with in 2011.