But imagine we do make a move to improve 3B … and either Young turns the corner or Punto has one of his good years. (It is a walk year for Punto, which means a good season is more likely. All his good years are walk years.)

If we get a good year from either of them … it barely matters what the lineup looks like. As long as the following two things aren’t both true:

1. Punto is having a bad year
2. Punto is batting second

Span Figgins Mauer Morneau Cuddyer Kubel Hardy Young Punto

Not a bad lineup. A big fear is that we get Beltre and Gardy puts him lower in the lineup — sliding Punto into the 2-hole rather than sliding Mauer up.

Span Punto Mauer Morneau Cuddyer Kubel Beltre Hardy Young

is Gardy’s most likely lineup … but is clearly a gross misuse of talent.

What really helps us, I think, is that the White Sox picked up Rios and Peavy and thus can’t afford to go after Figgins.

Also, we need to be spending money wisely regardless of the size of the revenue or the percentage of reinvestment. We absolutely should not offer Cabrera any money … but checking out the bidding war on Beltre and Figgins is within our monetary range and we should absolutely do it.

I do not want to hear from Bill Smith that he looked into Beltre and Figgins, decided they were too expensive for the size of our payroll, and then read about them signing like a 4/$40M deal or something. If we can get either one of them at 4/$40M, we need to jump on it. (Something like 5/$60M might be just out of our range for them. And this is why I don’t like to try to project what a free agent will go for. I have no idea which is more likely.)