General managers deal with major pressure

Sure, the pressure’s on Barry Zito.

San Francisco Giants fans will want to see how many wins $126 million buys these days.

Alfonso Soriano?

The Friendly Confines will turn ugly pretty quickly if the Chicago Cubs’ new $136 million leadoff hitter turns out to be Tuffy Rhodes reincarnated.

But the guys who have the most at stake, who have the most pressure and the most to lose after baseball’s biggest spending spree, are the general managers who doled out more than $1.1 billion during the off-season.

Jim Hendry of the Cubs is working with a safety net. He signed a two-year extension last April before the team he put together started its agonizing march to the worst record in the National League.

The 2006 Cubs had an Opening Day payroll of $94.42 million. They won 66 games. That works out to $1.43 million a win.

OK, the New York Yankees were worse. Each of New York’s 97 wins cost $2 million since the club had a payroll of $194 million. But the team Brian Cashman put together plays in a bigger ballpark, in a bigger market, with bigger television revenues. The Yankees routinely do what the Cubs rarely do – collect a bonus check for making the playoffs.

P-p-p-pressure?

The way Hendry has been spending the Tribune Company’s money this off-season, the Cubs could start the season with the third-highest payroll in baseball, somewhere around $130 million. They would trail only the Yankees, who have cut theirs to around $180 million pending the possible acquisition of Roger Clemens, and the Boston Red Sox, who are expected to come in around $160 million with the addition of Japanese star pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka and the $14 million they are going to pay for ex-Los Angeles Dodger J.D. Drew and his bum shoulder.

Hendry doled out more than $275 million to get Soriano ($136 million for eight years), keep third-baseman Aramis Ramirez ($75 million for five), sign outfielder Cliff Floyd ($6 million for two) and bring in much-needed pitching help with left-hander Ted Lilly (four years, $40 million) and right-hander Jason Marquis (three years, $21 million).

That doesn’t include the $10 million it took to lure Lou Piniella to clean up the mess left by fired manager Dusty Baker, the nearly $7 million to re-sign routinely injured pitchers Mark Prior, Kerry Wood and Wade Miller or the hard-to-imagine $13 million Hendry gave Mark DeRosa, a utility infielder-outfielder.

Oh, and some time in the next two weeks, the Cubs have to decide whether to offer ace Carlos Zambrano something more than the $11 million they have on the table or fight out the $15.5 million he wants in arbitration.

Make no mistake, Hendry has assembled a first-class team. But with it, he’s brought some world-class pressure on himself.

“I don’t know if pressure is the right word,” Hendry said during his spending spree. “I feel the same responsibility that I always have.”

Hendry is a bright, hard-working, personable man. So if he prefers to think of what he’s facing as “responsibility” rather than “pressure,” so be it. But the fact of the matter is that during the winter meetings in Florida, literally as he was closing the Lilly deal, Hendry was wired to a heart monitor and about to undergo an angioplasty procedure. That sounds a little more like pressure than responsibility.

This season will wrap up a century since the Cubs have won a World Series.

If Hendry’s big spending ends the suffering, he will become a legend. If the Cubs flub, he’ll be just the latest in a long line of responsible parties who get paid to stay away from Wrigley Field.

Hendry isn’t alone. San Francisco GM Brian Sabean is in the final year of his contract. He has a team stocked with senior citizens and a star under federal investigation. His club hosts the All-Star Game this summer and he spent a ton of money during the winter in what Giants fans realize is a last-ditch effort to win at all costs.

That’s a lot of pressure … uh, responsibility.

Like Hendry, Sabean brought in a new manager in Bruce Bochy, and paid heavily for free agents Bengie Molina (three years, $16 million), outfielder Dave Roberts (three years, $18 million) and infielder Rich Aurilia (two years, $8 million). But his big signing was Barry Zito, who got $126 million for seven years to replace Jason Schmidt, the former Giants ace who moved on to Los Angeles.

“You might as well tattoo that number to your forehead,” Sabean told Zito when details of the contract were released.

But Sabean is the one who should have $126 million tattooed on his forehead. Zito is going to get paid, no matter what happens. He’s under pressure, but not like Sabean.