Where Do The Cubs Go From Here?

The 2007 Cubs payroll as of right now:

CF Alfonso Soriano - $17,000,000
C  Michael Barrett - $4,400,000
1B Derrek Lee - $13,000,000
3B Aramis Ramirez - $15,000,000
RF Jacque Jones - $5,300,000
LF Matt Murton - $420,000
2B Mark DeRosa - $4,300,000
SS Cesar Izturis - $5,850,000

Lineup - $65,270,000

SP Carlos Zambrano* - $9,000,000
SP Rich Hill - $400,000
SP Wade Miller - $1,500,000
SP Sean Marshall - $400,000
SP Angel Guzman - $400,000

Rotation - $11,200,000

Bench

Henry Blanco - $2,500,000
Freddy Bynum - $400,000
Ryan Theroit - $400,000
Angel Pagan - $400,000
Felix Pie - $400,000

Bench - $4,100,000

Ryan Dempster - $5,000,000
Bob Howry - $4,000,000
Scott Eyre - $3,500,000
Neil Cotts - $420,000
Kerry Wood - $1,750,000
Glendon Rusch - $3,250,000
Michael Wuertz - $400,000

Bullpen - $18,320,000

Other
Mark Prior* - $2,920,000

Total - $101,810,000

*-Estimated contract

The Cubs payroll is already over $100 million and they still aren't that great of a team. They have no rotation, a bullpen stocked with expensive middle relievers, no depth, and a good, but certainly not unstoppable lineup.

Where do the Cubs go from here? Fixing the holes in the rotation will cost them at least another 20 million dollars, and even then you're counting on Mark Prior and Wade Miller to be healthy. The bullpen is pretty much unfixable, it's filled with overpaid mediocrity. So what do they do? Can the Cubs push payroll into the $130 million range? Right now, that's pretty much the only solution for them. At this moment, the Cubs are a mediocre team at best, and are sitting on a $100 million dollar payroll. This is the type of team that no G.M. would want to inherit, yet Jim Hendry just willingly put himself into this position. Well played.