Jim Hendry has been relieved of his duties as general manager of the Chicago Cubs. We’ll have plenty of time to look back on his place in GM history, but for now, let’s look forward. Cubs chairman Tom Ricketts gave us the checklist today, when he said that he was looking for a candidate who had analytical experience in a winning front office and who would focus on player development. Time to rank the potential replacements using those requirements.

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At least one person in Kansas City will be flashing his trademarked smile today. Jeff Francoeur had his contract extended two years. Fans in New York and Atlanta are probably stifling laughs of their own, coming from an entirely different place, but was the signing so bad? Even without terms, we can try to evaluate the signability of the 27-year-old corner outfielder.

Frenchy is having his best season at an age where most baseball players are peaking. On the other hand, very few of his core stats represent a career-best. He’s shown a better ISO before (.189 in 2006), struck out less the last three years in a row, and probably won’t hit career highs in home runs, runs or RBI. He’s only showing a personal best in stolen bases and walk rate, and that walk rate (6.6%) is only percentage points above his best (6.0%, achieved thrice).

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The saber prescription for the bullpen seems clear: identify your best relievers based on their component skills and use them in the right matchups according to their handedness and arsenal. Ignore the inning and instead use your best pitcher in the highest leverage moment. Basically, have a relief ace who pitches in the most important moment in the game — and then find role players to fill in the blanks.

There’s some agreement that this would be an improvement over the current set-up man/closer plan. There might never have been a ‘pen that was truly run this way.

Well, until now. Check out Chicago’s South Side.

Is Ozzie Guillen running a saber pen right now?

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We often roll our eyes when announcers cite a player’s stats over the past 15 days. We’ll groan when they tout how many home runs he’s hit since the All-Star break. We’ll throw the remote when a pitcher’s last five starts are mentioned. And yet, when we attempt to analyze a player here, there’s nary a blink if ‘last season’ is mentioned.

Well, guess what. Seasons are also arbitrary endpoints. Yes, they are arbitrary endpoints that allow for easy analysis, and ones that we have all agreed to use. And, if we didn’t use them, statistical analysis would be rendered fantastically difficult. Our record books would look very strange. We’d have to phrase things very carefully.

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Aubrey Huff will continue to bat in the middle of the batting order, says his manager. It’s no surprise, either, given the organization’s predilection for veterans. Even though it’s clear that this will be one of Huff’s off years, he’s been better recently. Has it been the colloquial ‘dead cat bounce,’ though?

First, a definition! Our own Joe Pawlikowski seemed to nudge towards a definition of the ‘dead cat bounce’ term in his writeup of Jorge Posada. Mr. Pawlikowski hinted that an unsustainable blip on the way down might be a fully BABIP-driven occurence. If a player has the same flaws in the good months and the bad months, and a large BABIP fuels the difference, it makes sense that once the BABIP subsides, the player will return to his free fall. The dead cat returns to being dead.

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Sometimes baseball analysis is similar to semantics. Define Brandon Allen one way, and he’s got a bright future despite some early struggles. Define the 25-year-old first baseman from a different direction, and the odds are incredibly stacked against him.

Let’s de-emphasize Allen’s 209 plate appearances so far. Even if those plate appearances had all happened in one season — which they haven’t — we’d only barely be looking at a reliable sample for his in-season strikeout rate, and we’d know next to nothing about his power.

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The Athletics traded a reliever and got back a young player that, despite his struggles to date, already has shown more power than anyone on the Oakland roster not named Josh Willingham. Yes, they used Brad Ziegler to (hopefully) free Brandon Allen.

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Today, the Rangers traded Chris Davis and Tommy Hunter to the Orioles for setup man Koji Uehara. Some might balk at the asking price, but it’s become obvious that neither Hunter nor Davis were going to figure in to the Rangers’ future plans. And Uehara might end up at the cheapest way for the Rangers to upgrade their late-inning relief.

It’s true that there are a lot of years of control left on the young players that the Orioles acquired. Both can be free agents in 2016 at the earliest. But it’s also true that both players had muted upside.

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You’re the shepherd of a contending team. Your veteran left fielder is 10% worse than the average major leaguer and your young right fielder is part of a tandem that’s third-worst in the National League at he position. An exciting young corner outfielder is available on the market. Acquiring the upgrade is a no-brainer, right?

A lot of ink will be spilled about how Hunter Pence is over-rated. You can point out that he’s got a below-average walk rate. You can say his strikeout rate is only average. It’s true that his power looks above average when compared to the league but is only about the same as the average right fielder (.163 ISO for Pence, .168 for the average right-fielder). It’s even true that he steals bases at a less-than-efficient rate (63%).

And yet, acquiring Pence makes sense for the Phillies.

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Ed. Note: Four people were injured in the copyediting of this article.

One word. Change one word of the trade description, and you might see a world in which the Cardinals got fair value for Colby Rasmus in their trade Wednesday night.

The consensus for the most part is that Alex Anthopoulos pulled a coup when he acquired a young left-handed center fielder with power and speed and a decent glove for his collection of spare parts. A rental starter, a rental backup center fielder, a rental righty reliever, and a young lefty reliever is all that it took to get Rasmus. But then there’s that one word — reliever.

Call Marc Rzepczynski a young lefty starter, and suddenly things might seem a little more even.

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