Wouldn't rebuilding be more of trading away pricey players for prospects? This team is definitely going to be in the playoff hunt-maybe not the playoffs, but at least in serious contention.
Beane has signed veterans to short-medium term, fairly expensive contracts before. In the 05-06 off-season he signed Esteban Loaiza for 3/21.375, and in the 06-07 off-season he signed Mike Piazza for 1/8.5. It wouldn't be unreasonable.
I originally supported re-signing Varitek as a part of a platoon (Tek would hit against lefties). But now that Bard is signed to a major league contract, I'm against signing Tek, since Bard could very well be the lefty half of a platoon.
Your Cubs forumers are correct about the fielding; Ibanez is terrible. Maybe not as bad as Dunn, but terrible. And F% is not a very good stat to use since it only shows the balls the fielder got to.
Do they really do partial songs? I didn't remember that. I'm still excited though, I like Springsteen, I've seem him live a couple times and he was good. Hopefully he'll play some new stuff too.