Tom Hicks talked about his 2010 budget:

We have three veterans in (Hank) Blalock, (Vicente) Padilla and (Frank) Catalanotto whose contracts expire this year that total over $20 million in payroll. In each case, we have young players coming up that we feel very positive about that may be as good or better than the veterans that are leaving. So we’ll have to make a decision later about whether we want to bring the veterans back or not. Whatever we do, we’ll be a better team next year than this year. That gives us the ability to free up resources to go find a Ben Sheets-type pitcher and if that guy is out there, we’ll do it. We’re not going to do a 7- or 8-year contract with one of Scott Boras’ pitchers or anybody like that because we don’t believe in that.

We have not reduced our budget $20 million. We have great young players to replace them. We may bring some of the veterans back. But it’s up to how they perform. We haven’t set the budget for 2010.

Reading between the lines, Hicks is ready to let the veterans go, but he’s also willing to spend the freed money to make the team better if he needs to fill holes in the lineup. Just what he should do.