I think people are sort of overreacting to this trade news re: hamels and thinking that the cubs are some how cash strapped because of it. IMO the way to take it is they already dumped a ton of money into their starting pitching. I mean we know that Lester, Hendricks, Q, and Darvish are all back regardless. But they are currently on the hook with Smyly who was supposed to be a depth type starter and Chatwood who was supposed to be the 5th starter. My take is you have to move at least one of those guys before you talk about exercising Hamels option because what the **** are you gonna do with 3 starters for one rotation spot? And that's before you even talk about the healthy depth they have in Monty as well as Mills and Alzolay who can be effective #5 type depth in AAA.
Presumably the move here is to pawn of Chatwood however you can. You do that then bringing Hamels back makes more sense. Also, even if they do decline the option because they can't trade Chatwood soon enough there's always the option he hits FA, they find a deal for Chatwood and then Hamels and the cubs work something out. While I'm not sure Texas would be that happy about having to foot the buy out, I think this would be a more understandable case than the cubs just declining and then immediately re-signing him.