MLB 2011!!

[rah]

If Theo can make him disappear, more power to him.

While I'm not unhappy to see him gone, I don't think having to eat 15 out of the 18 million owed made it difficult to do. Very small risk for the Marlins. I'll bet they get more than their 3 million dollars worth.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Indeed. A smart deal for the Marlins. I'd take Zambrano for $3 million, easily.

[rah]

Besides, when you have Ozzie headlining the show, Z's crazyness will seem a smaller sideshow.

I did like Steve Rosenbloom's comment in the Trib this morning

The Cubs agree to trade Carlos Zambrano to the Marlins. The deal will not be official until Zambrano passes a physical. It would never be official if he had to pass a mental.

[OzzyKP]

Indeed. A smart deal for the Marlins. I'd take Zambrano for $3 million, easily.

Certainly. But they gave up Volstad too though.

[rah]

I think they gave up on him prior to the deal.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Volstad hasn't been even an average pitcher since his rookie year.

His last 3 ERA+ are 82, 91, and 80.

[-Jrabbit]

True. But Volstad brings more to the party: He's under contractual control for IIRC three more years, and he'll be a reliable inning-muncher on a rebuilding team.

Win-win.

[rah]

If he sucks, who cares if he's under contractual control for three more years. And he hasn't been a reliable inning muncher for a few years. Hoping that will change is like hoping that Z will behave better. It's all hope. So I don't see win-win at all.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Inning munchers don't have to be good, rah. They just have to keep the seat warm and be relatively close to average. Since a team isn't going anywhere, it is better to save money and have average players "munch" innings to allow young pitchers to grow and when ready can cast the inning muncher aside.

[-Jrabbit]

Maybe "inning-muncher" was a bit of an overstatement, but he'll beat whatever AA wannabe we would have to replace Zambrano with otherwise. He'll should give the Cubs 29-30 starts, 160-180 innings. Average in today's MLB, and more than Big Z has given us the past 3 years. Plus, he's only 25.

Zambrano is 30 -- and that's in Latino years. Plus he's got a lot of mileage on him -- 9 full years as a starter.

Hell, I would have settled for a bag of balls and a couple fungo bats.

[rah]

Hell, I would have settled for a bag a balls too. But we threw in 15 million dollars.

And I want to see the youngsters up and getting experience and a thorough vetting if we're truly going to be rebuilding. Better than performing above average at lower levels while the expectations for what they'll do when they get to the big show become unbelievable high.

Less than two years ago, Zambrano had a couple month stretch where he was putting up elite numbers. I think he had a few of those stretches left in him. (and I'm afraid we'll see Oz, coax a few out of him.)

But again, I'm glad he's gone, but I was hoping we wouldn't have to eat quite so much of the contract. I think the marlins won this one.


And in theory, I agree with you Imran about them just having to be average. But, I don't see him as average over the last couple of years. (which your earlier post seemed to agree with)

[-Jrabbit]

Volstad IS a youngster. I doubt Theo would have taken him without thinking there's some potential there.

[rah]

Actually I believe we got him because that's all that was offered. He wanted to make a splash by getting rid of Z. And he did.
OZ actually wanted Z and it wasn't a secret. I just think that would have given us a SLIGHTLY better negotiating position. Not much but better than eating what we did.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Oy, the Yu Darvish link gets no discussion, but this hardly of any consequence deal involving the Cubs gets posts and posts... saddens me.

[rah]

I can't help it that Z has been a polarizing character in Chicago or that there are few more posters that are Chub fans than other teams.

And I really have a problem with the whole pay for the right to negotiate thing, and would rather not discuss that.