The Cubs will be receiving 21-year-old right-hander Corey Black in the trade. Black, who has been pitching at Class-A Tampa, is 3-8 with a 4.25 ERA in 19 starts this season. Never heard of him before today. I'm sure the Cubs will be sending him to either Kane County or Daytona soon enough.
The trade is reportedly awaiting the approval of MLB commissioner Bud Selig. Soriano, 37, is owed $24.5 million on his contract which runs through the end of the 2014 season. Reports indicate the Cubs will send $17.7 million to the Yankees as part of the deal. That seems like a lot, but hey, it's sunk cost at this point and the Cubs are actually saving about $7 million. Best of all, they make Soriano go away and open up a spot in their outfield for a younger player who might be part of their future plans.
Soriano waived his 10-and-5 rights to accept the deal. In many ways, this is the official end of the Jim Hendry Era for the Cubs. Soriano was the last player on the roster with full no-trade rights.
As GM, Hendry handed out no-trade clauses like candy. Derrek Lee, Aramis Ramirez, Ryan Dempster, Carlos Marmol, Soriano, they were all exceedingly hard to get rid of, in part, because they had no-trade protection in their contracts.
The new regime on the North Side isn't big on handing out no-trade clauses, and they'd be wise to keep it that way. Now that Soriano is gone, any player on the Cubs roster can be traded at any time without their consent. That's obviously a more favorable situation for management.
24 mil left. Not terrible considering he was still semi-producting... look at the contracts out in LA - Hamilton and Pujols. I predict the latter will turn out to be one of the worst of all time. He can already barely finish a season with his injuries and still has 8 years and $200 million left! He'll be 34 before next season starts and is already playing more DH than 1B!
ReplyDeleteOh, easily among the worst of all time. It's already bad, and it might end up being the worst. I never thought I'd see a contract worse than A-Rod's, but the one the Angels gave Pujols might be it.
ReplyDeleteHow do you suppose the Cardinals and their fans are feeling about all of that? The front office there caught its fair share of crap when it refused to meet Pujols' demands, but that turned out to be absolutely the right move. St. Louis continues to field a balanced, contending team every year. One wonders if they'd be able to do that if they had zillions tied up in one player such as Pujols.
I don't know how they do it. But it's partly because of moves like this. Must've been hard to let him go, but LA offered (what I heard) 40 mil. more than STL. So they wanted to keep him, but not at the stupid money level that LA was offering. I think everyone thought that contract was a little ridiculous to begin with and it's going to look worse and worse. Cubs fans only had to deal with Sori for 5.5 years... and only really 3-ish subpar seasons. (you could argue all day about that) LA forgot that pitching wins championships. Just looked at their P depth chart and it is atrocious. Jerome Williams? He's lucky he's in F'ing baseball.
ReplyDeleteAnd the Pirates with the best record in baseball 2/3rds of the way through. Who would have thought?
It's a bit of an upside-down year with a lot of the lower payroll teams doing well. Look at the top 10 winning percentages in baseball: Pirates, Rays, A's, Orioles and Indians all on that list. Some of the bigger spending clubs, most notably the Angels and Yankees, seem to have a lot of old dudes with bad contracts limiting their flexibility.
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