Thanks to MLBTR-
Cubs May Trade Mark Prior
Three articles about the Cubs' Mark Prior situation came out today - Buster Olney, Paul Sullivan, and Gordon Wittenmyer. The Cubs have until December 12th to make a decision one way or another - that date is the last day for teams to offer 2008 contracts to unsigned players.
The Cubs may try to keep Prior and see if they can salvage anything. He hasn't taken a big league mound since August 10, 2006, when he got knocked around by the Brewers. What the Cubs don't want is to bring Prior back for 2008, see him rebuild value, and then have him jump ship after the season. Instead they want an option for 2009 tacked on. The least the Cubs can sign him for '08 is $2.86MM. As Buster Olney notes, the Cubs also have the option of trading Prior right now. Then his new team can deal with the contract situation. There's definitely a little bit of low-cost upside there, and the Padres are said to be interested.
The third option is to non-tender Prior, which seems dumb to me. It'd be better to keep him around for one more year at $3MM.
It will be interesting to see what they do with Prior. Jim might try to shop him at the Winter Meetings but his price might be down cuz of his health issues. Could a Tejeda for Prior be discussed again?? Who knows?!
I think the Cubs should sign him to a one year deal with a team option for 09. That makes since for both parties.
2 comments:
I would like to see them keep Prior. I think that once he can finally stay healthy and he will be the arm that everyone has expected him to be. With the fact that he is from Southern Cali, and does all of his rehab at home, which makes perfect sense, I think he would prefer to play for the Padres.
The O's would never agree to Tejada for Prior straight up we would need to add at least one or two more players to get that done. Maybe Prior, E-Patt, and Jake Fox.
I had balked at the rumored Prior Tejada deal couple years ago at the time... but man could we do that one over again.
I dont know if a Prior for Tejada deal would work this time around would it? I think Prior is too much of an unknown at this point to get anything back of value. Not to mention on top of that the whole contract situation that the new team would take on.
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