Friday Free-For-All

The flow of rumors is down to a drip as we near the Christmas break. Yet the Cubs are without a first basemen or much of a starting staff and still employ Carlos Zambrano and Alfonso Soriano. There is still work to be done JedStein.

- Early in the day yesterday, Jerry Crasnick of ESPN reported that "there were signs today (I can't say precisely what) to indicate the Cubs are stepping up their pursuit of Prince Fielder." Four hours later Nick Cafardo of the Boston Globe, claimed the "Cubs are not major players for Prince Fielder. Not ready to spend big." I hate when my baseless rumors contradict. WHO AM I TO BELIEVE?!?!?!?!

If there's any truth to Cafardo's report, hard to see the Cubs being in on Yu Darvish either. One recent rumor regarding Pince Fielder was that he was seeking a 10-year deal, which after seeing Albert Pujols get one and being younger makes sense to ask. Whether anyone will give it to him is the real story, but it wouldn't be the worst idea for an A.L. team. For the Cubs or any other N.L. team, that would be a hard one to justify unless there's something we don't know about the DH coming to both leagues, but unlikely that could even happen before the newest CBA ends in 5 years. Otherwise, you would think the Cubs would want some sort of guarantees for the later years (maybe vesting options) or to front-load the contract so to make Fielder easier to move on the back-end of the deal if they decide to take that plunge.

- Speaking of Darvish, we do know the Cubs submitted a bid and that the Rangers, Blue Jays and Yankees did as well and there may be a few more teams involved. One rumor was that one of the bids was north of $50M and another rumor was that the Blue Jays offer was "sky high". It appears we won't know the winner until Tuesday and then it's still 30 days for the a contract to be negotiated with Darvish. I have to say I'm a bit skeptical about throwing $100M at Darvish (posting fee and 6 year contract). Hopefully I'm overestimating the cost, but paying nearly $17M a year on average doesn't sound like it's really building from the ground up and you always have to worry about a pitcher's arm blowing out. On top of that, I don't know how sure you can be that Darvish will be as good as advertised. I think after a decade and a half of Japanese players coming over the majors, it's pretty clear there's a big difference in the level of competition. Maybe Darvish bucks that trend and can make as much as an impact as Ichiro, but I'd sure worry he ends up more like Dice-K. That wouldn't be terrible, but it would be disappointing.

Enjoy the weekend!

(Thanks to Tim for the illustration, click on the image for the full size)