Jacque Jones Almost Traded…Again
UPDATE #3: The Sun-Times is reporting that the Cubs sent $2 million over in the deal and repeat the previous mention that JJ is owed $5.5 MM in 2008. My guess at this point is that he was only owed a half million of his pro-rated signing bonus, not the $1.3 MM that I suggested earlier. If Infante sticks with the team and makes about $1.5 MM next year plus the $2MM the Cubs gave to Detroit, that's only about $2MM in savings for 2008 for the Cubs.
UPDATE #2: The Cubs.com press release says the Cubs will send over cash considerations but no word on the amount. Anything more than covering Jacque's signing bonus and we should burn Hendry at the stake.
UPDATE: SI.com is indicating it's a done deal. I assume the financials will come out later and I can only pray that the Cubs are saving a bunch of money with this move.
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The Detroit Free Press (who?) and now Phil Rogers are reporting that a Jacque Jones for Omar Infante swap is nearly complete. This would jive with an earlier Bruce Levine report. First, let me say, WTF?
Now that I got out of the way, let's try and see what Jimbo might be thinking with this one. Jones is due $5 MM for 2008 plus the last installment of his $4MM signing bonus which brings his total contract up to $6.3MM this year. Omar Infante is eligible for arbitration and made $1.3 MM last season. It's reasonable to expect a half million raise for a utility player with limited at-bats. If this deal goes down, and hopefully we learned our lesson last year about jumping the gun on a Jones trade, we'll see how much money the Cubs fork over to the Tigers in this deal. Hopefully, it's none at all since the Cubs are getting a nobody for a marginally useful player. This seems to be a case of a salary dump for the Cubs to hopefully make room in the payroll for our big Alex Rodriguez push. What better way to motivate going after ARod then bringing in the generally useless Omar Infante as a potential backup.
ARod jokes aside, Infante is a waste of roster space, time and energy. He doesn't get on-base, he doesn't hit and he's not particulary fast if you look at his stolen base numbers. Well maybe he's fast, but he's not very good at stealing bags. He has played six positions in his career including second, short, third, center, right and left. If this deal is completed, I hope the Cubs just non-tender him and save the extra million or so.
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