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As Long as You Don't Look at the Standings, The Cubs are Doing Great!
The Cubs just took 2 of 3 from the Nationals including winning games started by Strasburg and Gio. Their starting pitching has put up the third best ERA in the senior circuit without their best pitcher. 'Mo Gregg is locking down games in the 9th, and Anthony Rizzo is the left-handed power hitting droid you've been looking for...what's not to love?
(clicks on Yahoo MLB Standings...quickly clicks off Yahoo MLB standings)
Back to the positive....let's talk the Anthony Rizzo deal...7/$41M with option years.
Rizzo: $2M sign bonus, $750K in '13m $1.25M in '14, $5M in '15 & '16, $7M in '17 & '18, $11M in '19, cubs option $14.5M in '20 & '21
— Jon Heyman (@JonHeymanCBS) May 13, 2013
Once a novelty in the league, these pre-arbitration deals are fast becoming the norm. I'm sure someone's studied it more thoroughly than me, but it seems rare that they don't work out for the organization. Safe to say, he'll be a Cub for a long time though...unless he's not and they trade him away with Castro for all the good players in the league.
The other interesting tidbit I read over the weekend, was this report/presumption that Scott "2.53 ERA" Feldman could be the odd man out of the rotation once Matt Garza returns to showcase himself to a contender every 5 days. According to the Patrick Mooney tweet, Dale Sveum says Samardzija, Jackson and Travis Wood will stay in the rotation and they're not willing to try EXTREME 6-man style. That leaves Carlos Villanueva and Scott Feldman as the logical goats, although both have pitched better (by ERA at least) than Samardzija and Jackson. First, I don't get why they wouldn't try a 6-man until a deal can be made, the Cubs aren't contending for anything and showcasing these pitchers in the starter role isn't the worst thing they can do. But if I had to choose between demotion options, I think Edwin and Villanueva would be the more logical choices. Villanueva seems to be pitching over his head a little more than Feldman right now and I think we all expected he was set for the swing-man role when he was signed and that's probably the role that would interest other teams. Now Edwin signed the big deal, and that usually takes precedence over the quality of the pitching, but since the Cubs are all about flipping short-term assets for long-term assets, then it would make sense to showcase Feldman until a trade could be made, while Edwin dives into his pool of gold for a few weeks (or months) waiting to be put back into the rotation.
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