Welcome Back to Chicago, Cliff Floyd
UPDATE: Here are the contract details, Floyd gets one year, guaranteed at $3 million. He has a vesting option that kicks in at either 425 plate appearances or 100 games started for 2008, and if it does vest, it becomes a player option and Floyd can opt-out and become a free agent once again. If it does not vest, the Cubs hold the 2008 option. He can make up to $7.5 million this year by reaching all of his games-played, plate-appearance and roster incentive levels. If he has 550 PA's in each of the next two season, he can make up to $17.5 million. If he gets to only 500 PA's in each of the next two years, he'll make up to $15.5 million. And now we know why this deal took so long to complete.
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As AZ Phil pointed out, the Floyd deal is finally done. As I've mentioned in previous comments, I'm not completing against this deal despite it likely taking at-bats away from Matt Murton. Floyd can most definitely hit the righties (281/368/496 career) and that's likely all he'll be asked to do. It's certainly better than trotting out Todd Hollandsworth off your bench or as a starter, that's for sure. There is no doubt though that he's in a slow and steady decline though. Here are his charts (courtesy of Fangraphs.com) for his ISO and RC/27:
Now until last year, he was still well above average and those are his total numbers versus righties and lefties. However his power is fading although a move out of Shea Stadium and the NL East can only help him. If Piniella uses him wisely, we'll hopefully get a bit more out of him than the Mets did last year. And well, just being average would be a whole lot better than anything else that came off our bench over the last few seasons.
Of coure with Floyd, the injury bug-a-boo is bound to bite at sometime over the course of the season, leaving plenty of at-bats for Matt Murton anyway:
We'll see what the 40-man roster move will end up being and how much playing time he'll ultimately receive. I imagine he'd get most of the starts versus righties, but if there's a long string of them in a row and/or a day game after a night game, he'd sit for Murton. If everyone stays healthy, it'll likely be more of 50/50 split in playing time. But in the end, I don't mind the deal. There's certainly no guarantees that Murton, Lee, Jones or Soriano stay healthy and having some power and patience off the bench certainly can't hurt (Image courtesy of AP Photo/Lenny Ignelzi).
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