Z to the Pen

[Kid]

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And I was just noting that all of you called me crazy for wanting to rid ourselves of Z's contract. You argued that many teams would take it off our hands but it would be a mistake to do so. Now some of you are saying that nobody would take him off our hands without the Cubs eating a portion of his salary, which is exactly what I was saying then. That's all.
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This is an entirely different scenario compared to last year. However, I still argue personally that there are plenty of teams that would claim Zambrano off of waivers outright. He's still young and I think he has it in him to throw 200 innings at a sub 3.50 ERA. What exactly are your expectations for him if he would have stayed in the rotation all year?
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If you are correct we should trade Z for whatever we can get. Use the salary savings on an impact player for 2011.
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The way they have handled Z at this point, I don't think they would get an impact player at all. That's the point. Plus, if I'm right it would be exremely hard to match the value of a player that can give you 200 innings and a 3.50 ERA for the next three years. I understand that the Cubs have a financial hole work around, but it's going to be extremely hard to fill. The only manageable way I see is to let some contracts expire. I forget what the figures were, but I believe we have something like 25 million coming off the books next year and something like 32 million in 2012. <b>The Cubs just need to make a conscious effort to utilize their money in a better way in the future.</b>
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This has been my central argument for years. By releasing some of the bad contracts to other clubs we can accelerate this process. The problem is that JH is still in place and would probably just replace them with more bad ones.
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If only you understood the idea that you can't just release players and not pay them and other teams aren't going to trade for your bad contracts.
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I fully understand that idea and it was the crux of my argument. My argument was that no team would take on any of their salaries. Yours was that a lot of teams would for Zambrano. Now, it appears, you've changed your mind.
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No more than you have.