Three articles about the Cubs' Mark Prior situation came out today - Buster Olney, Paul Sullivan, and Gordon Wittenmyer. The Cubs have until December 12th to make a decision one way or another - that date is the last day for teams to offer 2008 contracts to unsigned players.

 

The Cubs may try to keep Prior and see if they can salvage anything. He hasn't taken a big league mound since August 10, 2006, when he got knocked around by the Brewers. What the Cubs don't want is to bring Prior back for 2008, see him rebuild value, and then have him jump ship after the season. Instead they want an option for 2009 tacked on. The least the Cubs can sign him for '08 is $2.86MM. Prior won't be eligible for free agency until after the 2009 season since he accrued no MLB service time this year. So I'm not sure why the Cubs would be terribly concerned with '09 since they would control him for that year anyway.

 

As Buster Olney notes, the Cubs also have the option of trading Prior right now. Then his new team can deal with the contract situation. There's definitely a little bit of low-cost upside there, and the Padres are said to be interested.

 

The third option is to non-tender Prior, which seems dumb to me. It'd be better to keep him around for one more year at $3MM.

 

I can't see why any team would want to pay him $3 million.

I think whoever ends up with Prior next, gets a bargain. I think once he gets out of the Cubs spotlight, he bounces back.

I almost wouldn't mind if KW took a shot with him... compared to some of the others names thrown out there. It would all depend on what the Cubs were asking for him.

Considering he was throwing closer to 84 than 94 last time he was actually pitching, that seems like a major waste of money.

Prior will never be what he was, IMO, but who cares. If you can get the next two seasons out of him for 3 mil apiece, it's worth the gamble. If he gets back to even 75% of what he was, he's still an effective SP. From a Sox perspective, it's almost worth the 3 million alone just for the chance to have a tremendous marketing opportunity to stick it to the Cubs.

Prior will never be what he was, IMO, but who cares. If you can get the next two seasons out of him for 3 mil apiece, it's worth the gamble. If he gets back to even 75% of what he was, he's still an effective SP. From a Sox perspective, it's almost worth the 3 million alone just for the chance to have a tremendous marketing opportunity to stick it to the Cubs.

I think the Cubs wouldn't deal him to the Sox for exactly that reason.

From that standpoint, I think it's probably in their best interest to hang onto him for 3 mil this year and see what happens. What's another 3 mil considering all the money they've wasted on him already? I'd think it would be worse for them to trade him and see him succeed somewhere else than to gamble the 3 mil and have him be the same old story for them again.

I think the Cubs wouldn't deal him to the Sox for exactly that reason.

From that standpoint, I think it's probably in their best interest to hang onto him for 3 mil this year and see what happens. What's another 3 mil considering all the money they've wasted on him already? I'd think it would be worse for them to trade him and see him succeed somewhere else than to gamble the 3 mil and have him be the same old story for them again.

 

I think you have summed up exactly what's going to happen. The Cubs are willing to pay him for two years if he'll forego free agency for a year. They'll be willing to pay him for one year.