Kerry Wood.
Most of you know that things have gone back and forth
on whether or not Kerry Wood is coming back next year.
The whole situation is extremely strange.
Kerry Wood has said in the past, that he would either play
for the Cubs or retire. Well, for some
reason, things have hit a snag here and Kerry is now being courted by some
other teams including the Phillies and Reds.
Earlier this week, Kerry Wood was interviewed, and he
sounded as if his time in Chicago was about to come to an end. Last week in an interview, Theo Epstein said
that the Cubs were going to make every effort to bring Wood back and that if a
deal didn’t get done, “shame on us”. Yet
yesterday, GM Jed Hoyer said that the Cubs had made Wood an offer with a “significant
raise”.
The fact that Hoyer made a statement like that immediate
shifts the blame from Epstein’s “us” to Wood himself.
I’ve said before that Wood isn’t worth much more than about
$2 to $2.5 million next year. This is a
player that has had a WAR over 0.5 once since 2004. I don’t know what official
projections have for Wood in 2012, but I would assume he projects about to around
a WAR of 0.4 or so. That would validate my thoughts about what his salary
should be next year. It might be safe to
assume that Hoyer’s offer to Wood was somewhere in that range. That would be between a 33% to 67% raise over
the $1.5 million that Wood made last year.
Yes, that is significant, percentagewise.
Rumors have it that Wood could get around $4 million on the
open market probably because of Wood’s ability to close.
It was truly a wonderful gesture last year for Wood to come
back at that reduced rate. He’s a great ambassador
for the Cubs and the city of Chicago.
Fans love him.
Unfortunately, Wood just doesn’t have a place on this team
right now. If the Cubs had no problem
getting rid of Sean Marshall, another very competent setup man, why would they
want to re-sign a much older, more fragile and much less reliable pitcher for
possibly more money? If the Cubs were to
actually re-sign Wood they couldn’t even trade him without the wrath of the
world coming down on Jed and Theo for doing so.
Kerry Wood adds no value to a team that is in a full
rebuilding mode and would take up a roster spot that could be used by the Cubs to
give a prospect a chance to prove himself.
It pains me to say all this.
I like Kerry Wood. I really don’t
want to see him in another team’s uniform again (especially the Reds). But, just like the pain of some of the other
moves this offseason, this is the price we pay for going “all in” with a true rebuilding
effort.
Last week, it seemed as if Theo was preparing everyone one
for the eventuality that Kerry Wood would not be re-signed. He was preparing to take the blame. That’s what makes Hoyer’s comments yesterday
so curious. Has something changed over
the last week inside the Cubs front office?
Maybe they have decided that the only way to get fans to accept the fact
Wood isn’t coming back is to make it look like it was Wood’s choice to leave. I don’t know.
Part of me still believes that this is all posturing by the
two sides and that a deal will be worked out (and worked out in very short
order). Wood still works out at Wrigley
every day, according to some reports.
Unfortunately, logic tells me that this likely to be then
end of Kerry in a Cubs uniform, at least as a player. The fact that Wood continues to act as if he
is still a member of the team may indicate that he plans on retiring
instead. I don’t know.
It will be interesting to watch how this whole situation
ends because it will show us exactly how far Jed and Theo are willing to detach
the current team from the 103 years of failure.
You’d like to think there is some flexibility, even in the current
situation, for the team to make some completely pointless, yet sentimental
move. And that’s what this would
be. It’s just too bad Wood is such a
nice guy.
