MLBTR has a couple of posts up this morning about Milton Bradley. One of them says the Cubs may be talking with the Blue Jays about Vernon Wells. This would be an awful idea. Wells is owed something like $7.6 trillion and in 2 of the last 3 seasons his wOBA has been well below average. He’s not a very good player. He’s definitely not worth the kind of money he’s being paid. People think the Alfonso Soriano contract is an ugly one, well, this is worse. At least with Soriano there’s reason to believe he’ll be a really good player. That’s not true with Vernon Wells. We’ve heard plenty of talk that the Cubs will try to trade disgrunted outfielder Milton Bradley this offseason, and somewhat surprisingly there’s been plenty of interest in his services. Most believe the Cubs might have to take on another bad contract in return, maybe someone like Pat Burrell, but Bob Elliott of The Toronto Sun tosses a new name into the rumor ring: Vernon Wells. “It’s early on, but we think this one has some legs,” said one Cubs official. “But they aren’t the only team we are talking with.” Wells has hit just .276/.324/.439 since signing his big contract, which still has five years and $107MM left on it (including a still-to-be-paid portion of his signing bonus). Bradley is owed just $21MM over the next two years, and Elliott indicates that the “Cubs’ idea is to split the difference on monies owed,” which works out to each team absorbing $43MM. In the other post, MLBTR links to a post by Buster Olney who says that Wells to the Cubs would be a stunner. Olney also talks about some bad contracts the Cubs could acquire in exchange for Milton Bradley, adding that this morning’s Vernon Wells rumor “would be a stunner” if it happened. Some of the players he mentions as possible fits include Carlos Silva, Derek Lowe, Gary Matthews Jr. (who said he wants out of Anaheim), Barry Zito, Aaron Rowand, Oliver Perez, and Dontrelle Willis, among others. Any other ideas? the only player on that list that is any good is Derek Lowe and I can’t imagine the Braves trading him for Milton Bradley. I hope they do. That would be pretty nice, but they’d have to be crazy.
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October 31, 2009
