On Monday afternoon, Chicago Cubs GM Jim Hendry announced that starting/relief/not-really pitcher Carlos Zambrano would enter some form of treatment program and would be placed on baseball's "restricted list" until after the All-Star break.
Restricted? Does he have to trade his boxers for briefs for the next three weeks?
My suggestion is that the Cubs treat Zambrano the way he treated his teammates on Saturday, and the way he's been treating his fans' hopes for the last four years: open the door, kick, close door, deadbolt.
Zambrano is a wasted roster spot and, even worse, an epic disaster of a contract. While it seemed impossible to give away Milton Bradley last year, his deal was small enough that there might be another albatross out there; Seattle had their own mistake in Carlos Silva, and the Cubs struck a deal.
But Zambrano's salary is comparable to baseball's top-ten. There isn't a team on the planet that wants a guy throwing garbage for $18 million a year.
If Tom Ricketts is sincere in his wanting to build a championship team at Wrigley Field before another 100 years expires, then trading dead contracts for other dead contracts isn't what that work-in-progress should be. The Cubs got lucky with Silva; lightning doesn't strike twice in the same place.
Unless, of course, you're past your prime, a head-case, or bad. Then your agent will get you a $10 million annual salary from Hendry a couple times each November.
If you wouldn't urinate in your baby's bottle and hand it to the child, why would Ricketts continue to expose these rookies to Zambrano?
Ricketts needs to separate the emerging new core of his team—Tyler Colvin, Starlin Castro, Andrew Cashner—from the overpaid feces formerly known as an ace. Additionally, sending him to the minors would only subject future generations of potential Cubs to this trash of a baseball player.
Buy him out, and let him go rot somewhere. Enough is enough.
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