Alfonso Soriano and How the Mighty Have Fallen

In March of 2010 I wrote a post on my Latinoball blog site called ¿Que Le Paso a Alfonso Soriano?. In this post, I reference an article that I had read from the Washington Post, which basically said that the Chicago Cubs did not get what they paid for in Soriano. Here the Cubs are left with four years on his contract at the sum of $18 million per year until 2014. With Soriano currently batting .249 with 14HR and 41 RBI with 76 strikeouts and only 16 walks it seems that the Cubs are willing to eat a significant part of Soriano’s contract in order to move him.

Mike Axisa of MLBTradeRumors.com states in his article Cubs Willing To Eat High Percentage Of Soriano's Deal that based on sources the Cubs would be:

"willing to absorb a high percentage" of the money left on his deal if the right trade offer came along. There is more than $60M left on his eight-year, $136MM contract.

Soriano also has a full no-trade clause that unbeknown to him was included in his contract. In an interview with Chicago Sun-Times reporter Gordon Wittenmyer Soriano had the following to say about waiving his no-trade clause:

"If it was a contender, yes," Soriano said of waiving the no-trade. "Of course, I want to win. I want to win here. But if not here, then somewhere else. . . .First of all, I don’t want to leave here. I want to stay here because we’ve got to win it. But if they want to trade me, I think the team they would want to trade me to would be a contender that I could help."

If the last few seasons are an indication, the Chicago Cubs will not be winning anything anytime soon. Discarding players like Aramis Ramirez and Alfonso Soriano and rebuilding the team around players such as Starlin Castro might be the way to go.

It seems that at the age of 35, (yes Yankees fans, it has been 10 seasons since Soriano almost won the World Series against the Arizona Diamondbacks with a homerun against Curt Schilling in the 6th inning of Game 7) that Soriano’s best days might be behind him. A future in the AL as a potential DH and occasional outfield replacement might be his best bet.

FH

For Further Reading:
- Click Here for Alfonso Soriano's career statistics from Baseball-Reference.com