Double Standards for the Company Team

You know what looks like bias? When a newspaper writer criticizes one team while making excuses for the other — on the very same topic. Phil Rogers and his ilk have been all over the White Sox for not re-signing Mark Buehrle, even while lubing up the Cubs to help them excrete Carlos Zambrano. Here's Rogers saying the Cubs won't be making a Maddux-sized mistake when they lose the only reliable pitcher they've had since Bartman:

Because Zambrano hasn't come up big in [big-game] situations, there isn't the parallel to the Greg Maddux situation in 1992 that some suggest. Yes, he's young. Yes, he has had success. But he's not heading into free agency as the Maddux of '92, coming off a Cy Young Award season and owning 95 career victories, including three years of 18-plus wins.

Zambrano and Maddux were both age 26 in their walk years. Carlos currently has an ERA .07 higher than Maddux, which could well fall below Maddux's first Cubbies' ERA by seasons' end. Modestly projecting him to 13 wins this season, Z will have averaged 13 wins to Maddux's 15.5 in full seasons. Zambrano's numbers aren't good right now, no doubt, thanks in part to the White Sox, and he can be a Sosa-sized jackass with all his skyward pointing and flying spittle, but he remains the hottest commodity on the Cubs' pitching staff. But Uncle Phil says not to worry, Cubs fans, he's not all that.

After all the Buehrle controversy the Tribune has incited, Phil must know he sounds like a hypocrite, so he addresses his double standard directly. Just not very well:

If the Cubs don't re-sign Zambrano, it won't be because they tried to get him on the cheap, as the White Sox have tried with Buehrle.

The Cubs offered Zambrano $11 million this year. Last summer, the White Sox offered Buehrle $33 million for three years. Does Phil own a calculator? If the Sox didn't bump up that offer, maybe it's because Buehrle promptly imploded. But Rogers doesn't even consider that reason, because he's too busy making excuses for the Cubs:

They (the Cubs) made legitimate five-year offers before the announced sale of Tribune Co. suspended negotiations, but Zambrano has enough leverage to want to be very near the top of the market, if not at the top. When the Cubs let Zambrano get within a year of free agency, you knew it was going to be a tough negotiation, no matter how sincere Zambrano is about wanting to stay put.

Yeah, negotiations are tough on the North Side, where the Cubs had financial diarrhea all winter, but negotiations aren't tough on the South Side, where the team actually has to maintain a feasible budget. It makes perfect sense... if you're living in your own private Wrigleyville.

Does a contract really have to extend 5 years to be reasonable? Are sportswriters acting as agents now? Are they taking the customary percentage too?

And if it's really true that the Tribune's sale shut down negotiations with Zambrano, doesn't it also mean the Cubs can't engage in any significant trades this year? What if Derrek Lee goes down again, or Alfonso tweaks his hammy, or what if that Phil-Rogers-All-Star, Mark DeRosa, takes a fastball in the chops? The Cubs are confined to Iowa and MLB's spare parts? (Tony Womack, Todd Walker, Mike Remlinger, Todd Hollandsworth, and Jeromy Burnitz are listening to offers.) Sounds like a big story to me, but I don't think I've read that one in the Tribune. Have you?

Brett Ballantini contributed much of this entry.