Apparently he is. Details are not in yet, but I hope if this is a done deal, that he talks to Lester like Dempster is doing about Chicago. :-X
2 for 18 and an option. I like that deal. I just hope they can get 28 starts and 160+ innings out of him for each of 2 years. I was never too high on him so I really like that the term is short, I thought he was going to get a little more on his deal. No complaints from me about this contract.
You know, if you look at his stats, he is really a decent pitcher IMO or at least, very, very serviceable. His ERA was inflated in Colorado of all places, and he had a good 2012 campaign in Baltimore in the AL East, and then a regression in 2013. Don't know what happened there. Comes to the Cubs, and has a stellar first half, gets traded, and has a bad (I mean awful) July for the A's. But then in August and September, posts a .286 and .220 ERA respectively in the AL West. Whoa! Either he had an odd year again, or the Cubs have found a little bit of gold in them there hills. Let's hope it's not fools gold.
Like I said, if he's good enough to eat up the same amount of innings, that's going to help out the staff enough for me to like the deal. With Ks up and runs down so much, I'm not sure where I expect his numbers to be but I'm hoping he's good enough to be considered a very good number 4 or better compared to the rest of the league.
