Coming down to the end on Morris

The bidding for Morris is coming to a head. The San Jose Merc says the Giants offer is 2 years/$18M or 3 years/$25M. Sabean says that something should happen within 48 hours, yea or nay. The Giants appear to be the front runner at the moment, with Texas and Seattle also in the running. It appears that Morris' agent, Barry Axelrod, is waiting for the Cardinals to make their best bid now and that Sabean probably gave them 48 hours to take it or leave it, hence his being able to say that 48 hours is the timetable - I'm sure the agent would be more than happy to let things run and see what happens with the bidding.

Funny how the Cards are presented depending on the source. The St. Louis papers are saying that St. Louis is working hard to re-sign Morris and preparing a 3 year deal while the SF Bay papers are saying that St. Louis is balking at a multi-year contract with Axelrod saying that one year doesn't cut it for Morris, he wants multiple years.

Hard to say which contract I prefer right now, the 2 year-$18M or the 3 year-$25M. Obviously, shorter is better, but the other contract has him at $7M for the third season effectively and the way contracts are going right now, that's cheap for even the decline in performance that Morris has done in the past two seasons. And he was better in 2005 than 2004, giving some hope that it was 1) his injury that caused his poor 2004 and 2) it was his surgery that caused his poor second half of 2005, perhaps weakening it enough so that he wasn't effective but obviously he was lights out in the first half (3.10 ERA, 1.07 WHIP, .246 BAA) when he still had his arm strength. Based on this reasoning, I guess I prefer him to sign the 3 year deal but either way I would hold my nose and wish for the best.