Sources: Big Z Headed to Miami at LinesMaker

Sources: Big Z Headed to Miami

Big Z is headed to Miami.

The Mar­lins, seek­ing to make another off­sea­son splash, are close to acquir­ing Cubs right-hander Car­los Zam­brano, accord­ing to major-league sources.

The Cubs would get right-hander Chris Vol­stad, the sources said. There is an agree­ment is prin­ci­ple, but the deal is not com­plete until both teams sign off on med­ical infor­ma­tion and secure approval from the commissioner’s office. Such approval is required for any cash exchange that involves more than $ 1 million.

Zam­brano, 31, would need to waive his full no-trade clause to com­plete the deal, if he hasn’t done so already.

His approval is not expected to be a prob­lem; Zam­brano almost cer­tainly would embrace play­ing for his fel­low Venezue­lan, Mar­lins man­ager Ozzie Guillen.

The Cubs likely will pay between $ 15 mil­lion and $ 16 mil­lion of the $ 18 mil­lion Zam­brano is guar­an­teed in 2012 to purge Big Z, accord­ing to the sources. The Cubs placed the volatile pitcher on the restricted list in 2010 and dis­qual­i­fied list in ’11 due to issues with his temperament.

New Cubs pres­i­dent Theo Epstein said Wednes­day on WGN Radio that Zam­brano would need to make sig­nif­i­cant changes to remain with the team.

“The Car­los Zam­brano of 2011 and years pre­vi­ous can’t fit into the cul­ture that we have here,” Epstein said. “Change needs to hap­pen and change will hap­pen. Either he’ll change and buy in and fit into this cul­ture – and I under­stand there are a lot of skep­tics around about that, and I under­stand that, and frankly, I’m skep­ti­cal as well.”

Zam­brano joins a fran­chise on the upswing after a win­ter spend­ing spree resulted in the sign­ings of All-Stars Jose Reyes, Mark Buehrle and Heath Bell.

Zam­brano fin­ished last year 9–7 with a 4.82 ERA. The Cubs expected more when he signed a $ 91.5 mil­lion deal over five sea­sons through 2012, includ­ing a $ 17,875,000 mil­lion salary last sea­son and $ 18 mil­lion in 2012. As part of the trade, they’ll likely pay much of his salary.

Vol­stad went 5–13 last year with an ERA of 4.89, and his career record is 32–39. He has given up 69 homers over the past three sea­sons, which could mean trou­ble for him at Wrigley Field.

Zam­brano is 125–81 with a 3.60 ERA after break­ing in with the Cubs in 2001, and he threw a no-hitter against the Astros. But he had dif­fi­culty con­trol­ling his temper.

In 2007, he got into a fight with team­mate Michael Bar­rett, first in the dugout and then in the locker room. Bar­rett ended up with a bruise under his eye and a cut lip.

In 2009, he went on tirade against an umpire, throw­ing a base­ball into the out­field, pre­tend­ing to eject the umpire and slam­ming his glove against the dugout fence, a tantrum that led to a suspension.

In 2010, Zam­brano was placed on the restricted list for six weeks and sent to anger man­age­ment after a ver­bal alter­ca­tion with then-teammate Der­rek Lee.

Our sports betting news features unique sports betting articles as well as current sports news compiled from leading wire services. This arti­cle was dis­trib­uted by Syn­di­cated Sports news wire and aggre­ga­tion ser­vice, For more MLB base­ball news see: Sources: Big Z headed to Miami.

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