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Cubs Sign Nice Jewish Boy

As first noted in dfrancon's diary, the report of the 3-year, $20 million signing of Jason Marquis is apparently done -- not for $28 million as reported yesterday.

The marketplace has officially gone crazy, although not quite as nuts as one might have thought. $6.5 million a year for him is not quite as insane as $9 million a year. I like Marquis, but no other teams were apparently interested; the Cubs were bidding against themselves.

For those of you who are going to quit being fans, or have your heads explode, I urge you to look at Marquis' career stats, particularly his 2004 and 2005 seasons, where he was a solid mid-rotation starter. He had the best ERA on a World Series team in 2004, and was 15-7 for that Cardinal team.

According to JewishMajorLeaguers.org, Marquis will become the ninth Jewish player to play for the Cubs. The other eight:

Cy Block
Hy Cohen
Ken Holtzman
Art Shamsky
Steve Stone
Dave Roberts (No, not the outfielder; there have, in fact, been four different major leaguers with this name)
Jose Bautista
Andrew Lorraine

Look, I could be wrong about Marquis. Maybe he'll be bad again. I wouldn't have given him three years. But if he DOES regain his 2004-2005 form, that money will look like a bargain.

I choose optimism. Anyone else?

UPDATE [2006-12-9 15:22:15 by Al]: According to Yahoo, this deal is not yet final, and will be "in the $20 million range" -- meaning, perhaps, that maybe it'll be a bit smaller.