Road work complete for Cubs, Zambrano

Jim Hendry and the agent for pitcher Carlos Zambrano both used a road analogy Friday in talking about Zambrano's freshly signed contract extension.

"This was a long road, but it wasn't a rocky road," said Hendry, the Cubs' general manager, during a Wrigley Field news conference.

"This has truly been Carlos' long and winding road," said agent Barry Praver. "We began this process of trying to secure Carlos a multiyear contract with the Cubs as far back as spring training prior to the 2006 season."

The long, but apparently well-paved road, led to a nice pot of gold for the 26-year-old Zambrano, who Friday agreed to a guaranteed five-year, $91.5 million extension that will keep the ace of the Cubs' pitching staff in Chicago until at least 2012.

The deal includes a $5 million signing bonus and a "vesting option" for 2013 worth $19.25 million based on Cy Young voting in the last two years of the contract.

Zambrano also gets a full no-trade clause, which was necessary to get a deal done, according Praver.

The average annual value of $18.3 million is the highest for any pitcher with a multiyear deal, eclipsing the $18 million average Barry Zito got in his seven-year, $126 million deal to leave Oakland for San Francisco.

If Zambrano had gone on the open market this fall as a free agent, he could have commanded a deal possibly worth $140 million over seven years.

"Not everything is about money," Zambrano said. "I know that if I would go to free agency, there's a lot of teams that would come to me and offer me more than that. I feel comfortable here. I feel good here. My family feels good here, my wife. This is my town, my home, my city. And I love Chicago. I love the Cubs. I've been here. Jim's known me since I was 16 years old."

The road to even more riches for Zambrano may not have been a rocky one, but it did contain a few speed bumps.

The two sides were moments away from a salary-arbitration hearing this past February before agreeing to a one-year, $12.4 million contract. Before both sides headed for the hotel in Phoenix for the hearing, Zambrano and Hendry talked together for several minutes on one of the spring-training practice fields.

At the time, the Cubs and Zambrano pledged to begin working on a multiyear deal, and an agreement seemed imminent as spring training ended. But on Opening Day, when the Cubs were in Cincinnati, the Tribune Company, which owns the Cubs, was put up for sale, with the Cubs to be spun off by the Trib.

That put any extension on hold and raised doubt about whether Zambrano would re-sign with the Cubs at all.

"Of course it was a disappointment to everybody, not just to us, but also to Jim and John (Cubs president McDonough) and everyone involved," Praver said. "It's just one of those peculiar circumstances that, really, I don't know that's come up before in baseball. Like anything else, you deal with it. Fortunately, everything worked out well."

Talks wound up on the back burner for most of the summer until heating up again on the most recent road trip, which saw Praver and Hendry meeting face to face.

The Cubs thought they were close this week, before Zambrano lost a 6-5 to the Reds on Wednesday. The next day, talk-radio speculation was that Zambrano was injured because he had lost 2 straight decisions.

"I did our best to try to conclude it before Carlos pitched the other day," Hendry said. "Sometimes, in a long, great relationship, when you get close to the finish line, then both sides have principles and mutual respect.

"But sometimes at the end, the final touches are even harder because of the relationship you have. You want the other side to give a little at the end. They think you should give a little at the end because we've been doing this together for such a long time.

"I think it had a negative effect the other day before the ballgame. There was no injury to Carlos Zambrano."

In his own way, Zambrano agreed with Hendry.

"I'd say no, but it's something that was on my mind, and I was thinking about that," Zambrano said. "Now I have a fresh mind. I'm ready to go, and I'm ready to lead this team to the World Series."

The timing of Zambrano's signing is extraordinary, as deals of this magnitude simply aren't done this close to a player filing for free agency. If Zambrano had signed before spring training, Hendry said the deal would have been for 2007 plus four more years. With the lateness of the signing, the two sides agreed on five years beginning in 2008.

"I don't know of too many cases in history that a young man would have passed up an opportunity to hit the streets," Hendry said. "I think we all know there were bigger pots of gold out there for him.

"It's a great example of a young man talking the talk and walking the walk. He made it clear he was not leaving the Cubs. This is where he wanted to be."

Hendry and the Cubs signed Zambrano as a non-drafted free agent out of Venezuela in 1997.

The 6-foot-5, 255-pound right-hander is 78-51 with a 3.37 ERA for his big-league career, which began in 2001. This year, he's 14-9 with a 3.86 ERA with 139 strikeouts in 168 innings pitched. He said he never lost faith a deal would get done.

"I trusted the Cubs, and I trusted in the word of Jim Hendry gave to me in spring training," Zambrano said. "He said he would do anything possible to bring me back and so I can stay here. I believed in that word."