it's being reported that mulder is close to signing a 2-year extension for $23 million.
more when there's news available.
Update [2006-2-19 15:30:52 by lboros]: if this is true --- and it's still unconfirmed --- what does that do to the prospect of keeping edmonds? at that price, the cards' obligations for '07 would look like this:
guaranteed: pujols $15m, rolen $12m, mulder ~$10m, is'hausen $9m, carpenter $7m, encarnacion $5m, looper $4.5m, eckstein $4.5m, rincon $1.5m.
subtotal: ~$68.5 million to 9 players
arb-eligible players: bigbie, taguchi @ est. $2m per
non-arb eligibles: molina, reyes, luna, b thompson, wainwright, j-rod @ est. $500K per
TOTAL: ~$75m to 17 players, leaving ~$15m to fill 8 roster slots
if they pick up edmonds' option for $10m, that leaves just $5m for the last 8 roster spots. if they increase the payroll to $95m, they could sign edmonds and have $10m left over to fill those last 8 roster slots -- and it is possible to fill out the bottom third of a roster for that sum.
again, i'm not endorsing any partic'lar course of action, just mulling scenarios . . . .
Update [2006-2-19 16:56:47 by lboros]: . . . . and a big never mind. bernie checked with the p-d beat writers down at spring training; they say the report is false.