As one can see from things I've written in the past, just about the last of the organization's five potential arbitration cases I expected to get settled was the one that came off the board today, with Mark Prior and the Cubs splitting it right down the middle and agreeing to a one-year, $3.65M deal. I was pretty obviously over optimistic about the whole process, because while I may have had Prior as the last to sign, he's also the guy whose signing date I guessed best.

Of course, I made my little predictions before the parties submitted their figures, and once that came down, I probably would have pegged Prior as the third to sign, and even assuming the club made his deal a priority, I would have expected something to happen first with the mere $250K gap between the team and Will Ohman. Still, it's good to get this done, because if someone has to be the first arb hearing for the current Cub regime, Prior's one of the two men in the process whom the team cannot afford to annoy.