[alnorth]

Apparently Haren's no-trade expired when the world series ended.

There must be something about Haren that we don't know about, A LOT of teams could have beaten this deal and no one did. This deal is arguably WORSE than the Angels just letting him walk and getting nothing because aside from being God-awful, Marmol also is due almost $10MM next season. So the Angels aren't saving any money unless the Cubs are sending them a ton of cash. They may as well have just paid Haren's option instead of paying this much for freaking Marmol.

Why were the Angels so desperate to get rid of him?

edit: I'm now thinking they got bad news in a physical or something. Haren's always had chronic back problems, maybe something medically-related has spooked everyone.