Cardinals Close To Jake Westbrook Trade

11:13am: Westbrook has agreed to lower the $2MM trade bonus, tweets Joel Sherman of the New York Post.  It's currently unclear whether the Padres are involved in this as part of a three-team deal, though Sherman thinks they may have dropped out.

10:53am: A third team might be involved in the deal, reports MLB.com's Anthony Castrovince.

10:19am: The Cardinals are close to acquiring starter Jake Westbrook from the Indians, tweets Paul Hoynes of the Cleveland Plain Dealer.  Westbrook is scheduled to start against the Blue Jays a few hours from now.

Westbrook is pricey – he has $3.89MM remaining in base salary this year, and a $2MM bonus and $353K salary bump for being traded.  That's a total of $6.24MM remaining.  Ken Rosenthal of FOX Sports tweets that the deal is at the union level as the teams try to sort through the financials.

Westbrook, 32, will solidify the back end of the Cardinals' rotation given the injuries to Kyle Lohse and Brad Penny.  Westbrook has a 4.65 ERA, 5.1 K/9, 3.1 BB/9, and 53.3% groundball rate this season.  He had Tommy John surgery in June of '08, and wasn't healthy until this year.