Salomon Torres wants to be traded. Good riddance.
Torres has been nothing short of shaky this season, and Matt Capps has already replaced him as the team’s closer. Torres does give some interesting reasons for wanting to leave, though.
“I’ve given everything I have to the team, to the city of Pittsburgh, and I would like nothing more than to be part of a championship there,” Torres said by phone from Bradenton, Fla., where he is rehabilitating his right elbow. “But I’ve had enough. They tricked me into signing that contract, and what they are doing to me now is retaliation because I complained about it.”
The “retaliation” to which Torres referred, as he explained, was what he feels is a slow schedule the team has mapped out for his current rehabilitation.
His larger issue with the Pirates, without question, is his perception at how Littlefield handled negotiations leading up to the two-year, $6.5 million contract extension signed in the spring of 2006.
Torres, who did not have an agent in those talks, contends that he agreed to less money than market value because Littlefield had strongly suggested — though not in writing — that the team would consider renting one of the two baseball academies Torres built in his native Dominican Republic.
Hmmm. A player has a problem with the Pirates organization, huh? It looks like fan frustration is finally overlapping to the players.
Everyone is calling the walk-out a failure. Only about 1,000 people left their seats, and many fans booed. However, PSaMP looks at it a different way. How many times has fan frustration reached the ears of management? I can count one time, and that was the walk-out. Just because all 26k people didn’t leave the stadium, it doesn’t mean the protest was a failure. We can all bitch and moan about the Nuttings and Littlefields, but Fans for Change actually made their voice heard. And now players are echoing these sentiments, that the management is manipulative and uncaring.
Torres called Dave Littlefield out. Fans finally have some reasons to believe that the walk-out was done for the greater good. Its not just some renegade fans who feel the management doesn’t care. There is a much bigger scheme going on. Players like Torres understand this, and are proving that point.
Torres can have his grievance. I’m glad that he probably won’t be around to blow any more saves. However, his reasoning may help the most blinded fans realize that the management is duping the supporters, and players, on a rather large scale.
