Thursday 3 January 2013

No Money, Mo' Problems



Some news on the Darren Oliver front.

Not sure on how you could get a source for this (Oliver himself? Would he really say something this scummy to these guys?), but both Jon Morosi and Ken Rosenthal are reporting, via MLBTR, that the guy wants more money to come back to the Jays, despite signing a deal last year that came with a club option for $3MM.  As in "if you wanted more than $3MM, you shouldn't have signed a deal that had a club option on it for $3MM".  It's an interesting strategy, especially for a 42-year old who doesn't have a leg to stand on as far as negotiating goes.

I mean, he signed the deal, right?  Yeah, whatever, he had a really good season, and probably could have found more than $3MM on the free agent market, but isn't that what club options are for?  He's certainly within his rights to just tell the Jays to fuck off and go ride off in to the sunset on his giant bed of money, since he's got a family that doesn't exactly live in Canada, and he's 42-- he doesn't need to play baseball anymore if he doesn't feel like it.  That arm could fall off whenever.

But uh... well, I'm certainly not a lawyer, but it seems like it's going to have to be $3MM or $0, no?

The Jays have said repeatedly that they're way, way beyond their payroll parameters, so it's not even all that easy to just say "give him another million bucks and shut him up".

Fun little situation.

No comments:

Post a Comment