That would be one of your all-time backfires, huh? In Buster Olney's new blog post, he hears:
Some agents for the players who were offered arbitration are aggressively calling around to try to find out if they can get better offers for their clients from other teams. "I think a lot of the agents are looking at what happened last year with (Jon) Garland and (Jason) Varitek" -- who both turned down arbitration offers, and wound up taking much less in contracts than they would have gotten through arbitration -- "and they don't want to make the same mistake."
The teams that would be most likely to pay $10 million for a closer like Valverde pretty much already have closers. The Yankees, Red Sox, Mets, Angels. The Braves just got Billy Wagner. So is Valverde's agent - Bill Rego - one of those who is calling around to see if he can get Valverde more money (or a multi-year deal for comparable money)? If he's smart, he is. And I'm guessing he won't want to make the mistake of declining arbitration if he's only going to get $6 million/year from another team.
We didn't come out here to play tiddlywinks, son.
-Hal Smith
