Fire Gardy

A lot of people will probably call this a small piece of news, but I disagree. Glen Perkins has dropped his grievance against the Twins:

Glen Perkins has dropped his grievance against the Twins as the sides reached a settlement this week, avoiding a hearing that was scheduled for Friday in New York.

He was pissed off at the Twins for optioning his contract to the minors rather than sending him on a rehab assignment after activating him from the DL at the end of August. He’d been on pace to become a Super-2 player and become arbitration eligible this offseason, but the Twins’ move pushed back his arbitration eligibility a full year.

First of all, teams do this all the time to save money; and it’s been happening more and more often as front offices are getting savvier and are trying to do a better job of controlling costs and keeping their young players cheap (and around) as long as possible. On the other hand, players are understandably irked when it happens — it’s essentially a billionaire owner screwing a young guy out of several hundred thousand dollars (which is nothing to the billionaire, but is a massive pay increase for the player, often more than 100%). Neither side is right when it comes to this stuff, as I see it.

But with Perkins, things are a little different. Perkins has repeatedly complained of injury during his time with the Twins — but only immediately after a bad performance. (Before those starts he said he felt fine, and after he lays the egg he claims to have been injured all along. Each time, this is news to the Twins’ training staff.) The Twins have repeatedly had him checked out, and doctors can’t find anything wrong with him — Perkins then demands a second opinion and the team has to fly him around the country for other doctors to see if the Twins’ doctors are wrong. They usually don’t find anything either.

Meanwhile, Perkins is not pitching for the team; when he does, he pitches badly, for the most part. But the biggest problem with this back and forth is the building animosity between Perkins and the Twins; Gardy has voiced his frustration with Perkins in the past, usually after Perkins blames his performance on a previously-unknown injury. Not surprisingly, Perkins has quietly been on the trading block for several months (or more).

But it’s awfully hard to trade a guy who has a currently-open grievance against his team. It signals potential trade partners that the team and the player want to split up — and thus lowers his trade value.*

* And Perkins’ trade value probably isn’t very high as is, given his performance. The only thing he has going for him is that he’s cheap during a time when teams are trying to save money. And he’s left handed.

That’s why this move is significant: the Twins somehow* convinced Perkins to drop the grievance, giving him some extra service time but keeping him under Super-2 status, which completely removes the artificial anchor to his trade value.

* My guess? They kicked some money to him under the table in return for dropping the grievance so he can be traded more easily. If I were running the team and another GM told me he’d be willing to trade me something decent for Perkins if not for the grievance, this is exactly what I’d do.

So don’t be surprised to see Perkins moved to another team, and possibly soon. We’ll try to keep you posted.