Fire Doug Melvin

Arbitration needs to be filed by the club by 11:59pm EST tonight. But we don’t have to worry about the suspense, Doug made the decision to not offer arbitration to any classified player per Haudricourt. It’s no real surprise on some of those players. Doug moved on from Cameron after rushing the trade of Hardy for Gomez. Cameron has plenty of value, but is dangerous if he accepts due to his salary and potential Arbitration numbers. Looper, Kendall and Weathers are not very good at the game of baseball anymore, and it’s smart that we moved on. But then there is the matter of Lopez.

Lopez is indeed a client of Scott Boras, and with that said has a vast vast history of not accepting arbitration to maximize his own profits clients salary in the free market. So why then did Doug not offer arbitration to Lopez? Let me pour two fingers of scotch and we’ll dive right into it.

Adam McCalvy blogged about the recent moves. You can read it here. There’s a lot of words there, and reading is hard. So here’s the big point.

“You would love to have that depth,” Melvin said Monday in previewing his looming decisions. “But is [Lopez] going to want to be a part-time player? He’s going to want to be an everyday player, and Rickie is going to want to be an everyday player. In some sense, you also ask, are you willing to trade the possibility of [acquiring] a pitcher for Felipe Lopez? That’s the question.”

That bold is mine. That is the very reason why Lopez and Boras would decline arbitration and see what you can get in the open market. And come on Doug, you pissed away our money for a free agent on Loopers option, Suppans boat anchor of a contract, and Halls salary (Go Mariners!). Stop saying it’s because of Lopez potential arbitration year money that we are in this mess. Hold on one more finger to go.

The only other reason the vast series of tubes could think of is that Melvin is once again going to his talking points, something he must have learned while reading “Going Rogue” by Palin. Always go to the talking points, and in this case.. like all cases… it’s all about the small market woes. Due to the great strain an extra draft pick would place on the system. You know, because of how expensive a sandwich pick signing really is. It’s completely unfair.

The only good thing about not offering arbitration to Lopez is this.. all you reading this..(hopefully it’s not just mom this time) welcome to the Fire Doug Melvin side. Hopefully the two fingers of scotch helped you as much as it helped me.