Bobby Abreu wants to be traded if he can’t play every day:
“I’m an every-day player. I can still be in the lineup for a Major League team,” said Abreu from his native Venezuela. “I will not be on the bench knowing that I can play.
“If the Angels don’t have a position for me, then the best thing is to trade me. It would be the correct (thing) to do. I won’t be able to do nothing sitting in the bench.”
I understand Bobby wanting to play, but saying this now puts the Angels in a poor negotiating position. If teams know LAnaheim has to trade Abreu, they can offer less for him. Bobby should have kept this between himself, Jerry DiPoto, and Mike Scioscia.
He probably did let them know while saying all the right things in public, yet it’s time to report to ST and they did not make a deal, so now he has no choice but to make an issue of it.
Being nice does not always work in the real world.
He signed a contract to be on the 25 man roster, not the starting 9. If he wants to be a starter, he either shouldn’t have signed the contract or should play better.
Plank: or, he should do what he’s doing now, which is ask to be traded. What’s the problem with that? If DiPoto isn’t happy with Abreu speaking out, he should have put a gag clause in the contract.
That’s a good point. I rarely meet someone who is as pro player as me, but still this seems unprofessional to me. How many teams could use his services and are willing to pay for them? I would guess the answer is zero. The Yankees wanted to do a bad contract swap, but that got nixed.
He’s an aging player who isn’t used to being on the back burner. It happens to every great player at some point. Other than a famous name, he projects to be a below average (maybe average) 38 year old DH making 9MM. Who wants to trade for him?
For a guy who refuses to run up against the wall to catch a ball, Bobby Abreu, as talented a hitter as we’ve ever seen, has very little problem shoving his teammates or his management up against a wall whenever it suits his own personal needs to do so.
His tragic flaw is that he has never been about “team”. As soon as the Phillies dumped Abreu, they immediately began to win.
Abreu’s “me first” attitude was a clubhouse cancer.
He never helped any club he was on, no matter how many win shares or WAR you may see on paper, because like Wilt Chamberlain, Bobby Abreu is all about collecting statistics, and not about making his teammates better or making the team win.
Arthur John Kyriazis
Philly