I don’t quite understand what’s going on with Brandon Phillips:
“Do I feel like they lied to me? If someone tells me they don’t have no money and you find $200 million somewhere, what does that sound like? You tell me.
“Tell me, what did I say wrong. It’s like this — think about it, if someone said, ‘hey, I’m going to give you a promotion, I’m going to make sure I give it to you.’ And the next thing you know, two weeks later they give someone else a promotion, how are you going to feel about it? Would you like that?”
Cots Baseball Contracts has Votto signing his extenstion on April 3, 2012, and Phillips his on April 10, 2012. Is Phillips saying his deal was done and agreed to before the Votto deal? If so, why did Phillips sign the extension? I must be missing something.
This is quite interesting to me. It sounds like Phillips (and probably most players) consider their pay checks to be the same thing as promotions & demotions. I can kind of see why, but I think that’s a ridiculous viewpoint. If you get paid more & then ride the bench more than you did the previous year… that would be a demotion IMHO. Or maybe you get paid more, but you’re dropped down the lineup. That would also be a demotion IMHO. I’ve seen too many players get overpaid or underpaid, to think of the cash as a symbol of your rank on the team.
Cash is King.
Did you read the whole article?
He does say elsewhere in the article that he understands he makes a lot of money and acknowledges he’s right in line about where other second baseman of his caliber are.
My take away is that the whole thing rubbed him the wrong way simply because he was due to be a free agent while Votto was not-therefore, they should have taken care of his contract first.
The Reds knew he had zero desire to go elsewhere and took advantage (and a risk) that they were right. So they let him wait; so he didn’t like it, and so he said so.
It shouldn’t surprise anyone that pro athletes have Paul Bunyan size egos.