Salomon Torres Requests Trade

Pirates reliever Salomon Torres believes Dave Littlefield tricked him during their contract talks in April of 2006.  Torres did not use an agent.  To hear him tell it, he had a verbal agreement with Littlefield that the Pirates would pay to rent one of Torres’s baseball academies in the Dominican Republic.  That never happened, so Torres filed a grievance.

Now Torres feels that because of the grievance, he is being punished by the Bucs by means of a longer-than-necessary rehab assignment for his elbow.  He’s fed up with the team and would like to be traded.

Torres has about $1.3MM left on his contract this year and $3.2MM for ’08.  His deal also has a $3.75MM club option for ’09 with a $300K buyout attached.  Torres can earn another $900K in incentives. 

Torres is now 35, and he logged a whopping 280 relief innings during 2004-06.  He’d be a fairly risky acquisition.   However, with some of the silly reliever deals handed out this offseason, he’s still got trade value.