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.