Ryan Dempster says he never turned down that deal to the Braves. Um, OK.

Ryan Dempster was all-but-traded to the Braves last week, but rejected it with his 10/5 rights. At least that’s what The Man wants you to believe. Dempster says it didn’t go down like that:

“The truth of the matter is, at the end of the day, I didn’t turn down any trades. All I asked for was more time on one particular trade. I didn’t really get that time. It got leaked out that I said yes and then I said no. And even after I said no -- I never officially said no -- I said I needed time to think about it, and I have the right to that time. I know people want an answer overnight, but I’ve been traded twice in my career with no say and so to have a little bit of say and time to make a decision, that’s all I wanted. Unfortunately it went down the way it did. I felt bad for the Atlanta Braves. They are a first-class, top-notch organization.”

Couple things:

• When someone who prefaces an assertion of fact with “frankly,” or “the truth of the matter” or “in all honesty,” it usually means that the following statement will neither be frank, truthful nor honest. If you add an “at the end of the day” to it, sorry, I’m more suspicious, because that’s just vamping, verbal goo.
• If all Dempster wanted was more time, and he did not, in fact, get traded to the Braves, doesn’t that strongly suggest that he did, in fact, turn it down? Because I’m having a hard time seeing the Cubs just voluntarily walking away from what almost everyone thought was a great deal in landing Randall Delgado unless they were forced to.
• If that didn’t happen and, instead, it was the Braves who bailed, it was because Dempster’s delay caused them to rethink. Which, effectively speaking, means that Dempster did scuttle the deal through his actions if not his words.

Is there another possibility here? I’m having a hard time seeing one. What seems pretty obvious, however, is that Dempster is really interested in not being seen as the impediment to that scuttled deal, when he almost certainly was, one way or another.

And just to be clear: he had every right in the world to sink that deal if he wanted to. His union brothers negotiated for that considerable power and he earned the right to exercise that considerable power through his consistency and longevity.

But you know what they say about what comes with great power, right?