Earlier today, Craighad some thoughtson how Pirates general manager Neal Huntington treated right-hander Matt Capps, who was non-tendered on Saturday. I’m beginning to think that Huntington announced that he would tender contracts to all of his arbitration-eligible players only to attempt to drum up some late trade interest in the 26-year-old reliever. It obviously didn’t work.
Huntington defended the surprising decisionin an interview with Dejan Kovacevic of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on Sunday:
“We spent a ton of time and energy on this and made an aggressive effort to try to keep Matt in Pittsburgh. The bottom line is that the arbitration process allows for these types of decisions to be made. Once you tender a player, it’s really a no-lose situation for the player. Even if he loses, he’s going to get a substantial raise. We didn’t feel like going through the process with Matt was a good decision for us. He felt like it was better for him to become a free agent than to accept our offer. He feels like he’s going to get that much, if not more, as a free agent. They might be right, and they might be wrong. We feel like we can take that money and apply it elsewhere and do as well as we expected Matt to do. And, again, we might be right, and we might be wrong.”
Capps, meanwhile,sees things a bit differently:
Both sides haven’t closed the door on re-opening negotiations, but the good news for Capps is that he is now able to sign with any team. Speaking of which, Nick Piecoro of the Arizona Republicreports that the Diamondbacks have interest in Capps.
