Quote of the Day: Adam Jones on his rights as a player

Posted by parceline on

Wednesday, August 1, 2018

A lot of people wondered if the Orioles would trade outfielder Adam Jones at the deadline. He did not get moved, of course, and a big reason for that was that he has full no-trade rights pursuant to his being (a) a ten-year veteran; with (b) five years on his current team. Or, “ten-and-five” rights, as they’re colloquially known.

These are rights which the players union bargained for because no player likes to be traded when they’ve been someplace for a while. It uproots families and disrupts social and philanthropic efforts players — who are expected to have some loyalty to their community — tend to cultivate. In bargaining, the owners agreed. They agreed that, at a certain point, sure, it’s the right thing to allow guys of significant tenure to have a say in where they play.

I haven’t explored Baltimore Orioles fan message boards and haven’t sought out their comments since the deadline passed, but based on how such situations have played out in the past, I presume there are at least some fans who wish Jones would’ve waived his no-trade rights in order to allow the O’s to more completely tear things down. Roch Kubatko of MASNsports.com no doubt heard or expected such sentiment, so he asked Jones about not approving a trade. Jones’ comment:

Jones on why he didn't approve trade: “When players walked out years ago and walked the picket lines and did all that stuff, they did all that for reasons like right now. I earned this and it’s my decision. I don’t have to explain it to nobody. It’s my decision. Thank you.”

— Roch Kubatko (@masnRoch) August 1, 2018

Kubatko added later that there was no saltiness or anything like that on Jones’ part when he said this. He said it was matter-of-fact and that it was even a little amusing. Which is not surprising given Jones’ reputation. He’s one of the good ones.

You know me pretty well by now, so you know I’m staunchly in favor of players’ rights when it comes to this sort of thing. I share it, though, not so much as to wave the union flag as I do to remind folks that not every assertion of a players’ rights is some sort of anti-team, anti-management provocation, as they are so often portrayed. As Jones correctly notes, in this case a team asking the player to waive his rights is the one asking for more than that for which they bargained. They’re the ones trying to take a bit more, not the player.

As such, we should not ask, as we often do in these instances, why the player being intransigent or whatever. We should ask why the team is asking for more than it is entitled to and what they’re willing to do for the player to grant it a considerable favor.

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The Nationals stood basically pat at the trade deadline, believing that, despite their struggles thus far, they still stood a good chance of winning the division. It’s not a terrible assumption, necessarily. They are a much better team, talent wise, than their record suggests. All it really takes is a good week or two of play combined with a stumble or two from the Phillies and/or Braves and they’re right in the thick of it.

Even if you don’t buy that, there’s no obvious trade they could’ve made, save dealing Bryce Harper, that would’ve made a huge difference for the course of the franchise. But they did make one trade. They dealt reliever Brandon Kintzler to the Chicago Cubs. Today Barry Svrluga of the Washington Post said why:

Kintzler was shipped out because the Nationals believed he was responsible for anonymous reports that painted Washington’s clubhouse culture as iffy.

“Dysfunctional?” Manager Dave Martinez said. “I don’t see any dysfunction in our clubhouse. I see a lot of cohesiveness, a lot of togetherness.”

The “anonymous reports” no doubt refers to a story Jeff Passan of Yahoo wrote the other day in which the Nats clubhouse was described as “a mess.” That story was published just after noon on Monday. Kintzler was dealt a little over 24 hours later. For his part, Kintzler denies being Passan’s source.

Who knows who Passan’s source was — neither the source nor Passan will ever say so — but this does strike me as some killing-the-messenger stuff. I’d be one thing if Kintzler was the cause of the reported clubhouse dysfunction, but no one is saying that. He was just telling people about it. Which, sure, is not the sort of thing a team likes, but it’s also way less of a problem than having clubhouse unrest in the first place.

In any event, the Nats beat the tar out of the Mets last night and, as I said, they may still very well go on and win the division if they get their act together. If they do, I imagine they’ll look back at this time as when they all pulled together as a unit. How much of that pulling together will be attributed to sending Kintzler off will be rather interesting to see.

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