Arroyo shocked by trade to Reds
By DAVID BORGES, Journal Register News Service
03/21/2006
FORT MYERS, Fla. --- Bronson Arroyo has long said that, if he could, he’d sign a lifetime contract to remain a Red Sox.
Unfortunately for Arroyo, he couldn’t. Now he’s gone, and he’s not happy about it.
Arroyo was traded to the Cincinnati Reds on Monday in exchange for strapping young outfielder Wily Mo Pena. He got the call from general manager Theo Epstein late yesterday morning.
"He said something to the effect of, ‘I’ve got news you probably don’t want to hear,’" Arroyo recalled. "I said, ‘I’m traded to the Reds, huh?’ He said, ‘Yup.’"
And with that, the 29-year-old righthander was thrown for a loss, even though he had heard the trade rumors ever since the start of spring training.
Reached on his cell phone yesterday evening, Arroyo seemed flustered ("My brain’s scrambled, man. I’m just driving down interstate"), upset, hurt and genuinely surprised that he had been traded away.
"Yeah, it came as a shock to me. I mean, why wouldn’t it?"
Arroyo signed a three-year, $11.25 million extension with the Sox on Jan. 19 against the advice of his agent, Gregg Clifton, who warned him that signing at such a discounted price would make him attractive to small-market teams.
Arroyo signed anyway, believing he had a tacit agreement with Jed Hoyer and Ben Cherington, the team’s co-general managers at the time, that he would remain a Red Sox for at least the foreseeable future.
"My exact words were, ‘I’m not signing this deal to be in Tampa Bay in two weeks,’" Arroyo said. "Their exact words were, ‘We don’t foresee you being in any type of deals in the near future. There are no deals involving you at all.’ Whether they meant the near future was tomorrow, I don’t know."
"After the conversations I had with Jed and Ben," he continued, "did I think I’d be traded six or seven weeks later? No. Not that I didn’t think I could be traded possibly at the trading deadline if I wasn’t throwing well, but I didn’t think I’d be traded in spring training."
Epstein returned as Sox GM after a 2 ½-month hiatus the same night Arroyo agreed to his deal. He hadn’t been involved with the negotiations, but said the rumor of a "gentlemen’s agreement" between Arroyo and the Sox "simply wasn’t the case."
"Jed Hoyer finished the contract with the Red Sox and told Bronson at the time that signing such a contract came with no guarantees about being traded. He assured Bronson at the time that there were no active trade discussions (involving) Bronson, and that certainly was true. But that was several months ago, and things did change as teams began to inquire about Bronson this spring."
Arroyo didn’t think anything would have been different had Epstein been involved with the negotiations over the winter.
"He is involved right now," the pitcher pointed out. "If he didn’t want it to go down, it wouldn’t have gone down. He’s the GM."
Arroyo had been pegged to start the season in the bullpen for the pitching-rich Sox, but he should be near the top of the Reds’ starting rotation. Not that that provides much consolation for the tall righthander.
"No place is going to attract me," he said. "I don’t personally enjoy pitching in the National League, because of all the things that come along with the National League. I wanted to pitch with a team I knew had a chance to be in the World Series every year. Not to say I couldn’t with the Cincinnati Reds, but obviously it’s probably more of an uphill battle. I just bought an apartment in Boston, it felt like my home. It’s going to be different getting to know everybody, going back to square one."
Even more disconcerting for Reds fans: "Hey, I’ll go out and pitch my three years. I’ve got three years and I can go where I want."
Still, it’s not the Reds so much that bothers him but the fact that he’s leaving Boston.
"I wanted to stay in a Red Sox uniform. Period. That was it, that was the only reason I signed that deal. Hey, business is business. They did what they had to do, and I did what I had to do. You can only be a stand-up guy to a certain point. There’s so many factors involved. It’s not just me, it’s Theo, the owners, a lot of stuff involved around it. It’s strictly a business decision. I know Theo liked me as a person, but that doesn’t make it any easier."
Arroyo didn’t make it over to City of Palms Park yesterday, instead packing up his residence. He’ll be at the park today to pick up his belongings and figures to be up at the Reds’ spring training site in Sarasota, a little over an hour up the road, to play catch this afternoon. He said he’s slated to pitch on Saturday when the Reds host Minnesota, meaning he could be in line to face the Sox the following Thursday, March 30, at City of Palms.
In his three years in the Sox organization, Arroyo emerged from waiver-wire pick-up from Pittsburgh to author of a perfect game with the PawSox to a solid and versatile starting pitcher to a literal rock star.
Along with racking up 24 wins and more quality starts (36) than any other Red Sox pitcher over the past two seasons, Arroyo had become famous for his guitar and vocal skills. He even released an album of cover songs last July entitled ‘Covering the Bases,’ on which Epstein was a special guest guitarist.
"From a personal standpoint, I really admire Bronson," Epstein said. "I have gotten to know him really well, and that made it difficult. From an organizational standpoint, we owe a lot to Bronson ..I think it’s safe to say we would not have won the (2004) World Series without him. He’s handled himself with a huge amount of class on and off the field throughout his time as a Red Sox."
"That said," Epstein continued, "if I allowed my personal feelings about a player or recognized that a player would prefer to stay in Boston, if I let that affect our judgment, I wouldn’t be doing my job. It was tough for the organization to see a good, loyal soldier go."
Originally Posted by vaticanplum
