Glavine, don't be grievin'

Yeesh. The other day, I came down kind of tentatively on the Braves' side in the whole Glavine fiasco, though I certainly understood Glavine's frustration and felt for the guy. I also mentioned that I think he's an exceptionally intelligent ballplayer.

If this happens, I take all that back. I didn't know the CBA had a bar on releasing players for economic reasons, and I'm pretty sure that I would think that was idiotic if there were any way to actually enforce it. But such a provision is pure window dressing to placate the players. If a GM can't come up with some vaguely plausible non-financial reason for releasing a player, that GM is in the wrong line of work (and should probably try the food service industry or something next). There is just no way that a grievance filed against a team for releasing a player "for financial reasons" can, or should, ever be successful.

And the case here is particularly terrible. As I pointed out the other day, there were several good reasons to dump Glavine that didn't have anything to do with money, the biggest being that with four good MLB starters and Tommy Hanson, they didn't have a place for him. If Glavine files this grievance, whoever adjudicates these things should actually, physically laugh in his (and his agent's) face. And he's not nearly the reasonable sort of guy I thought he was.