After another good outing today Papelbon spoke with reporters and talked about the negotiations with the team. He is not up for arbitration until next year so the Red Sox do not have to increase his salary but he has started to make some noise: “it’s a tough situation for me right now because I’m at a point where I feel like the position I’m in, there’s a certain standard that needs to be put put in place here,’’ said Papelbon after his scoreless inning of work here in a game against the Pirates. “I feel like with me being at the top of my position, I feel like that standard needs to be set and I’m the one to set that standard…I don’t think the Red Sox really necessarily are seeing eye to eye with me on that subject right now. Hopefully we can get somewhere. We’re chugging away at this thing and we want to get it done, believe me and we can move on….At the same time, I feel a certain obligation to not only to myself and my family to make the money I deserve but for the game of baseball. I mean, Mariano Rivera has been doing it for the past 10 years. With me coming up behind him, I feel a certain obligation to do the same. And, yeah, I’m at the mercy of the club right now to a certain extent but you know, it’s just a matter of ironing out the numbers and we haven’t ironed them out yet. Hopefully we can get a mutual agreement…I don’t want to renew, I don’t want to but if I have to, I have to, that’s just the cold, hard facts of it and if I have to do that to set the tone, that’s what I do. We’ll figure something out.’’
I hate this part of the game of baseball; players want to get more money than a club wants to offer them before becoming a free agent and then players want to get paid for past performances after their prime.(just ask Scott Boras) Papelbon has every right to ask for more money but do it through your agent not through the press….and why do you throw Rivera into the argument?
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