Tyler Kepner misses the point

Interviewed on Charley Steiner's show today on XM, Kepner & others forget a recent behavior pattern that's already been acknowledged as a mistake. In the case of Andy Pettitte, a long-time valuable Yankee, they could've made a 5 minute phone call in 2003 saying thanks, we're worried about your arm/elbow, so can only do such and such. But they didn't and let the 2 week window go by without a word. This kind of treatment has since been acknowledged by Brian Cashman as a mistake, but he's doing the same thing with Rivera.

• If you have a long time valuable player who's already asked you for some indication of your plans, it doesn't mean you have to sign him or pay him anything. But the least you do is call the guy or his agent, say we don't know what we're doing yet, we'll get to it shortly, just wanted to give you the courtesy of a response. When you treat franchise players like this, why wouldn't they react negatively? You wouldn't treat a dog like this and still expect him to be part of a "team" and have a "heart."
• Since the team can't even respect these guys with a phone call, they decide well, maybe this is a business and they don't especially like being allowed to "twist, slowly, slowly in the wind."

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