PIT Post-Gazette: Torres files grievance, asks for trade

Reliever Salomon Torres, angry with the Pirates about what he feels was a broken promise in negotiating his most recent contract, has filed a grievance against the team and asked general manager Dave Littlefield to trade him.

“I’ve given everything I have to the team, to the city of Pittsburgh, and I would like nothing more than to be part of a championship there,” Torres said by phone from Bradenton, Fla., where he is rehabilitating his right elbow. “But I’ve had enough. They tricked me into signing that contract…”
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Torres, who did not have an agent in those [2006] talks, contends that he agreed to less money than market value because Littlefield had strongly suggested—though not in writing—that the team would consider renting one of the two baseball academies Torres built in his native Dominican Republic.

“I liked the idea,” Torres said. “I was thinking of it like deferred money, something I could have for later in life. They kept me interested enough. They made me believe. Dave told me he’d think about it, but that I’d have to sign at a hometown discount. I did that.”

After signing that contract, then waiting for the Pirates for a few months, then having one last futile talk with Littlefield in November, Torres gave up and rented his second facility to the Texas Rangers late last year.