If this is true, Luhnow and the Astros did an amazing job of keeping this out of the media for the last year.
No kidding. He could've had the surgery last year (assuming it was a tear they found) and now be rehabbing and pitching by the end of this season...with $5,000,000 in his pocket. Now, he loses another year and probably millions of dollars.
Exactly...I would have probably spilled all the details once the media attacked the Astros. Props to Luhnow for taking it like a man.
I wonder if we will get any positive cred on this? I know the Chron won't, but hopefully MLBN or someone will.
So basically the Astros did him a favor by offering him what they did after the MRI.... So what national pundits are we waiting for an apology from?
From a financial perspective it was disastrous. However, it's not like this was some inner city kid trying to provide for his family. The Aikens are clearly well off and felt like the initial 3 million offer was a slap in the face, certainly enough to where he was willing to take a paycut to play for any team but the Astros.
And on top of that, the team that drafted him is playing well this year. A major oops from the Aiken camp.
Unless they are multi-millionaires to the point where Brady earning any additional income is just icing on the cake, then a 5 million dollar deal from the Astros is quite a bit of money to scoff at, specially since we are now seeing that he had obvious issues with his arm.
What part of this is new information? I'm pretty sure we knew all of this from the Chron coverage at the time of the failed negotiations. Luhnow even said publicly that Aiken's side didn't counter-offer.
The only thing I was thinking was new was the info that they saw a small tear in his ligament. I always thought the issue the Astros had was their MRI showed his UCL was unusually short, not that it was already torn. I thought the concern was that were he to need Tommy John surgery (if a tear were ever to develop) then the repair might have complications because of his anatomy. But if they actually already saw a tear present AND his UCL was short causing concern, then hell yes the Stros were justified in what they did. Or was it reported back at the draft that they found a tear on their scans?
Nope, but who knows what information is correct? Partial tear? Short? Thin? What we know is that something gave them pause, and now it looks like they were right.
Why doesn't mlb have a draft combine of some sort so at least the top prospects can be tested before drafted.
Because veteran players will allow team's to pay minor leaguers minimum wage and MLB players for the first six years tens of millions of dollars below market value, but for some reason veteran players have drawn the line at medicals prior to the draft during collective bargaining.
If it was really a tear, doesn't make sense that other physicians were saying "he's fine... now." That still implies it was an anatomical variant which we now know led to a more complicated surgery. It also doesn't make sense that out of their 2nd, 3rd, 4th or 5th opinions, none of them came close to making this a black/white issue (which a "tear" would have implied).
