Sandy Alderson terms his earlier statements about R.A. Dickey’s contract “unrealistic” - MLB
As it seems renewal of agreement of R.A. Dickey is unlikely, New York Mets’ General Manager, Sandy Alderson has given further strength to this assumption by acknowledging that what he said regarding the contract before was unrealistic.
He has confessed that the optimism that he showed was not based on factual information.
During and after the conclusion of the last season, Alderson expressed an extraordinary level of hope that he will be able to sign a new agreement with Dickey.
He, time-and-again stated that the team needs the services of Dickey, giving an impression that they will go all-out in the offseason to ink a new deal.
Right now, he appears to be thinking otherwise. Instead of giving any information about the developments regarding negotiations with Dickey, he is talking about the need to have outfielders and address other areas in the team.
He is giving clear indications that at the moment he is more interested in doing some shopping from outside as opposed to agreeing on multi-year contracts with his current players.
The reason why Alderson had to be extra ambitious before was the fact that he did not want to spread speculations such as “New York treating Dickey in a similar way as they did in the case of Jose Reyes last year”.
In order to keep focus of the players on the season, he largely gave an impression that new deal with Dickey is not far from materialising.
"Maybe it was a little bit unrealistic on my part to think that we get something done," Alderson said. "But I think it was important for me to emphasize that we were going to get going early, in order to avoid any speculation about a Jose Reyes-type approach
to this. So in that sense it was probably a good idea to emphasize speed but unrealistic to expect that this was all going to be concluded quickly."
Alderson is still hoping that somehow they manage to retain Dickey beyond 2013 but at the same time he is conscious of the fact that doing so may be difficult for them.
In case Dickey is traded by the Mets and not offered the extension, it will be an unusual event. The Mets fans will certainly be unhappy as he was the only source of their solace during the last season.
It will be interesting to keep track of the reports regarding Dickey in the next few days.
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