Former Atlanta Braves pitcher Tom Glavine said Friday that he was "blindsided" by his sudden dismissal this week from the team where he was a 10-time All Star.
Interviewed Friday morning on the "Mayhem in the A.M." radio show on 790 The Zone, Glavine said he thinks Braves officials were hoping he would get hurt so that they wouldn't have to pay a $1 million bonus he would have been due if he had been added to the active roster.
"Absolutely, they were hoping I got hurt, no question in my mind," Glavine said. "They figured I would either get hurt, and that would be the end of it, or I would pitch so poorly that they figured I was a standup person and would say, 'no.'"
Glavine said his release from the team on Wednesday " could have been handled a whole lot better than it was.
"Looking at the whole situation, and taking into account the amount of time I've spent in this city and the amount of time I've spent in baseball, there's no question in my mind it could have been handled better."
Glavine said Braves officials sometimes "don't look at players and take into account what they've done on the field, what they've done off the field, what they've meant to the organization, what they've meant to the city, and say, 'wait, these guys deserve to be treated a little bit differently than this business model we have.'"
Glavine said that he had expected all along to playing in Atlanta this weekend following a rehab schedule in the minors.
"I would pitch the simulated game that I pitched at Turner Field, I would then pitch a 3- or 4-inning stint in Gwinnett, followed by a 5- or 6-inning stint in Gwinnett, followed by a 90-pitch stint in Rome, then I would pitch in Atlanta on June 7, that's what I was told," he said.
"When I signed my contract, I was pretty adamant that I was not going to spring training to make this team. I was going to spring training and proving I was healthy and getting through spring training healthy and I'm on the team, or I'm not going," Glavine said. "If it was a tryout situation, I wasn't going to spring training."
In his mind, Glavine said, "the way the conversations went down, the only way that I was not going to pitch in Atlanta on June 7 was if I got hurt again."
Glavine said he was blindsided Wednesday morning when he got a call "from somebody that kind of gave me a heads-up on what was going on."
He said his release was "totally financially-driven, whether it's they didn't want to pay me the million dollars that I would have been due to go out there and pitch and pitch one pitch, one inning, one game and get hurt - and I'm very understanding that that's a possibility."
Glavine said that the more likely scenario involved Wednesday's trade that brought Pittsburgh outfielder Nate McLouth to the Braves.
"In order for them to pull this deal off, they had to get some money somewhere, and they got the money from releasing me," he said.
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