Dismayed by all the talk of economic troubles hamstringing a quality starting pitcher signing, Roy Oswalt took off to Las Vegas to let his GM know that he wasn't going to take that as an excuse.
Apparently Oswalt wants to restructure his contract to back load money towards the end of the contract to artificially free up money for 2009. While not the most logical of solutions because a starting pitcher's contract will certainly be for more than one year, still a noble gesture (if you ignore the fact that he's not requesting a pay cut to truly free up dollar signs on the Astros ledger).
The Chronicle's article had some interesting quotes:
They haven’t approached me about it, but I wouldn’t have a problem with it. Actually, I told Ed Wade that we could redo my contract if we could go out and get another starter.
And Wade's view point:
We’ve had a lot of internal discussions on a lot of things. I think when you get to things of that magnitude it takes a lot of conversations, and 99.99 percent of it has to be internal.
I'm interested to see if Lee or Berkman chime in on this issue. It's clear that Oswalt wants to be on a winning team again and is frustrated by the front office's willingness to make that happen.