Clevland was sort of stupid in this situation. However they tried to get him locked up in a long term deal for what was probably below market value. They came out and basically said, "we'll give you a huge raise over last year but we want to lock you up long term as a trade". If he did verbally agree and then backed out then yes, he is SCUM. However, Clevland played a risky game and got burned as well. Even if they had him at $700,000 this year he'd want a huge raise (to the tune of 6/$68mil like he got) to stick around. Don't believe for a minute that Clevland did it "out of the goodness of their heart", they did it as a business move designed to save money and get a good player in a contract. The dumbest part for clevland was dealing with him after a career year....the only reason I can think why they did this was b/c they thought he'd get better and command an even higher price next year.