This week Kansas City Royals' Billy Butler spoke with MLB.com about Zack Greinke and his departure from Kansas City. Butler said Greinke's interview in the Kansas City Star a few months ago where he expressed pessimism that the Royals would be ready to compete at the end of his contract was eventually going to cause more controversy with the team.
"This has been a controversy ever since Zack had that article that came out and he was wanting out. Whenever you do something like that, the organization has no choice but to trade you. I’m just happy that its behind us now, because if it would have kept lingering on any longer, I think it would have affected the team."
And with that Butler gave the blueprint to getting out of Kansas City -- talk about potentially wanted out of Kansas City and the organization will have "no choice" but to do it. Butler says the organization doesn't want that around.
"You don’t want somebody to be somewhere they don’t want to. That being said, Zack made it public that he didn’t want to be here anymore. As the Kansas City Royals, you don’t want that around. It’s not good for your team. I hope it works out for Zack in Milwaukee. I think we got some great pieces that came over."
So...what is Joakim Soria comes out and says the same thing this week? What if Butler does? Is this the way to get out of Kansas City?
It's always a slippery slope when you're dealing with a situation like Greinke. On the one hand, you don't want to give the impression that players can complain about the direction of the team and get traded. On the other hand, you don't want to keep unhappy players on the team.
SB Nation's Matthew Hays took Butler's words a little differently -- a viewpoint I can agree with -- and says this is a sign of Butler becoming the new face of the franchise. He's one of the top two to three players on the team and he's saying that this sort of thing won't happen in the future.