Paul DePodesta on Trevor Hoffman or How to not be graceful

Emphasis mine from DePo's blog.

After a couple of weeks passed without contact, Trevor's representatives did request a meeting with Kevin, Sandy, and John Moores. Kevin responded to this request directly to Trevor saying that he and Sandy would be happy to meet with Trevor. We did not hear back regarding a possible meeting. After one month had passed, it was clear that our offer was not sufficient, so we officially withdrew it.

Again I'll say that I don't think the above facts are all that important. The reason is that there is simply no graceful way to handle this situation. Trevor has meant too much to this franchise for any kind of separation to be seamless. No matter how the situation is handled, if Trevor pitches elsewhere in 2009, it will be deemed to have been handled poorly. We know that.

 Jayyyyyyyy in the comments sums up my thoughts before I can:

I'm sure the same thing was said after Todd Walker was cut, after Khalil Greene stopped getting paid, after the hold-up in the negotiations with Allan Dykstra, after it came out that the team was shopping Jake Peavy, after the team called out Brian Giles for using his no-trade clause, and so on and so forth. Do you realize that this is one of the biggest concerns of many of your business-savvy fans? That there is a graceful way to handle many of these situations and the Padres seem to not care how many fans they alienate, especially Sandy "I'm not selling anything" Alderson.

I know one way to deal with being in situations that have no "graceful way to handle" them. Stop being the type of organization that puts themselves into crap situations.