-Only three days remain to re-sign Stephen Dreim to an FF contract for 2012, and unravelings on Thursday zapped even more life out of the feasibility of the negotiations.
After eight days of silence on a $764,000 offer issued Tue., Oct. 30, Dreim finally came out and rejected the offer, as was expected. "There's a psychological pattern, where, if people are taking a long time to make a decision, they're more likely to say 'no' to it," said analyst Mike Vilshire. "Because if they like the offer, they'll usually say 'yes' enthusiastically and quickly." Dreim set no further request for an offer, which is both good and bad for the scouters. It's good in that it gives them more freedom to post their own amount in the next offer, not one dictated by Dreim, but the lack of an offer request, which Dreim has usually issued upon previous rejections, deprives the scouters of guidance in the form of a ballpark figure.
Head Scouter Jim Dall said he and his scouters had not yet figured an amount to offer Dreim, but he said that it "will not exceed $800,000." The offer will be formally issued on Friday. "Our battle plan is to see this offer off and away Friday, hopefully we get a response awfully quickly, and then we hope, if Mr. Dreim is responding quickly, to engage in a rapid-fire tennis-style back-and-forth of offers and responses over Saturday and Sunday until either we reach an agreement or until the Monday deadline passes. Hopefully, the former of those two scenarios will play out."
In other news, chefs met with scouters for five hours on Thursday in an attempt to break off talks between the scouters and Dreim, but with the deadline looming that's not a must-do in order for the chefs' goal of not rehiring Dreim to be achieved. "Time is on our side," said chef Peter Dumas Thursday.
However, if the chefs could get the scouters to agree to the pact, the pact's terms would involve having the scouting department place Dreim on the barred list. If the chefs drop the pact matter and just let the deadline pass, Dreim could still be negotiated with in the next offseason. While most chefs agreed that letting Monday come and go would be a victory for their cause, a few disagreed. "We must settle this matter now and get the scouters to agree with this pact," so said chef Alizone Jahschweich. "I don't know about the other chefs, but I can say that I don't want to be refighting this come December, January, February, 2013, 2014, 2015, ever. I want to get Dreim on the barred list. And I never want to have to refight that."
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