Pedro Still Plans to Pitch

Opening Day of the 2009 season has come and gone as baseball enters its first weekend of the season, and already there are plenty of teams with questions about their pitching staffs. While managers and pitching coaches are already losing sleep worrying about their pitchers, there's one man who is sitting at home loving every minute of it.

That's because when the season started last Sunday night, it was the first Opening Day since 1992 that Pedro Martinez wasn't on somebody's roster. Martinez couldn't get the $5 million deal he was looking for this winter, but even though he's still unemployed, he has no plans on retiring. He thinks somebody is going to give him what he wants sooner or later.

Martinez's thinking is he ultimately will have an opportunity to pick and choose among suitors, similar to the situation Roger Clemens faced in 2007, when The Rocket signed a pro-rated $28 million deal in May to pitch for the Yankees, who were bidding against the Red Sox and Astros.

But Martinez remains adamant he won't accept a deal with a low base salary that is heavily laden with incentives. Martinez's agent, Fern Cuza, yesterday would only say that the right-hander is continuing private workouts and has drawn interest from several teams.

Sitting it out for a while is probably the right thing for Pedro to do. After all, he hasn't made more than 25 starts in a season since 2005, and has only made 25 starts total over the last two years with the New York Mets.

By sticking to the blueprint Clemens laid out before him (though he may want to avoid the part that shows you where to inject the steroids), Pedro can find a team that he can help over the last half of the season, and help ensure that he's fresh and healthy for a possible playoff run.