Padres to Place Hoyt on Waivers : After Losing Arbitration Case, Club to Re-Release Pitcher

The Padres said Wednesday they are putting pitcher LaMarr Hoyt on waviers for the purpose of giving him his unconditional release a day after a baseball arbitrator declared that the club improperly released the former Cy Young Award winner.

George Nicolau, the arbitrator, also reduced a one-year suspension of Hoyt by baseball Commissioner Peter V. Ueberroth to 60 days.

Nicolau said in a decision Tuesday that the Padres should not have released Hoyt Jan. 7 with three years and $3.2 million remaining on his guaranteed contract. The Padres initially released Hoyt because they felt he had violated the “good citizenship clause” of his standard contract. The major league baseball players’ union filed a grievance against the Padres.

Hoyt, 32, was arrested twice in the last year for possession of tranquilizers and painkillers and served 38 days in federal prison in January and February.

In an announced statement Wednesday, the Padres said: “This move is consistent with Joan Kroc’s and the club’s previous policy (on players who have had continuing problems with drugs). The Padres wish LaMarr well in his life’s endeavors and we will be paying him his salary as stipulated in the arbitrator’s ruling.”

The Padres will have to pay Hoyt $3.2 million minus the 60-day suspension, which began at the start of the season.

Before the Padres’ decision Wednesday, Eugene Orza, associate general counsel for the Major League Players’ Assn. who presented the union’s grievances to Nicolau, was asked about the possibility of the Padres paying Hoyt, but not playing him.

“It’s a desire (on the part of the Padres) to avoid the consequences of a legal opinion,” Orza said. “If the club believes they can just pay him and that ends the matter, I’m not sure that’s the case.”

Orza said he will talk to the Padres.

“There is more than LaMarr Hoyt’s money at stake,” Orza said. “The clear intent of the (arbitrator’s) decision was for him (Hoyt) to resume playing.”

New Padre president Chub Feeney would not comment on the Hoyt situation Wednesday. Kroc and Beth Benes, the Padres’ legal counsel, were unavailable for comment.

Nicolau also was unavailable for comment.

Hoyt, who is home with his family in Columbia, S.C., told Howard Frank, his San Diego-based attorney, Wednesday that he did not want to talk to make a statement.

“I have to think he was pleased with the result (arbitrator’s decision),” Frank said. “All of this is really important, but what’s really important is that from a health point, he’s doing well. To some extent, he’s been working out. He’s spent a lot of time visiting with friends and family back there. That’s where his people are.”

Frank said the testimony of Hoyt’s psychiatrist, San Diego’s Dr. Thomas Rodgers, was “an important part of the arbitration. I’m sure Tom was a significant witness.”

Rodgers, who has an ongoing patient-doctor relationship with Hoyt and is therefore bound by confidentiality laws, said:.

“I think the Padres were in a data poor position. I was critical of their sending him to Hazelden Foundation (drug and alcohol rehabilitation center in Minnesota) at the time they did . . . I think Mrs. Kroc and Ballard Smith (former Padre president) have a set idea (on dealing with these matters). A rather narrow focus. Other things might be considered and I don’t think they were considered. They might have asked for other information.”

Orza said the Padres tried to turn what was a disciplinary case into a breach of contract case.

“The club did not do the kinds of things that are necessary in considering the question of just cause of disciplining an employee,” Orza said. “The club took a simple approach to the disciplining. That’s the big problem I’ve had with the San Diego club. You just can’t do what you want to do. You have to discipline an employee in a fashion that is fair.”

In 1985, the Padres traded second baseman Alan Wiggins--a repeat drug violator who was a key member of their 1984 National League championship team--to the Baltimore Orioles for pitchers Roy Lee Jackson and Richard Caldwell, neither of whom lasted long.

Orza wondered how Hoyt’s one-year suspension and release could have been justified when compared to sentences handed out to baseball players who admitted to cocaine use in a Pittsburgh drug trial in 1985. They were suspended for a year by Ueberroth, but were allowed to play, provided they paid specified fines and did community service.

“You need punishment to fit the crime,” Orza said.

“One aspect (of the arbitrator’s decision) was extremely surprising and disquieting,” said Barry Rona, head of the owners’ Player Relations Committee. “That is the fact that we had a player who has a contract and in that contract the player specifically agrees to conduct himself as a first-class person and that player then engages in criminal activity. We have a decision that doesn’t bind to that contract.”

Contributing to this story were Times Staff Writers Dave Distel and Ann Killion