See, the problem with the "he's knows he's not coming back so it was okay for him to make his comments" argument is really two-fold:

1) Yeah, our situation (pujorative "our") might be great, but what happens when it starts to become rocky? There are guys that can weather the storm and guys that make the storm rockier. He appears to be one of the latter.

2) His agent has already acknowledged that the incident has lost him money. So, let's pretend Burnett had no intention of going back (probably safe since the Marlins are cash strapped). How SMART is it to make comments like that one week before the end of the season? All he is doing is hurting his marketability.

To me #2 is more telling than any. When you look at a pitcher with his kind of stuff and see that he is a career .500 pitcher (more or less) it makes you wonder why. Injuries? Yeah, he's had that problem, but he still has the electric stuff. Maybe he's still too much of a thrower and not enough of a pitcher. Ah, maybe those stupid ill-timed comments are a hint of a larger problem. This guy is just not that intelligent. Say what you will about Roger Clemens and his ability to tutor young pitchers. Roy O has certainly benefitted from that, but you have to want to be tutored and you have to be smart enough to realize what resource you have in guys like Clemens and Pettitte. Redding didn't seem to be and that proved to be his demise.

In my mind, Burnett is a Redding with more stuff. Yes, that stuff will win him some games, but there are nights when either you don't have that stuff or teams are all over your stuff. Guys like Clemens, Oswalt, and Pettitte are so effective because they figure our ways to make it through games like that. You can probably count the number of truly bad starts all three have had on one hand. That's the same amount Burnett has had in the last month. He's 29 years old. If he hasn't learned by now he isn't likely to. Let the Yankees overpay for him and send them to further salary oblivion.