“Dude, what do you want from me? We gave all the money to Cliff!”

He’s not expecting something by tomorrow at noon, but Phillies’ skipper Charlie Manuel is hoping for a contract extension before Opening Day. If one isn’t signed by April 1, don’t expect to hear anything about it until after the 2011 campaign.

“I think that once the season starts, I don’t want to talk about my contract,” Manuel said.

According to agent Pat Rooney, who represents Charlie Manuel, the two sides are apart on money more than anything.  He breifly shared his stance on the matter with CSN Philly’s Jim Salisbury.

“Charlie deserves to be paid as one of the top five managers in baseball,” Rooney told CSNPhilly.com on Monday night. “I don’t want to negotiate through the media, but they know our position. Hopefully we’ll have something by opening day.”

It’s one of the few times that we’ve really heard either side mention the matter in the media. Both sides have been saying this offseason that a contract extension is likely, but plenty of time has come and gone. And Manuel still has no guarantee that he’ll be with the team after 2011.

Ruben Amaro breifly mentioned the negotiations yesterday, saying that “we want to get something done, which we have since December. I don’t view it as a distraction for our players because we don’t make our negotiations public.”

We can’t argue with that. We didn’t know that Cliff Lee was a possibility until the very day he agreed to terms in December. The Phillies do business rather quietly, so it can be tough to draw inferences from the situation, but there are a couple of things to consider. Read the full article at Crossing Broad.