It's not clearcut like a broken femur. First you try therapy on an injury. Then you try rest (he was DL'ed mid-July, right?). Surgery's the last resort, and you prefer to put that to the off-season. With the team in sell-mode, that choice was finally faced, sooner than later for the benefit of the player. I give the player props for playing through, rather than making a public issue of it. That effort has to stop at some point, where management (at some level in the org) makes the call, on behalf of the player, for the good of the team. But until the manager is told by the player "I can't go", it remains a judgement call - are they better off with their first choice playing only at 85% (realize that such "percentages" result in a steeper than linear dropoff in actual production), or their backup plan at that position or role. We can quibble about when it became apparent "it can't get better on its own". I hope people will resist the urge to assume downright malfeasance. This outcome clarified, for me, why they stuck with him as long as they did, through what appeared to us fans to be just a terrible slump.