Except Pennington replaced Kawasaki not Valencia. They kept an extra pitcher they barely used instead of Valencia.
I still don't buy this story about him being a pain. He seemed happy and was clearly surprised and pissed about being dfa'd.
...and since when did wanting to play more become a bad thing anyway. You should want guys like that.
Getting rid of a guy for wanting to play seems exceedingly stupid. His contributions to the team should be more important than him asking to play more and we don't know that he complained at all anyway.
Seems like this story is just contrived garbage to justify what they soon realized was a stupid move.