How often can this happen to one team

Jody Gerut has decided to blatantly ignore the Pirates and go ahead and have a knee surgery that the team says he doesn't need. I have no idea what to make of this, but Charlie breaks it down pretty well. It would seem that he's mostly just pissed at the Pirates for putting him in AAA. It is true that the severity of his knee injury seems to be inversely proportional to the level of play we see from Chris Duffy and Nate McLouth. Then again, as Charlie points out, he's losing money for having this surgery. Is it possible that the situation is so bad in Pittsburgh that a player would rather do anything he could to sully his image in the eyes of the front office, including not getting paid for a chunk of the year, just to get out of the organization?