Talking Chop

Another $100K. Incentive to like the incentives even more…

-C

cthabeerman - January 17, 2012 reply

The injury thing

should have hepled our cause in salary seeing how it has obviously affected his value in the trade market .

bravesdude - January 17, 2012 reply

mlbtraderumors had him projected at 5.1 mil so it is a litle higher than expected. Boras probably had something to do with that.

airman in bama - January 17, 2012 reply

But he was an All Star

a shiny tag like that has to look good in front of the arbitrator.

Mr. Sanchez - January 17, 2012 reply

I'll give it a shot

Years 1-3:
You are under team control. You get paid what they give you, which is typically league minimum, with a nominal raise each year. Typically, prior to the new CBA, it tended to look like: $419k, ~450k, ~$500k

Years 4-6/7:
Arbitration years. Depending on the call-up date and service time accrual, a player is entitled to three or four arbitration years. In arbitration years teams use stats and other measures to a player’s value, and offers them a figure. The player can accept it, and then there’s no issue, or in most cases, the player wants more money, and they ask for something higher. If no agreement can be reached by team and player, they go to arbitration, where a bunch of non-baseball lawyers and business heads listen to both sides, and they decide what the player is worth. At this point what these people choose to side with is what the player plays for.

Think of arbitration as court; two sides against one another, and it’s an invasive process that both parties typically want to avoid at all costs, because the player wants to know why he’s not making what he wants, and the team bringing out all of the negative reasons to justify why they don’t want to give it to him. This is primarily why it’s always a good thing to see headlines saying “so and so avoided arbitration by settling to X deal.”

With each year in arbitration, there is a minimum raise that is mandatory, the numbers I’m not up to speed with. For example EOF went from Arb 1 ~$900k to Arb 2 ~$2M (<100%) for doing well, whereas Jesus Flores, being mostly an injury risk went from just Arb 2 $750k to Arb 3 $850k.

In superstar cases, like Joey Votto, entering his first Arbitration year would have warranted gigantic money, so the Reds instead signed him to a three year deal which bought out all of his arbitration years (he was called up early, therefore had no Arb 4 year eligibility), which gave Votto stability in knowing he’d get paid no matter what for three years, and the Reds some potential salary relief if Votto contributes more statistically than what he’s being paid in the three years.

Non-tendering in the midst of arbitration years makes players free agents early. As in the case of Peter Moylan, it was mandatory for the Braves to give him a raise from his $2M salary, as he was entering his arb 3 year. But being an injury risk, the Braves didn’t want to do such, so they non-tendered him, making him a free agent. At this point, they were allowed to re-sign him for a cheaper deal, to protect themselves from a larger financial loss if he turns out to be still hurting, or ineffective. But typically, any really useful or good player doesn’t get non-tendered in the first place.

Year 7 or 8, depending on service time accrued:
And after all the arbitration years are done, a player is now a free agent.

royhobbs - January 17, 2012 reply