A discussion about Arbitration

[CubInOK]

So, I read this on another web site and I would like some input from you Bill James kool-aid drinkers here.

 

Anyway, there is a guy in law school (not me) who has an assignment to defend a catcher in an arbitration hearing. This catcher put up a line of .303 BA, 122 RBIs, 30HR and basically a .303/.420/.496 line on average over his first 2 seasons, with his major league debut coming when he was at the age of 23. He also put up a 36% CS% and played otherwise Gold Glove-caliber defense during those 2 years. At the end of his second season, he had a neck injury which required surgery. He was able to recover and was able to play most of his 3rd season, but put up a line of .247/.371/.426 and only threw out 10% of basestealers. His 3rd year came and he elects for arbitration.

 

Where you guys come in is; would you be happy if this was a Cub and he got a pay raise? What kind of wages would he deserve for his 4th season? I personally don't understand much about the arbitration process, so there are probably a few other issues that I am probably missing and would like to hear about.

[nilodnayr]

So, I read this on another web site and I would like some input from you Bill James kool-aid drinkers here.

 

Anyway, there is a guy in law school (not me) who has an assignment to defend a catcher in an arbitration hearing. This catcher put up a line of .303 BA, 122 RBIs, 30HR and basically a .303/.420/.496 line on average over his first 2 seasons, with his major league debut coming when he was at the age of 23. He also put up a 36% CS% and played otherwise Gold Glove-caliber defense during those 2 years. At the end of his second season, he had a neck injury which required surgery. He was able to recover and was able to play most of his 3rd season, but put up a line of .247/.371/.426 and only threw out 10% of basestealers. His 3rd year came and he elects for arbitration.

 

Where you guys come in is; would you be happy if this was a Cub and he got a pay raise? What kind of wages would he deserve for his 4th season? I personally don't understand much about the arbitration process, so there are probably a few other issues that I am probably missing and would like to hear about.

 

The guy should get a gigantic pay raise from the league minimum. The 10K foot arbitration summary is that a players first 3 seasons he is a) under the teams control and b) the team can pay him whatever they want at or above the league minimum (except for super 2 players, who qualify by basically starting their first year in the majors from day 1 and not getting sent down). For the next 3 years "a" still applies, but either the team and the player need to agree on a salary or the case goes between an arbitrator where the team submits a number and the player submits a number and both sides argue their case to an arbitrator as to why they believe their number is right. The arbitrator then decides which one is right and the decision is binding (ie the team says 7M, the player says 10M, the arbitrator can only chose from those to numbers).

 

Roughly speaking this is how much a player makes in arbitration as compared to his salary as a FA

 

Super 2--20%

Normal 1st year arbi---40%

Normal 2nd year arbi---60%

Normal 3rd year arbi---80%

 

Digging a little deeper there is the issue of comparables. That is the heart of what is argued at the arbitration process. So that catcher would argue that similar players at similar ages got paid X so he should get paid X.

 

Now that player that you are describing (assuming not a super 2), is hitting arbitration after his 3rd year coming off 2 ridiculously amazing years and one mearly awesome year. I'm assuming this is supposed to be some sort of comparable to Joe Mauer, so lets look at his numbers. He was a super 2 player going into 2007 (age 24 year) and even though he settled on a long term deal, we know his arbi submissions were 4.5M and 3.3M. According to tangos rough estimate he thought he was worth 22.5, his team thought he was worth 16.5 in the FA market (hes probably somewhere inbetween), so the sniff test works. So, if he wasn't a super 2, then in his first year of arbi, we would expect him to want to be paid roughly 9M and his employer to offer roughly 6.6M. As an aside, as part of Mauers long term deal, he got 3.75 in what was his super 2 year, and will get 6.25 this year. As you can see, arbi and especially pre-arbi players are giving up a lot of money for security. Its very quickly becoming the trend.

 

To your question, yeah, I'd be very happy to be a cubs fan with Joe Mauer on my team.

[Hairyducked Idiot]

So, I read this on another web site and I would like some input from you Bill James kool-aid drinkers here.

 

Anyway, there is a guy in law school (not me) who has an assignment to defend a catcher in an arbitration hearing. This catcher put up a line of .303 BA, 122 RBIs, 30HR and basically a .303/.420/.496 line on average over his first 2 seasons, with his major league debut coming when he was at the age of 23. He also put up a 36% CS% and played otherwise Gold Glove-caliber defense during those 2 years. At the end of his second season, he had a neck injury which required surgery. He was able to recover and was able to play most of his 3rd season, but put up a line of .247/.371/.426 and only threw out 10% of basestealers. His 3rd year came and he elects for arbitration.

 

Where you guys come in is; would you be happy if this was a Cub and he got a pay raise? What kind of wages would he deserve for his 4th season? I personally don't understand much about the arbitration process, so there are probably a few other issues that I am probably missing and would like to hear about.

 

The way the arbitration process works is you'd have to find similar players with similar service time and see what they made in their fourth season. It'd almost certainly involve a raise.