Breaking Down the 2022 Pre-Arbitration Bonus Pool

Ethan breaks down the pre-arbitration bonus pool from 2022

Photo Credit: Ryan Palencer

Way back in December, I wrote about the new pre-arbitration bonus pool, which had just been instituted during the previous season as part of the new Collective Bargaining Agreement.

Right as I was getting ready to publish that piece, reports came out covering roughly a quarter of the players paid as part of the new program, with exact total bonuses paid for only twelve of them.

Since then, I have been attempting to secure the rest of the list, asking around as well as scouring the internet for any report that gave me what I was looking for. Apparently, I didn’t search hard enough, as the San Diego Union-Tribune—via the Associated Press—had that very report on December 13th. Once I found it, I was able to dive in and see who qualified, who didn’t, and how much everyone was paid.

While I understand this breakdown is roughly nine months behind and many of you may not care at all, better late than never, as they always say.

First off, $11,250,000 was paid out in terms of award bonuses, which was confirmed by the initial reports, leaving $38,750,000 to be distributed among the thirteen award recipients, plus the remaining eighty-seven players who also qualified.

The pool is paid out based on a player’s “Joint WAR” (MLB only refers to it as such in the new CBA, but I will be using jWAR from here on out), as determined by a calculation agreed upon by the league and union. While we know the rank of a player’s jWAR based on the final payout—Yordan Álvarez of the Houston Astros was first ($1.5 million for his third-place MVP finish and $881,143 for his jWAR), while Trent Grisham ($201,700) of the San Diego Padres was last—we don’t know their actual jWAR figure.

To try and get an indication of what they may look like, the best I could do was look up every player’s FanGraphs (fWAR) and Baseball Reference (rWAR) WAR, which I then averaged out to a final Average WAR (aWAR), which I then compared to their final jWAR ranking, for reference.

Andrés Giménez of the Cleveland Guardians finished first in aWAR at 6.9, which was only one spot off his actual finish at second in jWAR. The top-ten in aWAR was consistent with the actual results, with eight of the same players showing up in both lists.

The largest differences between the two lists were Chas McCormick of the Astros, who finished 89^th in aWAR but 58^th in jWAR, and Grisham, who was 54^th in aWAR but last in jWAR, as already established.

This is obviously due to the differences in calculations between the three sources, with jWAR focusing on batting (measured by wOBA), baserunning, fielding (based on Outs Above Average), positional adjustment for hitters, and FIP and RA9 for pitchers, as per reporting by The Athletic.

As for comparisons between actual salary earned for the season and total bonuses, there were twelve players who earned more in pool money than during the regular season. Dylan Cease of the Chicago White Sox led the way with a surplus of $1,707,426 ($2,457,426 bonus versus a $750,000 salary), but this was in part due to his second-place Cy Young finish and an accompanying $1.75 million award bonus. Four of the twelve actually made more in bonus money without factoring in the award portion: Álvarez, Julio Rodríguez of the Seattle Mariners, Adley Rutschman of the Baltimore Orioles, and Giménez.

Joey Meneses of the Washington Nationals deserves a quick shout out. Selected in August and playing in just 56 games, he managed to accrue a 1.3 aWAR, earning a $247,462 bonus against only $250,000 in salary.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, two players on long-term contracts—Ke’Bryan Hayes of the Pittsburgh Pirates and Luis Robert Jr. of the White Sox—led the way in excess salary versus their award winnings. Hayes made $9,608,669 more in salary, while Robert was at $5,727,437.

Speaking of Hayes, I should move on to the part that you’re probably interested in—if you even care about this at all—how did the Pirates fair?

The team had two representatives on the list, Hayes and Mitch Keller. This is in comparison to the Orioles, who finished first with nine players on the list, and the New York Mets, the only team to have no player earn a bonus. The Mariners were second with seven, while eight teams had just one player make the list.

Hayes was 40^th in jWAR (30^th in aWAR), earning $391,331, while Keller finished 78^th in jWAR (76^th in aWAR), pocketing an additional $252,104.

In comparison to their actual salaries on the season, Hayes’ bonus was already compared to the $10 million earned in 2022 due to his long-term extension signed at the beginning of the season. Keller, however, played the season on his final pre-arb year, making $725,000 in actual salary, meaning his bonus represented a nearly 35% hike to his earnings.

What about the other pre-arbitration players on the Pirates? Using my aWAR calculation, there were five other players who likely finished close to receiving a spot on the final list: Oneil Cruz (1.7 aWAR), David Bednar (1.5), Jack Suwinski (1.4), Roansy Contreras (1.1), and JT Brubaker (1.1).

Using those numbers as comparison points, Cruz would have finished as high as 89^th, while Bednar would have been around 95^th and Suwinski 98^th. The final player on the list, José Miranda of the Minnesota Twins, finished with a 1.1 aWAR, the same as Contreras and Brubaker.

There were four closers on the list, with Bednar ranking behind each of them, while Cruz was ahead of only Bobby Witt Jr. (1.6 aWAR, 94^th) of the Kansas City Royals among the six full-time shortstops.

Moving forward, this data will be fun to track, especially as players qualify multiple years and begin to rack up more significant totals in bonus money. Hopefully I can come across this list much earlier come this December—when possible recipients for the Pirates include Bednar, Hayes, Connor Joe, Johan Oviedo, and Suwinski—and dissect it in a much timelier fashion.