Decisions Upcoming for Arbitration Eligible Players

Photo Credit: WTM

Update: The original post has been changed to include Edward Olivares, who was not originally listed.

It’s been a while, but we have another deadline!

Today, teams and players eligible for arbitration will have to exchange salary figures for 2024 unless they have already agreed upon contracts for this season, that is.

Before yesterday, the Pittsburgh Pirates had only come to terms with Ryan Borucki from their pending arbitration class; however, JT Brubaker agreed to a contract on Wednesday. That leaves the team with four players left to go: David Bednar, Connor Joe, Mitch Keller, and Edward Olivares.

For reference, here are the projections for each player via MLB Trade Rumors:

Keller: $6.0 million

Bednar: $4.7 million

Joe: $2.0 million

Olivares: $1.8 million

Teams and players can still come to agreements between the filing deadline and any scheduled hearings, which begin on January 29th. Of course, like many in baseball now, the Pirates consider themselves a “file and trial” team, meaning they prefer not to come to an agreement—outside of long-term pacts—after they’ve filed their numbers.

One point I wanted to make—fans and media alike often get rankled by small differences between the player and team, wondering why they couldn’t just come to terms on such a minor gap. The process is a little more in-depth than that, and it’s my understanding that each side doesn’t know what the other is submitting, and since the entire process is largely based on performance and precedence, it’s reasonable that, by and large, both sides will be close.

A recent change to the arbitration process is worth noting—if teams and players agree to terms outside of a hearing, the salary is guaranteed. This differs from prior years, where arbitration salaries weren’t guaranteed until the season started. That simply means that, for example, if Borucki were to not make the final roster, his entire $1,600,000 would be guaranteed, whereas he only would have been guaranteed 30 or 45 days of pay before, depending on when the contract was terminated.

As the Ji-Man Choi example last season showed—if any of these players goes to arbitration and has their salaries determined through that system, their salaries will not be guaranteed until the season starts. This means the Pirates could release any of them at a reduced price, even though that reasonably is only possible for Joe.

One final aspect of the process that bares mentioning—any player that is reaching arbitration for the first time after the 2022 season and played during the 2020 season, their statistics are to be extrapolated for 2020 as if it was a full season, not the partial one it was. For the Pirates, this only applies to Bednar, as Joe missed 2020 while undergoing cancer treatment.