Arbitration – Why going to a hearing wouldn’t be the most fun thing

Salary arbitration.

It’s as engrained into a baseball nerd’s mind as the trade deadline, the draft, and the day that rosters expand. There are four Dodgers who are arbitration-eligible this season. They are listed in Dustin Nosler’s excellent post from yesterday on Dodgers Digest here.

The Dodgers’ front office (Andrew Friedman) has a history in Tampa Bay of going to the hearing stage once arbitration is filed for. If you’re a player, an arbitration hearing is probably not a great place to be, especially if you take things personally. In a hearing, it’s the team’s job to tell everyone why they don’t think you’re worth as much as you think you are. Can you think of any other profession where your employer gets to go on and on about how you’re not really that good, and then you have to follow that up by working for that employer for the foreseeable future? I cannot.

But I digress.

Justin Turner is one of four arbitration-eligible Dodgers. By slgckgc on Flickr (Originally posted to Flickr as “Justin Turner”), via Wikimedia Commons

While slightly less-dominant than 2013, Jansen still put up good numbers for the Dodgers in 2014, posting 44 saves and a 5.32 K/BB ratio while being the only reliever the Dodgers could trust. At all.

Last year, Jansen made $4.3 million while increasing his save totals by almost 60 percent. Beyond Jansen, the Dodgers’ list of arb-eligible players is pretty short. Justin Turner filled-in decently last season all around the infield. Newcomers Juan Nicasio and Chris Heisey (out of Messiah College, BTW) are also eligible, despite being new to the Dodgers’ system.

The trend lately has been for the Dodgers (and most other teams) to settle arbitration cases before they go to a hearing. The last player they went to a hearing with was Joe Beimel, eight years ago. Some teams, however, are well-known for hard stances on arbitration. Players who do not reach an agreement by the deadline in these organizations are not negotiated-with again until the hearing itself.

This was the way the Rays operated under Friedman. Whether he brings that to the Dodgers is one of the many organizational questions we’ll get answers to over the next 12 weeks.