TORONTO – Off the hop, worth remembering about the arbitration process in baseball is that the system is meant to nudge teams and players toward a deal. Negotiations are based on comparables and precedent, the math isn’t chimerical and going to a hearing room so an arbitrator can choose between ask and offer is an act of last resort.
No one likes ceding control of the hammer to a neutral third party.
To that end, be careful extrapolating that the $2.5-million chasm between the Toronto Blue Jays’ $5-million offer and Bo Bichette’s $7.5-million ask is a symbol of relationship-altering dysfunction.
Does Bichette want to stick it to the Blue Jays after he derided their pre-arbitration salary formula and rejected their contract offer last spring?
No doubt.
Are the Blue Jays determined to pay the star shortstop as little as they can, something that’s especially important during a player’s arbitration years since salaries in the following season platform off the one preceding it?
One hundred per cent.
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Can the adversarial nature of fighting over money turn acrimonious and lead to bad feelings?
Totally, and you can be sure it did in at least some of the 11 other cases the club settled with eligible players ahead of Friday’s deadline.
The Blue Jays and Bichette are far from unique then, with 32 other players on 18 other teams also unable to avoid arbitration. And while one rival agent, assessing the situation, said, “I like the fight in Bo,” an arbitration hearing room isn’t where you go just to settle a score, or to turn the screws on someone.
The only reason to take a case that far is if both player and club feel total conviction in the correctness of their position, with enough confidence to test their arguments before an arbitrator.
No one budges in negotiations out of kindness and in a hearing room, righteousness doesn’t trump data.
Hence, Bichette and his camp have to believe a neutral third-party will rule that the Blue Jays were light at $5 million, while the Blue Jays must believe the judgment will find that Bichette and his camp were heavy at $7.5 million.
If they have second thoughts, they can in theory still settle on their own. But the Blue Jays are what’s known as a “file-and-trial” team, meaning once the figures are exchanged, a one-year deal will be decided in a hearing room, with cases taking place Jan. 30-Feb. 17.
Barring a multi-year agreement, then, they’re going before an arbitrator, and the intrigue lies in how each side frames their argument.
Now, the arbitration process is complicated with many different layers, but a very loose point of reference can be found by comparing Bichette’s numbers through his first three-plus seasons up against those of eight elite shortstops he and the team would likely consider contemporaries at the same point of their careers.
For this exercise, we’ll break up those eight players into two groups, six who earned a salary around the Blue Jays’ offer of $5 million, and two that exceeded Bichette’s ask of $7.5 million.
In their first year of arbitration eligibility, Dansby Swanson earned $3.1 million for 2020, Corey Seager $4 million for 2019 (coming off Tommy John surgery), Xander Boagerts $4.5 million for 2017, Carlos Correa $5 million for 2019 after beating the Houston Astros and their offer of $4.25 million in arbitration, Trevor Story $5 million for 2019 and Javier Baez $5.2 million for 2019.
Due to the pandemic shortened season of 2020, Bichette has the second-fewest games played among the group but still has the third-most hits and runs, the second most stolen bases, the second highest batting average and the third-highest on-base percentage and slugging percentage.
The Blue Jays could certainly place him among those players and argue that a $5 million salary puts him just about atop the group in compensation.
Trea Turner isn’t a perfect comp since he qualified for arbitration eligibility a year earlier as a Super 2 player and earned $7.45 million for 2020 platforming off $3.725 million in 2019. Francisco Lindor, meanwhile, earned $10.55 million for 2019, but also had far more games played than any of these nine shortstops.
That being said, Bichette’s numbers compare very favourably to those of Turner while his batting average and slugging percentage are a tick above those of Lindor, with his on-base percentage a hair below. His camp could very reasonably argue that had the Blue Jays called Bichette up earlier in 2019 and without the loss of 102 games due to COVID-19, he and Lindor would have essentially the same numbers.
A dip from $10.55 million to $7.5 million would help account for the games played difference.
Another interesting point the Bichette camp could make is how strongly he stacks up against the other eight shortstops on a per-game production basis.
Bichette is first in hits and runs, second in homers, batting average and stolen bases, third in RBI and slugging and fifth on base-percentage. If he’s not the most productive player, on a per-game basis, among the entire group, he’s pretty close, which would suggest his salary should be closer to the higher end of the scale than the lower end.
Again, there’s a lot more to it when push comes to shove in the hearing room. Experts will get deep into the weeds, Major League Baseball will support the Blue Jays, the players association will support Bichette, lawyers will get paid.
But it’s relatively easy to see why each side would draw a line in the sand on their number and be willing to test it in front of an arbitrator. More than any sort of litmus test on their chances at a long-term relationship, the path to arbitration is business between an uber-confident player intent on maxing out and a fiscally disciplined team determined to contain costs.
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