Seattle Mariners Avoid Arbitration With (Almost) Everyone, As Usual
In Major League Baseball, players are rewarded for sticking around the league for a while. The longer a player stays in the league, the more expensive he gets. A guy is dirt cheap for the first three years of his big league career, then becomes arbitration eligible for the next three. That’s when performance starts to dictate salary, at least in part.
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Six Seattle Mariners players were arbitration eligible this winter: Austin Jackson, Logan Morrison, Dustin Ackley, Justin Ruggiano, Charlie Furbush, and Tom Wilhelmsen. Last night was the deadline for teams and players to exchange salary figures for the 2015 season, and in advance of that date, the Mariners were able to agree to terms with five of their six potential cases.
For the last few years, MLB Trade Rumors has been projecting arbitration salaries based on a model that’s proven to be remarkably accurate. This year was no different, with the projections and the agreed-upon salaries for Seattle’s guys differing by no more than $300,000. Here’s what the M’s will be paying their arbitration-eligible guys, versus the MLBTR projections:
Jackson: $7.7m salary, $8m projected
Morrison: $2.725m salary, $2.6m projected
Ackley: $2.6m salary, $2.8m projected
Ruggiano: $2.5m salary, $2.5m projected
Furbush: $1.3m salary, $1m projected
Morrison, Ackley, and Ruggiano have some minor incentives built into their deals, so they’ll have the opportunity to boost their salaries by playing a lot. Morrison will get an additional $25,000 upon his 500th and 600th plate appearance of the year, while Ackley gets an extra $50,000 for his 500th trip to the plate. Ruggiano is eligible for a $20,000 bonus upon his 375th plate appearance. Jackson and Furbush do not have such clauses included.
Seattle spent a small amount less than projected, but if all the incentives are reached they’ll have spent a little more than projected. Sounds about right. Mostly what this means is that your back-of-the-napkin payroll calculations don’t need to be adjusted. We had a good idea of the Mariners’ 2015 commitments before these deals. Now we know just how good of an idea we had, and have.
Notably absent from this list is Wilhelmsen, who did not reach a deal with the team. MLBTR projected him for a $2.1m salary back in October, and odds are he’ll eventually settle with the team for somewhere around that mark. We can’t know his salary for sure until a deal is struck, of course, but given what we’ve seen already this offseason, it’d be a surprise if he wound up far from that mark.
What you shouldn’t expect is for this to go as far as an actual arbitration hearing. That doesn’t really happen with the Mariners – they’ve historically been one of the teams most adamant about avoiding arbitration. The Mariners will pay Wilhelmsen some amount, and it’ll probably be in the neighborhood of his projected salary. Unless he asked for $19.75 million or something crazy, which he most certainly didn’t.
The Seattle Mariners are going to pay some guys some money. We mostly know who’s getting how much, except for Tom Wilhelmsen, for whom we only have guesses. Spring training is weeks away. Go M’s.
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