2024-25 MLB Hot Stove

[The Sultan]

Arbitration offering less is fine. But grinding a young star through it endlessly rightfully puts a bad taste in one's mouth. 500k of goodwill to plan for the future is nothing!

Seriously? Is the thought that they are going to give them a break on a long term deal because they were nice to them during arbitration?

[Shaka Shart]

Seriously? Is the thought that they are going to give them a break on a long term deal because they were nice to them during arbitration?

Mitigating naked cynicism in extension negotiations is good in my opinion, yes. I believe it cascades across the org and league on how people approach you in transactions.

 I understand why you would disagree and honestly might depend on the agent.

There's an ROI trade off with the annual arbitration amounts where you are hedging that your young star is worth significantly more than what your first arbitration amount reaches. The question is, is the compounding savings you get up front going to torch you after round 3 of arbitration and open market salary hits with your player not giving you the benefit of the doubt? Many teams say yes but then that's where the haves and have nots come in with spending.

A significant chunk of teams have no intention of giving market FA value after the last round of arbitration anyway so why not set the market for the rest of your players hitting arb in the future.

[Jockey]

Arbitration offering less is fine. But grinding a young star through it endlessly rightfully puts a bad taste in one's mouth. 500k of goodwill to plan for the future is nothing!

Goodwill doesn't matter. Tucker will be looking for a $400+ million deal depending on the season he has. The Cubs aren't paying that to anybody. Heck, they've never even paid 1/2 of that to anybody.

[wadesworld]

Mitigating naked cynicism in extension negotiations is good in my opinion, yes. I believe it cascades across the org and league on how people approach you in transactions.

 I understand why you would disagree and honestly might depend on the agent.

There's an ROI trade off with the annual arbitration amounts where you are hedging that your young star is worth significantly more than what your first arbitration amount reaches. The question is, is the compounding savings you get up front going to torch you after round 3 of arbitration and open market salary hits with your player not giving you the benefit of the doubt? Many teams say yes but then that's where the haves and have nots come in with spending.

A significant chunk of teams have no intention of giving market FA value after the last round of arbitration anyway so why not set the market for the rest of your players hitting arb in the future.

The Brewers are never going to be able to pay for players like Willie Adames or William Contreras when they hit free agency. They aren't going to give the Brewers a $250MM discount because the Brewers gave them an extra $500K in arbitration. They've been doing this for years, yet the Brewers are pretty universally praised as an organization.

[JWags85]

Anyone know who the loser was who voted against Ichiro to keep him from being unanimous 1st ballot HOF?

[WhiteTrash]

Anyone know who the loser was who voted against Ichiro to keep him from being unanimous 1st ballot HOF?

Same loser that kept Babe Ruth from being unanimous?