McAdam: What the Red Sox' arbitration settlements mean - and don't mean

The Red Sox reached settlements with five of their seven salary-arbitration eligible players.

The Sox and the agents for their players agreed on the following deals:

Mookie Betts: $27 million.
Jackie Bradley Jr.: $11 million
Brandon Workman: $3.5 million
Matt Barnes: $3.1 million
Heath Hembree: $1.6125 million.

They were unable to reach settlements with outfielder Andrew Benintendi and starting pitcher Eduardo Rodriguez.

Benintendi filed at $4.15 million while the Sox countered at $3.4 million. Rodriguez, meanwhile, filed for $8.975 and the Sox were at 8.3 million.

The Sox have adapted a file-and-trial approach under which no negotiations take place once numbers are exchanged -- there will be hearings early next month. An arbitrator will choose either the players' figures or that of the team.

Some thoughts:

1. Don't get too excited about the settlement with Betts.

It's always preferable to reach a deal with a player and avoid the nastiness that sometimes takes place in hearings, where players hear their employers minimize their accomplishments and emphasize their shortcomings. No good comes of that, and to the extent that the Sox want to maintain a good working relationship with their best player, settling before a hearing is a positive.

But remember, the two sides avoided a hearing last year, too, and it didn't translate into any substantive extension talks. It's doubtful this year is going to be any different.

In that sense, things haven't changed. Betts is intent on going to free agency this November and finding his true value. By some accounts, he expects a contract bigger than the one given to Mike Trout last March.

If the Red Sox are willing to give Betts that sort of extension, then a deal could get done. If not, nothing about what happened Friday matters much past the end of the 2020 season.

2. At $3.5 million, Brandon Workman may be one of the best bargain closers in the game.

Granted, Workman has served in the traditional closer's role for only about half a season, and as we know, relievers are notoriously unpredictable from season to season. Baseball history is littered with relief pitchers who shine one year and revert back to ordinary -- or worse -- the next.

But Workman was spectacular out of the bullpen last year, allowing just 29 hits in 71.2 innings -- just one of them a home run. Opposing hitters managed a .443 OPS against him, meaning he turned them into the equivalent of a National League pitcher.

Yes, his 5.7 walks per nine innings is troubling. But it's partly offset by his strikeout ratio of 13.1.

Meanwhile, he'll earn a fraction compared to the likes of Aroldis Chapman ($17.2 million), Kenley Jansen ($18 million) and Wade Davis ($17 million).

One caveat: Workman is eligible for free agency after the upcoming season, so whatever relative bargain the Sox have at this position will likely be short-lived. By next winter, the Red Sox will either have to re-sign Workman to a substantial raise, trade for a more experienced (and expensive) closer or develop one internally.

3. The two players the Sox couldn't come to agreement on -- Andrew Benintendi and Eduardo Rodriguez -- are good extension candidates. But there's a hitch.

Both Benintendi and Rodriguez would represent two players the Sox would love to lock up long-term. Benintendi had an uninspiring 2019 season, but can reasonably be expected to bounce back. At just 25, the feeling is there's a lot there that is still untapped.

Rodriguez, too, finally had his breakout season, winning 19 games, and thanks to injuries and ineffectiveness by both Chris Sale and David Price, emerged as the most consistent starter in the Boston rotation. Rodriguez has already said that he would be open to exploring a deal that could keep him in a Red Sox uniform past 2021, when he would be eligible for free agency.

But the timing may not be right here.

Any contract extension by the Red Sox would wreak havoc with the team's efforts to reduce payroll enough to get under the first luxury tax threshold of $208 million.

Even if the Sox worked out a deal to extend Benintendi for, say, four or five seasons, they would have to count the AAV  of any long-term deal toward this year's payroll. So, even though Benintendi was projected to make $4.9 million this season via the arbitration process, his -- for lack of a better phrase -- "cap hit'' for this coming season would likely be more than double that, since the Sox would be paying him an average, over the course of the deal, that's far greater than his 2020 salary.

The same goes for Rodriguez, who was ticketed for $9.5 million in arbitration.