McAdam: Salary arbitration a bigger puzzle this offseason

To the long list of things left muddled by the coronavirus pandemic, kindly add: the salary arbitration process.

Even under more normal circumstances, figuring out arbitration figures can be dicey. A lot of work goes into the process, with both teams and agents hiring consultants whose job it is to determine what the proper projections should be.

There's plenty at stake -- and no margin for error. After teams and players exchange their figures, if no common ground can be found, an arbitrator must find for one side or the other.

This offseason, however, the process is that much more complicated. Ordinarily, a player and team would research past cases with similar service time and accomplishments, then factor in for the inevitable salary inflation before arriving at a suitable number.

But coming off an unprecedented season, in which just 60 games were played, that exercise becomes harder than ever before. It's always been something of an inexact science; this year, it's akin to a educated guessing game.

Should/can players extrapolate their numbers from the 2020 season and pro-rate the performances over a standard 162 game season. Would, for instance, a 10-homer season over the course of 60 games be the precise equivalent of 27 homers in a full season -- since a 162-game season is 2.7 times longer than what we just experienced? Or would that be assuming too much?

These are the types of decisions currently underway on both sides.



MLB Trade Rumors annually publishes a projected guide to arbitration cases, and have drawn universal praise for their accuracy. Sure, filing numbers tend to fluctuate a bit, but far more than not, MLB Trade Rumors'  guesses have traditionally been, quite literally, on the money.

Take the case of Red Sox third baseman Rafael Devers, who will surely be one of the more fascinating cases to follow.

Devers last year earned $692,500 after being renewed by the Red Sox in the spring. This winter will mark his first crack at arbitration, with three years and 70 days of major league service time. (Players earned credit for a full year of service time in the 60-game season, just as they would have had a full 162-game season been played).

To account for the uncertainty in the process -- incredibly, MLB and the Players Association didn't come to a pre-determined arrangement on how the 2020 season would be treated -- MLB Trade Rumors has come up with several different projections methods.

The first treats the 2020 season counting statistics (hits, homers, RBIs, etc.) at face value. The second extrapolates for a full season, multiplying all counting stats by 2.7 to arrive at a second projection. (A third exists to factor in what a player qualifying for arbitration for a second or third time would expect to get in a raise then gives them 37 percent of that projection. Since Devers is eligible for the first time, this third method does not apply to him).

The first model arrives at a figure of $3.4 million for Devers; the second one would award him a salary of $6.3 million.

Obviously, that's quite a gap.

Other Red Sox players don't have quite that variance. Because he was inactive all season due to COVID-19 and myocarditis, Eduardo Rodriguez will just get credit for service time, leaving him at $8.3 million under any of the three methods -- the exact same salary he made last year.

Matt Barnes has a significant variance -- with salary projections as low as $3.7 million and as high as $5.7 million.

The remaining half dozen or so arbitration-eligibles -- like Kevin Plawecki, Ryan Weber and Ryan Weber -- for the Red Sox are at relatively modest salaries with not a lot of variation.

Devers will be a fascinating test case, with a lot of play between the two figures. And given his importance to the Red Sox roster, it will be interesting to see whether the Sox use the window to get a multi-year contract extension done, perhaps buying out some potential free agent years in the process.

The whole business of arbitration is unsettling, with the potential for both huge salary bumps and bruised feelings that come about when a player hears his own team highlight his shortcomings in a hearing.

That will be the case this year -- along with an uncertain path that could occasion numbers being wider apart than ever before and the stakes greater than usual.