According to Troy E. Renck, the Rockies have only had two arbitration hearings in franchise history. I dug around and found that they beat Sun-Woo Kim over a $200K difference in ’06 and lost to Dennys Reyes over a $200K difference in 2002.
This year, the Rockies will be prepared for the possibility of multiple hearings. They’ve got to deal with Matt Holliday, Brian Fuentes, Garrett Atkins, Brad Hawpe, and Willy Taveras. Renck notes that "significant gaps exist with Atkins and Fuentes." Since we saw the Rox go to their only two hearings over $200K, we know it doesn’t take much of a disagreement sometimes. If no contracts are reached by Friday each side must submit a salary for ’08 and an arbitrator will pick one later. Teams typically like to avoid hearings partially because they can create some hard feelings.
The Rockies’ 2008 payroll should rise more than $10MM just to accomodate the five mentioned above.
