Jeff Mathis won his arbitration hearing with the Angels and will earn $1.3MM this year instead of the $700K salary the club offered, according to Ronald Blum of the AP (via Yahoo). The Angels have reached deals with all of their arbitration-eligible players now that Mathis and Erick Aybar have set contracts.
Mathis, 27 next month, shares the team's catching duties with Mike Napoli. Mathis appeared in 84 games for the Angels last season, hitting .211/.288/.308 with five homers. This is Mathis' first year as an arbitration-eligible player and he isn't expected to become a free agent until after the 2012 season.
if he doesnt hit better he should give us that $600,000 back
Either that or the Angels release him. Cuz his arb 2 definitely won’t be worth it.
Wish I could be less than mediocre and double my salary at my workplace, too.
Guess I’m not seeing what the arbiters saw. A decent glove/arm with a subpar bat. FA’s that profile similar to him are seeing LESS money than what Mathis just signed for. Another example of arbitration not living up to what it should be doing.
With another similar year Mathis could be looking at $2m next year. If the market stays the same he becomes a release candidate.
Come on, we both know as long as Mike Scioscia is the Manager then Mathis will be with the Angels.
Mathis is a great defensive catcher. Scioscia’s choice! His stamina is great and he handles pitchers very well. When Napoli was down, he carried the team with his bat a few years back. If you watch him play every day you would know that he’s worth every cent he received.
I do watch the Angels play … about 50% of their games. I’ve seen Mathis a lot, and while he is a fine guy to have the reality is that he is just OK.
The problem with Mathis and Angels fans is that he has come through huge in a couple spots. We tend to remember those “clutch” moments while forgetting all those 0-4 days with 2 K’s.
As for being a great defensive catcher … not sure you can find metrics to back that up. Here is a decent article (link to drivelinemechanics.com) that looks at caught stealing, throwing errors, pitch blocking, and fielding errors. Mathis ranks pretty poorly – overall a -2 runs (that’s 90th out of a total of 114 catchers in 2009). Unfortunately, Napoli is the worst at almost -10 runs.
If Napoli could get 500 PAs at catcher or 550 PAs at DH the numbers he’d put up would be pretty crazy. Too bad his defense is that bad.
Obviously Mike Scioscia was the arbitrator in this hearing.
Jeff Mathis shouldn’t even be on a big league roster, let alone WINNING arb cases. Unreal how big of a man crush Scioscia has on him considering he’s terrible at baseball.