Every spring, we hear about teams keeping top young players in the minors to prevent them from obtaining Super Two status. Players like Ryan Braun, Matt Wieters and Stephen Strasburg dominate the minor leagues for a couple months before getting the call near the end of May. The teams' logic is simple: Super Twos go to arbitration four times instead of three, so they make more money than their peers. That provides clubs with an incentive to keep players in the minors for eight or ten weeks of extra seasoning.
But how much more money do Super Twos really make? It depends on the caliber of the player, but Ryan Braun's contract gives us insight into how teams and agents value that extra year of arbitration. Braun isn't a Super Two player, but as Cot's Baseball Contracts shows, his contract would have paid him $25.5MM as a Super Two instead of the $19.5MM he will actually earn.
For Braun, Super Two status would have made a difference of $6MM. Not all Super Twos are superstars, of course, but even ordinary players could make as much as 31% more money over the course of the four last seasons they're under team control. As Yahoo's Jeff Passan explains in this article, Super Twos may be "negotiated into the ether" before long.
I like to refer to it as “Super Dos Status”
I don’t always sign contracts. But when I do, I prefer Super Dos Status.
Stay wealthy, my friends.
This is why you don’t call a player like Heyward up early. He most likely will be a very good player but will not give the Braves 6mm worth of value in the first eight weeks of the season.
Cole Hamels is a great example of how Super Two status can cost a team a lot of money. The Phillies are paying him $20M+ over 3 seasons, then will have to go to arbitration one more time after that which will likely be for a ton of money. It could cost them nearly $20M in that last year.