Teams offered 37 free agents arbitration this year, compared to 35 last year and 23 the year before that. If you're not sure what offering arbitration means, click here to read our free agent arbitration primer.
The following players were offered arbitration this week, and now have until December 7th to accept or decline the offers. The breakdown is more complicated than usual this offseason, as MLB transitions from one CBA to another. Here are the details on which players obtained offers:
Type A Free Agents (7 players)
- Prince Fielder
- David Ortiz
- Jonathan Papelbon
- Albert Pujols
- Jose Reyes
- Jimmy Rollins
- C.J. Wilson
It will cost draft picks to sign the free agents above, and their teams did have to offer them arbitration to be eligible for compensation picks.
Modified Type A Free Agents (6 players)
- Heath Bell
- Michael Cuddyer
- Kelly Johnson
- Ryan Madson
- Francisco Rodriguez
- Josh Willingham
It won’t cost draft picks to sign the six players above, but their teams did have to offer them arbitration to be eligible for compensation picks.
Type B Free Agents (24 players)
- Rod Barajas
- Clint Barmes
- Mark Buehrle
- Matt Capps
- Bruce Chen
- Francisco Cordero
- David DeJesus
- Octavio Dotel
- Ryan Doumit
- Mark Ellis
- Frank Francisco
- Freddy Garcia
- Aaron Harang
- Ramon Hernandez
- Raul Ibanez
- Edwin Jackson
- Jason Kubel
- Derrek Lee
- Jose Molina
- Darren Oliver
- Carlos Pena
- Aramis Ramirez
- Jon Rauch
- Dan Wheeler
It won’t cost draft picks to sign the 24 players above, but their teams did have to offer them arbitration to be eligible for compensation picks.
Also note that the following five Type A players will be treated as Type B free agents: Matt Capps, Francisco Cordero, Octavio Dotel, Ramon Hernandez and Darren Oliver. They didn't require arbitration offers for their teams to receive supplemental draft picks as compensation and teams won't have to surrender picks to sign them.
Our Free Agent Arbitration Offer Tracker has all of the arbitration decisions and will also show who accepts two weeks from now. We also note the decisions in our constantly-updated 2012 free agent list.
Yeah I wouldn’t offer Ordonez arb. either lol
I’d offer Betemit, but it looks like the Tigers didn’t. What is strange is that there were announcements from every club except Detroit.
The decision on Betemit means that they are content with a Brandon Inge/Donnie Kelly platoon at third base. As a Tigers’ fan, this makes me violently ill. Betemit would have only cost ~2mill if he accepted. If he declined, the Tigers would have gotten a sandwich pick. Offering seemed like a no-brainer, especially considering that Betemit is the second best offensive third baseman left on the market, so he would have good reason to think he could get more money elsewhere.
Totally agree with you if the plan is to stick with Inge and/ or Don Kelly at third base. That would be an act of gross negligence. By far, the biggest problem in the Tiger lineup last year was at third base, not at second base. I’d rather bring back Santiago as the full time second baseman and get a proper two way player at third, than to stick with what they have at the hot corner. Maybe Ilitch will prevail on DD and get A Ram signed.
I’d be happy to see Santiago and his .316 OBP leave town. Instead, I fear Domz is going to sign him for something silly in the range of 2/8.
DD will not sign Santiago as a full time 2B, but I’d rather have Santiago full time than either Inge or Don Kelly if I had to have an inadequate starter at one of those two positions.
Agreed, but I didn’t mean Domz would sign Ramon to be the everyday 2B. I expect Ramon to platoon at 2B with Raburn and to play a reasonable amount of 3B and SS (when we rest JHondo way more than we should).
But I do expect an overpay in the vicinity of 2/8. And that is terrible when we could have had Betemit for 1/2 or gotten a sandwich pick.
Phils can potentially add 5 first+sandwich round picks:
2 for Madson
1 for Ibanez
2 for Rollins
Not too shabby.
And yet everyone was freaking out about losing the 32nd pick for Papelbon.
Because it was a boneheaded move. If they waited a week, one week, they could have as many as six first/sandwich round picks instead.
Besides, it’s not the pick that people are blown away by, it’s the four guaranteed years at big money. Even being the top closer on the market, nobody expected Papelbon to get that much money. Papelbon could very well be this season’s Werth.
In other words, you don’t think Papelbon’s werth it
Except that once the new deal went into effect the price on type A relievers will should increase. What everyone ‘expected’ is pretty much irrelevant.
what is relevant: link to fangraphs.com
I’m a bit surprised to see the arb offer to Ibanez. There is no way he gets anything close on the open market to what the arbitration salary from the Phills would wind up being. What if he takes that offer? Or is this one of those ‘gentlemen’ type deals where Ibanez promised the Phillies he wouldn’t take it if offered. If so, don’t know what Ibanez gets out of that.
He’s not taking the offer, its been confirmed as a handshake deal.
still a wasted 1st round pick though. I guess jumping the gun was ok though if they really wanted Papelbon before everyone else put bids in. Depends how much they wanted him. Otherwise they would have been better off waiting it out like everyone else.
Can’t say I feel bad though cause they signed him knowing they were losing their pick.
What if they knew that relievers wouldn’t cost a pick? They would rightfully expect reliever prices to go up, so they decided that they don’t mind losing the pick to get him under the old pricing. Especially since they’ll get a bunch of new picks for losing Madson/Ibanez and maybe Rollins.
Sure. I guess we’ll see if prices go up!
Yea, and if the price went up and they signed Papelbon for more, everyone would be like, “How can you pay a closer not named Rivera that much?”
Oh wait, everyone said that anyways.
A terrible signing money-wsie is only made worse by this loss of a pick.
“Type A players will be treated as Type B free agents”
Does this mean that these players will only net their team 1 supplemental pick, instead of the normal 2 picks?