The dust appears to be settling from today's arbitration agreement madness. A few more settlements may trickle in, but at the moment our arbitration tracker shows 59 unsigned players spanning 22 teams. Big names include Tim Lincecum, Hunter Pence, Matt Garza, Clayton Kershaw, and Mike Napoli. These players all exchanged figures with their teams. The deadline was noon central time today.
After figures are exchanged, teams and players often agree at the midpoint. A few teams, however, have traditionally treated the exchange of figures as a deadline, and as a policy go to hearings after that point. If these teams are still using the "file and trial" strategy, we'll see hearings for Jed Lowrie (Astros), Casey Janssen and Brandon Morrow (Blue Jays), Emilio Bonifacio and Anibal Sanchez (Marlins), and John Lannan and Mike Morse (Nationals).
Any of the 50+ players to file are candidates to go to a hearing in February if an agreement cannot be reached. At a hearing, the team and the player's agency each take an hour to defend their salary submission, and an independent three-person panel picks one of the salaries.
Last year, 33 players filed numbers, three went to hearings, nine signed multiyear extensions, and 21 settled within $250K of the midpoint.
