The Dodgers have suspended minor league shortstop Erisbel Arruebarrena for the remainder of the season without pay, according to Barry Lewis of the Tulsa World (via Twitter).
Team director of player development Gabe Kapler says that the suspension occurred due to “repeated failure to comply with the terms of his contract,” as Eric Stephen of SB Nation reports on Twitter. The particular underlying issue that spurred the action remains unknown.
Of course, this isn’t the first time that the high-cost international signee has run afoul of the organization; the Dodgers stated the same grounds for action back in May of 2015. He was suspended then, too, with a “rest of the season” ban ultimately being reduced to thirty days after a grievance proceeding.
Arruebarrena is still owed a good bit of cash under the $25MM free agent contract he signed out of Cuba. He’s due $4MM this season — which is now in jeopardy — and $9MM total over the next two campaigns.
The 26-year-old, who’s known as a glove-first player, ended up having a reasonably productive season at the plate last year at Double-A level, slashing .299/.337/.418 over 205 plate appearances. Arruebarrena was off to a slower start back at Tulsa in 2016; his strikeout rate is up quite a bit, though so too is his isolated slugging.
Chortlesome.
Why does this seem like the Dodgers are just trying to get out of paying him what’s left on his deal?
This guy has been a discipline issue since he started with the team. I doubt a team with these kind of deep pockets would go this far if it weren’t a real issue–particularly since they’re thin on shortstops in general.
Looks that way to me too. There the ones always over paying foreign players a unGodly amount to ice other teams out so boo on the Dodgers
Well, a healthy amount of schadenfreude might be in order. It’s not like they haven’t shelled out millions on this guy already.
Well, compliance with his contract is a condition of payment. It’s not free money.
Yes, but a whole season without pay?
We make a big hoopla about players getting suspended 80 games? How do you suspend a guy an entire season and not even share what his infraction was?
Do the Dodgers even have the power to suspend a guy for an entire season without pay? Guys cheat and get a half season. I fully expect this to be something egregious, otherwise, it’s fair to assume it’s a cheap tactic to get away from paying the guy.
Do they have the power to? Yes. Will they succeed? Probably not.
As the article notes, they tried the same thing last year and his suspension was reduced to 30 days on appeal. I imagine he’ll appeal again and probably win another reduction.
Just curious, what gives them the power to suspend a player for a whole season without pay? (Not being argumentative, seeking a legitimate answer.)
Unless there is some egregious incident (of which we’d all be amazed went unreported), I can’t envision a scenario where the Dodgers are justified to suspend a guy an entire year without pay.
Lol. Really? 4 million dollars? Thats spare change for the Dodgers. If they wanted to get out of paying someone do it to Carl Crawford. Stupid.
Is this the same dude that bit a teammates ear off?
No
That was veteran catcher/psychopathic thug Miguel Olivo, who the San Francisco Giants are currently paying to play for them.
You are probably thinking of Alex Guerrero who was the Cuban player that received the ear bite.
It’ll be interesting to see what kind of action Arruebarrena can take, if any, considering he doesn’t have the MLBPA to assist.
He filed a grievance before, and he does have service time. He doesn’t get the union rep in this case?
Kind of depends what he’s done. If he killed a small puppy in front of the manager’s kids, probably not much.
It’s a major league contract. He’s covered by the union.
Dare I ask if this is domestic abuse related?
Probably would have heard that by now.
Where is my comment 3 minutes ago ? Or do you choose who side in on ?
I trust Gabe Kapler. No need for useless speculation. The facts will emerge.
Considering they had a season-long suspension overturned previously, for the Dodgers to do it again, you’d think they are reasonably sure they have grounds to do so without making the same botch up twice.
I really wonder what he’s done.
There has been indications that the guy is a bit of a loose cannon, not helped by that AAA brawl a few years ago that spilled into the stands, that he was right in the middle of.
Well done Dodgers for keeping the details in-house.
If they are going to suspend him for the second time with such a ridiculous amount of time, they need to release what he did and/or petition to have the contract nullified. If they have grounds for two season long suspensions, then surely it’s bad enough to get out of the contract.
I agree, in that, the organization should make it public, they shouldn’t even have the choice to not share what they’re accusing him of.
If I get suspended from my job for any length of time, I wouldn’t want it to be public knowledge as to why I was suspended. If you’re not involved, it’s not your business. Just an opinion, not trying to be argumentative
The average job isn’t the same as baseball. We know of the details of contracts, options, etc. (This website is devoted to those things.)
We also know of nearly every suspension, whether it’s 1 game or 80. I can’t imagine a scenario where someone is suspended for something so egregious that it doesn’t get released by someone in the media. A full season suspension better be for something incredibly terrible, which, if such were the case, I feel we’d know.
And in the case of your everyday McJob, if you were fired, there’s a good chance a lot of people would know what for… just that the general populous wouldn’t really care to know. In baseball, we do want to know.
Why do the Dodgers, or anyone in fact, have to release details to Joe Public? What gives you or me the right to that information? Curiosity doesn’t cut it.
Here’s a theory. What if he did something pretty embarrassing. Like say he’s married and he was caught with a prostitute. The Dodgers say “we’re suspending you for a year and we’re not gonna say why, but if you appeal the reason will come out publicly”.
Dude might not appeal just to save the embarrassment.
** the above is an example. I have no idea what the real reason is!!
You’d have to then conclude that marital infidelity and solicitation of a prostitute is grounds for a season long suspension. I can’t fathom too many instances that would result in a season-long suspension that aren’t egregious enough to be public knowledge.
I would guess he decided he no longer liked living in Tulsa, Oklahoma and would prefer to be on a major league team … and just stopped showing up.
Just living in Oklahoma is very near to cruel and unusual punishment.
Instead of reading into a situation like this and automatically seeing that this is the players’ fault, he’s a bad seed, etc etc…
The question shouldn’t be pointed towards the player himself, rather it should be questioning the organization itself.
To put it simply, take an employee at a business for example, if that employee does not know how to do something, isn’t doing his job correctly and efficiently….That’s the managers’, who hired the employee, responsibility.
Plus take this into consideration,
the Dodgers signed this kid, this player is from a different country (Cuba), they threw a ton of money at him to get him to join their organization. He’s a young kid in a new country whose been given millions of dollars!
In the eyes of any other organization who looks at this, would be blaming the Dodgers’ organization.
It’s totally justifiable for anyone to see this and say this looks like the Dodgers are taking advantage of him so they don’t have to pay him.
You can’t suspend a player for being a bad baseball player, so this obviously has nothing to do with not doing his job correctly and efficiently, but rather is about something that the Dodgers consider a material breach of his contract. And he’s 26 years old, so he’s clearly not a “young kid” anymore. I’m not necessarily saying that the Dodgers are right, since I have no idea what he supposedly did, but there has to be more to it than not “doing his job correctly and efficiently.”
“To put it simply, take an employee at a business for example, if that employee does not know how to do something, isn’t doing his job correctly and efficiently….That’s the managers’, who hired the employee, responsibility.”
You’re kidding. Is this like if the student doesn’t learn we sue the school system?
I’ve been a manager. People are responsible for their own actions. This is a human being being paid more a year then you will make in your lifetime. If he doesn’t comply to the employers….and the governments…and the CBA rules, then he’s subject to termination. And in this case there is an individuals contract.
Since something similar to this happened last year, I’d assume this falls under the category of – ‘He Was Given Enough Rope To Hang Himself’. Doubt the Dodgers took this action without multiple documented situations as well as meetings between their front office personnel, attorneys, and possibly the involvement of ownership. That happens for $20k a year people in this overly litigious society that we now live in – the situation of an employee making the sort of money he is was surely scrutinized by multiple processionals in multiple disciplines before the Dodgers took the actions they did.
The difference is other companies can fire their employees. If someone works at enterprise and stops showing up, he gets fired. No MLB organization can do that. Similarly, other companies can and routinely do place employees on suspension or administrative leave. So its not like this is the only company in the U.S. where this happens.
Also, pretty sure its not the organization’s fault if someone is naturally a bad seed. He’s gotten into several fights before, both with teammates and other team’s players, refused to follow instructions, as well as several other incidents. Pretty sure no matter what country you’re from or how much/little money you have you know that punching teammates and other players is wrong, as is refusing to follow instructions from your boss.
How about instead of looking for a reason to blame an organization you don’t like, you blame the player who is actually responsible.