Email a copy of 'Dellin Betances' Arbitration Case And The Value Of Closing' to a friend
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By Matt Swartz | at
Email a copy of 'Dellin Betances' Arbitration Case And The Value Of Closing' to a friend
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Jacob Greenia
This is like a U.S. Supreme Court case for relievers.
Eileenyy9
lolololol
reflect
Lmao
jdgoat
Simple solution is to get rid of the terminology. I’d rather have the best set up man in the game instead of a good but not elite closer. The closer would likely get paid more even though the set up mans better.
MB923
I just can’t see the terminology ever going away. Wins, Losses, Saves, RBI, Runs Scored, etc. will always be around.
A'sfaninUK
No they wont, only old people care about those stats and we have found and created new ones that better show how good a player is.
Why did baseball get saddled with this mentality of “things are not allowed to change”? We changed the rules, the game has changed, but the old fangled stats have to stay? RBI and pitcher W-L are the two most nonsensical stats in all of professional sports. They reward players for not doing a good job.
lesterdnightfly
“…only old people care about those stats…”
[Sigh]
Cam
You’ve got your words mixed up. RBI’s don’t “reward people for not doing a good job”, they just aren’t a great indicator of when they are doing a good job. Two very different things.
Unless you’re actually trying to argue that RBI’s indicate poor performance – I’ve never heard that one before.
astros_fan_84
If one player has 80 RBI and another has 120, who is the better player?
MB923
Please tell me you aren’t being serious?
Player A in 2016 had 108 RBI
Player B in 2016 had 100 RBI
Player C in 2016 had 72 RBI
You would take A right? Well Player A is Matt Kemp. Players B and C are Mike Trout and Corey Seager
Ken M.
You can’t treat future Hall of Famers the same as other players.
MB923
lol, Eck and his trolling are back. The future HOFers are your REd Sox players. Yankee fans/writers don’t call their young players future HOFers.
See here about future HOF Red Sox players (though 2 are vets and 1 is retired) masslive.com/redsox/index.ssf/2015/01/the_next_fiv…
You can’t use a joke that’s on your own team and use it for another. What’s next, am I as a Yankee fan going to laugh at another team’s payroll?
redsoxu571
Actually, yes, you totally could laugh at another team’s payroll. You could laugh about a low payroll team being so low, for example, or you could laugh at Boston for being treated as payroll equals to the Yankees despite always being a good tier or so below Yankee spending. I’m not sure that you’d want to, but it’s an option!
jdgoat
He’s getting at how hypocritical the first poster is being and saying should he also be hypocritical.
MB923
Sure I can but I’d look stupid in doing so. I should have been more clear and say laugh about another team’s high payroll (Dodgers, Red Sox, etc.), but since my fav team has a high payroll, I might as well laugh at them (ehh, sometimes I do anyway. Especially the team’s president)
billysbballz
I’m actually laughing at the deals the Red Sox gave to Cuban players recently. That Castillo deal is amazing and the Red Sox are one of a few teams to get away with it. But here’s the big difference, if the Yanks made that Castillo signing and stashed him in AAA the media would be killing the Yanks.
MB923
You’re right on the latter part for sure.
floridapinstripes
While Betances is not a closer he is the best of all the other relievers and would be top 5 if a closer.
Leading baseball in war
Innings pitched and strikeouts.
He’s basically the definition of a fireman after Miller(before he ever was one)
jdgoat
Very good and informative article though. Great read
trace
Closers are man made monsters.
A'sfaninUK
Incredible post. MLB needs to read this and restructure arbitration to avoid this happening in the future so its based on metrics not raw stats.
I also don’t think enough is being made of Betances being a late bloomer who’s the same age as Aroldis Chapman, so he kind of needs to be getting paid sooner than later – arbitration has been long doing late bloomers wrong, denying them free agency until they are well into their 30’s. But also being a pitcher he could disrupt or lose his career on any singular throw.
Logic would say that a supposedly “proud” team like the Yankees would go out of their way to help out this elite local guy who (I think) grew up a fan of the team and bleeds the colors by not making him earn min wage at 27-28. You would think the classy move would be to go “Yes we know we could beat you in arbitration, but being that you are great and we love you, we are going to agree that your somewhat unique case of being an elite non-closer reliever is worth the same amount of money as we gave Chris Capuano two years ago”.
lesterdnightfly
I wonder what Jerome Holtzman (Chicago sports columnist who “invented” the Save) would have to say about the devaluing of Saves and Closers these days.
He would blast anyone who even dared question where he placed a comma. It would have been a searing bombardment of words.
A'sfaninUK
“Devaluing of saves” – um, what? Saves are one of the only reliever pitching stats that has actual monetary value. That’s why this article exists.
lesterdnightfly
Devaluing or reevaluating their worth using advanced metrics.
And I did read it. And my comment stands. You are free to disagree.
A'sfaninUK
Right, but you are skipping ahead here – as it stands right now, pitchers get paid for saves so that literally means saves = money. The whole point of this is conversation is that saves have too much monetary value and Betances and pitchers like him and Andrew Miller, who being an elite non-closer are kind of a new thing, and arbitration screws over this type of particularly good baseball player.
lesterdnightfly
No, JAFan, you are the one skipping ahead.
The point of my post was about Jerome Holtzman.
But he was one of those “old people”, so I guess his opinion wouldn’t count.
MB923
Very nice article and like how you cite WPA too. Somewhere I read that one of the creators in WAR said it shouldn’t be used for relievers (why they have it then, I don’t know). But I did hear WPA for relievers is very good to use.
a1544
Lol everyone freaks out because the guy is earning $2 million less than he wanted
nj23nut
I don’t think that people are freaking out over the money as much as the way the dipshit Randy Levine handled the arbitration decision. He ticked off a loyal, homegrown player with his totally unnecessary comments. What kind of message does that send to the young guys like Judge, Torres and Frazier? Betances was going to live with the decision until Levine opened his stupid mouth. No executives have done more to tarnish the Yankee “brand” than Levine and Lonn Trost. Not sure how Levine even has his job still.
whosyourmomma
Using eyeballs & plain english- Everyone knows Betances is worth more than 3 mil a year but Yanks used stats in their favor to diminish his value. Looking at past few years the guy is clearly a dominant reliever!
Cubs as an example waited the 10 days or whatever it was to call up Bryant to gain another year of control. He really needed to “work on some things” for those 10 days because a year later he’s basically the best player in baseball. I think Cubs let Arrieta walk after ’17 season and then should sign Bryant to mega deal. PED’s and the disparity among team spending is what needs to change in MLB.
tuna411
Maybe Betances is worth more ON THE OPEN MARKET but since this is arbitration, he’ll get ONLY what the decision says he gets.
redsoxu571
The Bryant example is a poor comp. There has to be some kind of line drawn regarding what counts as a season, and teams will always factor that in to their decision-making. It isn’t that the way a “season” was counted for Bryant was not representative of reality and so he deserved to not give up that extra year of control – he literally was not playing for long enough for it to qualify as an additional season, period.
Betances is now set to be woefully underpaid by arbitration because its process for determining value is outright flawed. Betances DID perform at a level deserving better pay; Bryant did not play long enough to gain an extra year of service time, and there is no objective flaw in the manner with which a season is determined.
redsoxu571
Levine may be right that Betances hasn’t technically been a closer, but he’s wrong about everything else, most especially that this is a Yankee victory. Up until now, it has been to the Yankees’s benefit that Betances has both not been a closer AND has been willing to embrace his role; now, Levine has ground into Betances’s face that to the team he deserves to be worth less due to the way the TEAM uses him, and not because of his own lack of merit. Now Betances has absolutely no reason to be a team player about this, as it is costing him money and he is taking illogical insults on top.
If I were Betances’s agent, I would research what a closer with Betances’s numbers would be worth in his fifth and sixth pre-FA seasons in arbitration, what a setup man would be worth, and I would split the difference about 2/3 in favor of the closer’s salaries would be worth each of those seasons. I would then demand a contract extension that covers only those seasons – no FA seasons – at those salaries, and in return Betances will continue to pitch in whatever role the team desires of him. If not, I would say “don’t expect full willingness from him going forward, and you risk the outcomes that would result from that lack of willingness”.
Solaris611
Betances loses his arb hearing but still gets $3M a year. I think he could have lived with that, but now he has to go out there and give his best performance for an organization that takes such an obviously dim view of him. Betances should challenge Levine: “Why burden yourself with a substandard setup man? If you believe in what you’re saying, you should be making every effort to rid this organization of my services. To do otherwise is hypocrisy.”
agentp
Look at the first time Bryce Harper made 5M, a roy and mvp everyday player. Same with A-Rod, he didn’t make 5M until he left the Mariners. That’s just using two of the best players in different decades. Yes, the game is more flush now but asking for 5M when he made 507K last year wasn’t a reasonable ask. The Yankees paying even 3M was unprecedented.
Norm Chouinard
How about replacing arbitration with a an agreed statistical formula (both traditional and sabremetic) to determine salary which insures appropriate compensation. Who says no – players or owners?
babyk79
Players unfortunately, system right now overpays players for accumulating a single stat, think of guys like Matt Capps etc. Who aren’t that valuable but got paid for saves
hozie007
Bottom line is that the arbitrator decided Betances’ agent over-shot the mark both on characterizing his role and on the financial reward that he deserved. MLB arbitration is a “one-side wins all” hearing and there is no middle ground. That said both sides have to be smart about how they approach negotiating these salary years and in my opinion, should do everything possible to avoid arbitration. Players and their agents are going to tout how great they performed and teams are going to highlight all of the players faults and failures. In the end, the bitter feelings can outweigh the financial gain from either side. Good players who are worth their salt will eventually get the payday they deserve when they become a free agent.
cj1020
I think maybe the comments Levine was making were directed more at the agent asking for such a big jump in pay. Rather than dellin betances worth to the team
ProfessorLongnose
Two minor points.
First, I don’t think Levine was saying that arbitration is a market, only that if Betances for paid $5 M it would change the market for setup men.
Second, as far as sabermetric analysis having an effect in arbitration hearings goes, Bill James has done a lot of work in these hearings, so I would deduce that, yes, sabermetric analysis is used and is effective in many hearings.
ethan 3
I don’t think sabre metrics matters
lesterdnightfly
So wrong. In any sabre, the length, weight, sharpness, materials, and heft are vital factors in its value.,
That’s why they are called “cutting edge”. Haha….
ethan 3
whatever
Foreveryankees
Yankees would be smart to move him while the market is good for relievers. He will flame out soon. They got A ton for chapman and miller! They could get a nice return for him!
BSPORT
They would be better to use him for 100 innings each of next couple years while they have control and cheap then trade before his free agent year. He will be pitching his best with free agency lurking. He will not hurt the team financially and the manager is his boss which tells him when and what innings he pitches. His ego is a bit ahead of his career. I don’t remember Mo having big problems with what he was paid in contracts in his early years.
afuster
excellent article
ethan 3
no I still don’t understand