Marlins first baseman Justin Bour has won his arbitration case over the Marlins, according to his agent, Marc J. Kligman of Total Care Sports Management (Twitter link). Bour will earn $3.4MM in 2018, his first year of arbitration eligibility, beating out the $3MM salary the Marlins proposed. MLBTR’s Matt Swartz projected a $3.5MM award for Bour at the outset of the offseason.
The victory for the 29-year-old Bour comes on the heels of a career season in which he slashed a robust .289/.366/.536 with 25 home runs and a .247 ISO in 429 plate appearances. While the lefty-swinging Bour struggled versus same-handed pitchers from 2014-16, he turned it around against them last year and established himself as an everyday first baseman.
Overall, Bour has been a significant offensive threat during parts of four major league seasons, having batted .273/.346/.489 across 1,279 PAs. However, he has never played more than 129 games in an individual campaign, and injuries helped limit him to a combined 198 contests from 2016-17 (108 last year).
Should Bour stay healthy in 2018, he’ll be one of the few consistent forces in a Miami lineup that, compared to prior years, looks depleted. The club has traded away its previous starting outfield – Giancarlo Stanton, Marcell Ozuna and Christian Yelich – in cost-cutting moves this offseason, leaving Bour and catcher J.T. Realmuto as its offensive centerpieces. It’s possible Realmuto will also find himself in another uniform by the start of the season, given the plethora of trade rumors surrounding him this winter. Bour, on the other hand, seems likely to remain a Marlin.
Man I feel bad for the city of Miami and it’s fans. I know this is arbitration time and every team is penny pinching, but over a measly 300k. Especially when the player obviously deserves it!! Having Jeter coming in, bulldozing the entire organization was not good for Miami OR Baseball! And can’t nobody tell me stanton to NY wasnt premeditated!!
How was it premeditated when the Fish accepted offers from the Giants and Cardinals and Stanton declines to waive his no-trade clause to go to them? He gave them a list of 4 teams.
Was the package the Fish got back from Stanton enough? Not by a 100 miles but Stanton has all the leverage.
I’m glad you asked.
See what happened was they told Stanton all along that he was going to the Yankees, but they needed to field other offers to make it look like they were actually shopping him around. So he had to act like he was at least thinking about going to the Giants or Cards so that it wouldn’t be obvious Jeter was just sending him to the Yanks.
It was actually a very well planned and executed scheme.
See what happened is Michael Hill is the GM of the Marlins
and is the guy in charge! Not Jeter who is the CEO.
I love when people make up completely unsubstantiated conspiracy theories and don’t even pretend to offer a shred of evidence.
Oh wait, no I don’t. Stop wasting other people’s time with this garbage.
So… I take it that Bruce Wayne – CEO of Wayne Enterprises – isn’t the “guy in charge”?
Lol I’m going to assume you replied to the wrong comment and meant to say this about phillsphan comment.
If you thought mine was even remotely serious then I don’t know what to say.
like Jed makes all the Cub decisions and Theo doesn’t? #BULLSHITBRUCEWAYNE and drop the Batman bit. It’s stupid.
And if you think you were being so blatantly satirical that no one could possibly have thought a person would actually believe that, then good on you, because that means you haven’t spent much time on the internet and have better things to do with your life.
As far as dumb-sounding comments go, it’s not even the worst I’ve seen this hour.
I think we’re going to see a lot more arbitration wins for players as teams stop paying huge contracts to vets. if they can’t get the money on the downside, they’ll get it on the upside.
I don’t see why anything like that would change under the current CBA
The CBA doesn’t decide who wins arbitration cases.
And arbitrators don’t look at team salaries to decide who wins them. His point is that the CBA doesn’t call for higher arb salaries if the vets get paid less, so there is no reason to expect that to happen. The criteria don’t change just because less money is spent.
The general feeling around the league has been moving towards younger players earning the money while they produce instead of paying it to vets who aren’t going to produce. Arb players ask for more, and it makes sense when that’s the way the league is moving. So yes, I think they are related. Might not be, but if it continues that now and more players win their arb cases and less and less vets get 7+ year 9 figure deals, i think it’s easy to see a correlation.
The criteria doesn’t change, that is correct. But the valuation of young players absolutely is changing, which is what this is about.
Change will happen but not in the time frame you are implying, there will be many strong words & much handwringing till some significant change comes to fruition
Only 25 homeruns in the year of the homerun?
It’s still 25 more than I’d hit.
With this loss, the Marlins will probably ask their fans to being their own paper goods to the park.
brucewayne- What goes around, comes around and if a sensitive guy like you cries when its done to him, imagine how others feel when you insult them for no reason. You aren’t impressing anyone. After what you wrote about jimmertee and others you got nothing to complain about. Play nice and be respectful. Stick to baseball and don’t get personal.
Need to flip Bour to the Rockies for Mcmahon, Patterson, Howard.
“ladies and gentlemen your next Marlins superstar!….wait $3.4M? that’s way more than we can afford!!”