Four Reds who won't return article

[CJD]

(10-02-2023, 02:55 PM)bengalfan74 Wrote: I'm in no way a MLB contract/money guru. And I have no idea what Fraley and Benson's contracts are? But I'd be fine with keeping both of them as banch players, spot starters. 

I am a big India fan, he's been a starter level player except for a couple stints here and there. What kinda worries me about India is that he's already peaked. Add in the fact that he's a very average defender at best and I'm not totally opposed to trade him and whoever else for some better starting pitching.

Taking a chance so to speak that some combo of Steer, Friedl, McClain, CES, EDLC, Marte is going to be better.

The way baseball players' contracts work, they are considered "pre-arbitration" until they enter a season with 3 full years of service time. A year of service time is defined as 172 of the ~187 days in the regular season.

Will Benson made the team out of training camp, but he only lasted 8 games before being sent down to AAA. He wasn't called back up until May 20th. So his service time for this season did not meet a full year of service time (Sent down April 13th, called up May 20th, he missed 37 days of service time when you're only allowed to miss 15 days and still have the season count towards your service time as a full year). 

For that reason, Will Benson will enter 2024 with less than 1 year of service time (according to Spotrac), so he still has three more years of pre-arbitration pay, which is basically the minimum salary for a major league player. In 2024, that will be 740k. Dirt cheap.

It's kind of ****** up the way they calculate service time, but the player union agreed to it in the CBA so....shrug.

Fraley just had his last year of pre-arbitration pay this year, so he will be entering his first year of arbitration. Players are eligible for arbitration until they have 6 full years of service time. In case you aren't familiar, that basically means the Reds have Fraley under team control (he can't sign with other teams), but they still have to negotiate a salary that both the team and the player agree to.

If they are unable to reach an agreement by a set date in the off season on what Fraley should be paid, the case goes before an arbitration committee. This committee reviews the players' past production, potential for future production and a bunch of other factors and comes up with a fair wage for a player with that level of production, based on past contracts and probably other factors as well.

Once the committee comes up with a price, the team can no longer negotiate. They must either accept the 1 year contract at that price, or else the player will become a free agent.

Generally speaking, having to use the arbitration committee is considered a very bad thing. It represents a breakdown between what the player thinks he's worth and what the team thinks he's worth, which usually means the player is unhappy with the team in some way of vice versa.

All this is to say...Fraley and Benson are almost guaranteed to be on the team next year.