Kirsten Schmitt
Junior Guerra on September 3, 2017 at Miller Park in Milwaukee. Kirsten Schmitt/ Brewers
Over the next week or two we’re likely to see some of the largest new MLB contracts of the winter, as Yu Darvish and perhaps some others will sign deals eclipsing the five-year, $80 million deal Lorenzo Cain signed with the Brewers two weeks ago. At the same time, however, we likely won’t see as many headlines about some of baseball’s smallest contracts.
While most teams have already worked out 2018 contracts with their arbitration eligible players and any newly acquired free agents, they usually wait until the opening of spring training or slightly before to finalize deals with their players with less than three years of MLB service time. The reason is simple: For the players who have yet to accumulate enough service time to qualify for arbitration, there’s really not much room for negotiation.
Take, for example, the case of Junior Guerra. He was a big part of a better-than-expected 2016 Brewers team, posting a 2.81 ERA over 20 starts. Baseball Reference estimates that he was worth 4.0 wins above replacement (WAR), an impressive figure for a partial season. Guerra parlayed that success into a spot as the Brewers’ Opening Day starter in 2017 before injuries derailed his season. His 2018 contract is worth $554,800, per Jon Heyman.
To put that figure into perspective, the 2018 MLB minimum salary is $545,000. For all of his contributions to date the Brewers rewarded Guerra with $9800 (1.8%) more than the league’s lowest paid player. This isn’t unusual for pre-arbitration players: In 2017 the MLB minimum salary was $535,000 and 12 of the 27 players on the Brewers’ Opening Day roster and disabled list were within $10,000 of that figure. This phenomenon also isn’t unique to Milwaukee. Even the Dodgers, with 2017’s most expensive roster, had ten players earning $555,000 or less on Opening Day a year ago.
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A big season could improve Guerra’s financial outlook a great deal: To date he has accumulated one year and 155 in-season days of MLB service time. A small portion of players with two years of MLB service and a large percentage of the third qualify for arbitration each winter as “Super Two” players, so if Guerra spends a full season on the Brewers’ major league roster he would be in line for a substantial raise next winter. By that point he’ll also be 34 years old, however. He’ll have to stick in the big leagues through his 38th birthday to accumulate enough service time to become a free agent.
Certainly, Guerra’s $554,800 is the envy of many of his contemporaries in the minors and thousands of players behind them who have not reached and perhaps will not reach the majors to make that kind of money for themselves. But it’s also not that much money in the grand scheme of things. If Guerra’s MLB career ends before he reaches arbitration eligibility he may have spent a decade-plus in pursuit of at most around $1.6 million. The 2016 Brewers roster alone featured easily a dozen players that could find themselves in similar situations.
As noted earlier, this situation certainly isn’t unique to the Brewers. With the exception of players that have signed long-term contract extensions, virtually every pre-arbitration player in baseball is earning something close to Guerra’s 2018 salary and many of them are also at risk of seeing their MLB careers end before they ever reach their first big payday. On top of that, this winter’s slow free agent market has cast some doubt on whether the players that do reach six years of MLB service time will actually find the proverbial pot of gold they’ve spent their whole lives chasing. Meanwhile, by all accounts MLB teams are more valuable and making more money than ever before.
The possibility of labor unrest is coming up more often recently in response to this winter’s slow-to-non-developing free agent market, as a significant number of players who expected to receive large contracts this winter still don’t have jobs with ten days to go before spring training. At the other end of the spectrum, however, players at the bottom end of the wage scale may also have some cause for frustration with the collective bargaining agreement.
