Sarris: The Braves, Jason Heyward and file-to-trial arbitration
From SABR member Eno Sarris at FanGraphs on January 23, 2014:
The Braves are going to arbitration with Jason Heyward over $300,000. It’s a wonderful sentence, full of so many words that could set you off in a million different directions. And so I followed those strings, talking to as many people involved in arbitration as I could. Many of those directions did lead me to denigrations of arbitration, and of the file-to-trial arbitration policy that the Braves employ. There’s another side to that sort of analysis though. Arbitration is not horrid. File-to-trial policies have their use. This is not all the Braves’ fault.
Salary arbitration has a goal, and to the most part, it accomplishes that goal. Designed to reward teams for investing in players and developing them, it keeps players with their drafting teams for six (service) years after their big league debut. And because players should be rewarded for their work — and some more than others — it manages to slowly ramp up their compensation at market-like levels.
It’s how well it does the last thing that seems to be the sticking point.
Read the full article here: http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/the-braves-jason-heyward-file-to-trial-arbitration/
Originally published: January 23, 2014. Last Updated: January 23, 2014.