This coming Monday, December 2nd, major league teams must decide whether or not to tender contracts to pre-arbitration and arbitration-eligible players on the 40 man roster. If they do not tender contracts to either type of players, they’ll immediately become free agents. For those who are pre-arbitration eligible, they’ll receive a pre-determined amount that they won’t be able to contend. For those with arb eligibility, they’ll be offered a contract but won’t have to accept. At least not until January 10th when if both team and arb eligible players don’t come to some type of agreement will need to set a hearing to dispute before an arbiter to decide what compensation is just. Those hearings would take place any time from February 1st to the 20th.
The Dodgers have three pre-arb eligible players on their 40 man roster:
Alex Verdugo
Walker Buehler
Will Smith
Twelve are eligible for arbitration. Here’s a list of the players and what they’re estimated to receive if they agree to 1-year deals (estimates according to Roster Resource):
Joc Pederson $8.5 million (last year of arb eligibility)
Enrique Hernandez $5.5 million (last year of arb eligibility)
Pedro Baez $3.3 million (last year of arb eligibility)
Corey Seager $7.1 million (2 seasons left of arb eligibility)
Chris Taylor $5 million (2 seasons left of arb eligibility)
Yimi Garcia $1.1 million (2 seasons left of arb eligibility)
Max Muncy $4.6 million (3 seasons left of arb eligibility)
Ross Stripling $2.3 million (3 seasons left of arb eligibility)
Austin Barnes $1.3 million (3 seasons left of arb eligibility)
Scott Alexander $1 million (3 seasons left of arb eligibility)
Cody Bellinger $11.6 million (4 seasons left of arb eligibility)
Julio Urias $1.7 million (4 seasons left of arb eligibility)
As mentioned, they have until the 10th of January to come to terms on a deal and it doesn’t necessarily have to be for 1 year, it can be for multiple years. Since the players don’t have to decide right away, if any were to be traded away, the team that acquires them would be held responsible on whether to tender a contract (if they were to be traded before this Monday) and/or decide how much the player would be compensated.
Oskar is a contributor to Dodgers-Lowdown. Follow him on Twitter @2rawsko94.