SportsPulse: The start of spring training is right around the corner, and many of the offseason story lines will carry into camps. USA TODAY Sports
Major League Baseball's most rancorous off-season in more than two decades lurched onward Thursday with decisions issued in five more salary arbitration cases, and at least one outcome left a star player venting.
Toronto Blue Jays ace Marcus Stroman lost his case and will make $6.5 million in 2018 instead of the $6.9 million he sought.
And the fight over a $400,000 difference left Stroman feeling part of the collateral damage of baseball's arbitration process.
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"The negative things that were said against me, by my own team, will never leave my mind. I’m thick-skinned so it will only fuel the fire," Stroman tweeted after the decision was rendered Thursday.
Stroman has been working out at the Blue Jays' facility all this month, but left for his hearing - the second consecutive year he and the Blue Jays have gone arbitration - in Arizona earlier this week. Players with between three and six years service time are arbitration-eligible, a process in which their salary is determined by a panel if they cannot come to an agreement.
While the vast majority of arbitration salaries are agreed upon before club and player do battle in a conference room, this winter has been different - 18 have gone to a hearing, the most since 1990, with Miami pitcher Dan Straily and Cincinnati infielder Scooter Gennett's cases still to be decided.
So far, players have won 10 of 18 cases. The biggest winner Thursday was Cleveland Indians right-hander Trevor Bauer, who was awarded $6.525 million, while the Indians offered $5.3 million.
Like Stroman, Odorizzi went to arbitration a second consecutive year, though he has beaten the Rays both times. This time, team and pitcher defiled one another over a mere $250,000 difference.
The hearings come amid an off-season in which labor and management have taken pointed shots at one another, thanks to a free agent market that has left more than 80 players unsigned as camps open this week. Five of the consensus top 10 free agents remain unsigned.
