Baseball Style Arbitration?

[Tra La La]

http://www.cbcwatch.ca/?q=node/view/1159

Salary arbitration will be conducted "baseball style," with each side presenting a figure and the arbitrator obligated to pick one figure or the other. Provisions will allow teams to walk away from a specified number of awards.

How Would This work? RFA's only Right? So if you have an RFA you want to keep. But don't want to pay what they earned last Season. The team Takes a Figure to the arbitrator. The Player Takes a figure to the Arbitrator. the Arbitrator picks one?

If The Team does'nt like the Arbitrators Number. They can walk away and the Player is Unrestricted?

Click to read more...

 

[Epsilon]

It's the best possible system because it requires both sides to be realistic with their arbitration numbers. Instead of just shooting for the moon expecting the arbitrator to come somewhere in between, they have to be more conservative, and so the extreme points will be much closer together. I expect this will make arbitration much less testy than before as well.

 

[Montrealer]

[Quick Rant = ON]
STUPID BETTMAN IS MAKING THE NHL JUST LIKE BASEBALL THIS IS MORE PROOF WE ARE ALL GOING TO BOYCOTT NHL FOREVER LONG LIVE RUSSIAN SUPERLEAGUE
[/Quick Rant = OFF]

 

[kdb209]

http://www.cbcwatch.ca/?q=node/view/1159





How Would This work? RFA's only Right? So if you have an RFA you want to keep. But don't want to pay what they earned last Season. The team Takes a Figure to the arbitrator. The Player Takes a figure to the Arbitrator. the Arbitrator picks one?

If The Team does'nt like the Arbitrators Number. They can walk away and the Player is Unrestricted?

Baseball style arbitration can be less inflationary than the old NHL style where an arbiter can pick any salary between the team and player figures. Under the old system, the arbiters tended in many cases to just split the difference and the player got a significant raise. With baseball style arbitration it encourages GMs not to lowball and player agents not to shoot for the moon - under the old system, they had little to lose by doing so.

I would expect that teams will still maintain walk away rights, since an arbiter could conceivably award a cap breaking salary. I'm sure the arbiter will not be take any cap space issues under consideration when making his judgement.

Besides the teams had (limited) walkaway rights under the old CBA - why would they give them up.

 

[Bruwinz37]

It is a great system. How many holdouts are there in baseball?

 

[kdb209]

It is a great system. How many holdouts are there in baseball?

The MLB system really doesn't allow for holdouts.

Players with three or more years of service (plus 17% of 3rd year players) are eligible for arbitration.

Only the team (and not the player) can request arbitration.

If a player is eligible for free agency (6 years of service), he can decline arbitration if requested by the team. Otherwise he has no choice. A team must offer arbitration to an eligible free agent in order to receive any draft pick compensation if he signs elsewhere.

There is a deadline in spring training by which a player must be signed, offered arbitration, or released and become a UFA. If a player is not offered arbitration, he cannot re-sign with his original team until after May 1.

Frequently a team will offer arbitration to extend the window to sign the player and then both the player and team will come to a deal before the arbitration date.

A team has no walk away rights.

But back to the NHL. The league may adopt the baseball style hi/low/no inbetween arbitration award, but I seriously doubt that they will copy anything else of the system (team only option, no walk aways, no resigning, etc).

 

[Tra La La]

Would This Eliminate the whole Qualifying offer thing?

 

[kdb209]

Would This Eliminate the whole Qualifying offer thing?

Unlikely. A team will still be required to make an RFA QO in order to keep the RFAs rights, but it would be possible for the team to then take the player to arbitration and come in with and arb figure below the QO offer. Remember the team taking the player to arbitration is an option, not a requirement. I really doubt that the league will take the MLB path of sign, offer arbitration, or release.

 

[GSC2k2*]

Baseball style arbitration can be less inflationary than the old NHL style where an arbiter can pick any salary between the team and player figures. Under the old system, the arbiters tended in many cases to just split the difference and the player got a significant raise. With baseball style arbitration it encourages GMs not to lowball and player agents not to shoot for the moon - under the old system, they had little to lose by doing so.

I would expect that teams will still maintain walk away rights, since an arbiter could conceivably award a cap breaking salary. I'm sure the arbiter will not be take any cap space issues under consideration when making his judgement.

Besides the teams had (limited) walkaway rights under the old CBA - why would they give them up.

It's the best possible system because it requires both sides to be realistic with their arbitration numbers. Instead of just shooting for the moon expecting the arbitrator to come somewhere in between, they have to be more conservative, and so the extreme points will be much closer together. I expect this will make arbitration much less testy than before as well

With all due respect to both Epsilon and kdp, baseball-style arbitration is, all things being equal (in other words, in the absence of a cap) a far MORE inflationary system than NHL style arbitration.

I have posted on this before in some detail. I will try to dig it up and paste it in here.

{Edit: damn searching for posts is disabled. Anyway, the gist is that baseball style arb is more inflationary because the player does not have to prove that he is worth what he is requesting. All he needs to do is to prove that he is worth $1 more than the MIDPOINT between his request and the team's offer. This in and of itself forces the team to elevate its offer beyond what it might have offered. Given the fact that arbitrators tend to split their decisions instead of splitting the difference in each arbitration as per the current system, the players still get their wins. The inflation does not come from multiple wins in the arb system. All it takes is a few wins. The players get those for the reasons stated above, and it is game over as far as inflationary effects. This was covered to a degree in "Lords of the Realm", a great baseball business book.}