Los Angeles Dodges Arbiration

The Dodgers avoided arbitration with two of their brightest young players today by signing Jonathan Broxton and Andre Ethier to a duo of two-year deals. Let’s take a look at each situation.

Broxton is one of the best relievers in baseball. This represents his second year of arbitration, which means the Dodgers have set their price for his final arbitration-eligible season as well. Broxton will make $11M total. Papelbon is also in his second year of arbitration and he agreed to a new contract worth $9.35M. If the Dodgers motivation was to avoid an arbitration award similar to Papelbon’s $6.5M last season, then they did a pretty fantastic job.

Broxton has 317 career innings, a 2.92 ERA, and a 2.83 xFIP. Batters miss his pitches at a high frequency and when they do put it in play, it’s generally a groundball. He’s basically the perfect reliever. Even if you think WAR and the WAR-to-dollars translation generally leave high-leverage relievers undervalued, Broxton’s last three years average is around $9.3M. 60% of that is a little under $6M. And this is without noting that Broxton wasn’t a full-time closer until this season.

Ethier is actually in his second year of arbitration too, but he actually has an additional two remaining since he reached Super-Two status last year. He will make roughly $15M over the next two years, which works out to an average of ~$7.5M – or depending on the cost of a win, 1.5-to-2 wins – he’s been good for that every year of his Majors career. He turns 28 next season and it seems unlikely he’ll be -16 runs in the outfield again.