Thanks to long term deals the Indians have signed many players to including Roberto Perez, Brandon Guyer and Jose Ramirez prior to the 2017 season, there are very few players eligible for arbitration heading into the 2018 season. We’ll take a look at each of the seven players who are individually below, starting with the three who could hit free agency after one more season.
For those who don’t know, a player is eligible for arbitration in years four through six of their MLB career with the top 22% of players in service time getting a fourth season of arbitration eligibility (they start in year three rather than year four). This process allows the team to make an offer to the player and for the player to counter offer. If the two parties cannot agree, they go to arbitration where a neutral party picks the value that is more fair given the player’s production.
Lonnie Chisenhall
Chisenhall is hitting his fourth year of arbitration in 2018, meaning he will be eligible for free agency after the season if the Indians don’t sign him to an extension. In his first three years, he agreed to deals of $2.25M, $2.75M and $4.3M without having to go to the arbiter and MLBTradeRumors currently has him projected to earn about $5.8M in 2018.
Considering his reputation for inconsistency within any particular season, Chisenhall has been remarkably consistent from one year to the next. He’s been worth between 1.2 and 1.4 WAR each year from 2013 through 2017 with the exception of a 2.3 mark in 2015 that was largely defense based. Even in his rookie year, he was worth 1.1 WAR in just 66 games. In any event, with the rising cost of $/WAR, anything under $8M is a steal for Chisenhall in 2018.
The real question here, as it is for many of these players, is what are the club’s long term plans?
There are a lot of variables right now, some of which will be sorted out soon and some of which we may not know for sure for a few years. The first are the potential outgoing free agents. If the Indians were to resign Jay Bruce, who is essentially a better version of Chisenhall, they may keep Lonnie for 2018 and let him go after or trade him before the season starts. At the moment, however, I don’t expect them to bring Bruce back and the Indians may avoid using Michael Brantley‘s option given the recent injury developments, both of which will play into Chisenhall’s situation. Right now, Chisenhall is the left half of a right field platoon with Brandon Guyer, but if the Indians want to improve the outfield defense and baserunning game, they could go with Greg Allen in center next year and Bradley Zimmer in right. This leaves one position for a handful of players including Brantley, Chisenhall, Guyer, Abraham Almonte and potentially Jason Kipnis.
Despite the backlog, there is one solution that involves all those players and may be reason enough to use Chisenhall’s last year of arbitration and not trade him away this off-season. Assuming Carlos Santana leaves through free agency, Chisenhall could play first against right handed pitchers with Edwin Encarnacion at DH and Jason Kipnis in left. Against lefties, Guyer would move into left, Encarnacion to first and Kipnis to DH. In this scenario, no one has to learn a new position and everyone would still get regular playing time.
There are still plenty of things that could destroy that potential situation including resigning Santana, which should be the Indians top priority this off-season. If they do, Chisenhall becomes more expendable and could be decent trade bait to improve other organizational weaknesses.
Cody Allen
Most likely the most expensive arbitration case the Indians will handle this year, Allen is projected to make around $10.8M this year. This is both a legitimate number based on his production and a slightly inflated number because arbiters love old school counting stats, particularly saves. Allen is in his third year and made $4.15M and $7.35M in his first two.
Looking at the Indians contractual obligations, there is a great fear of the cliff approaching in the bullpen after the 2018 season when both Allen and Andrew Miller are set to hit free agency. With Bryan Shaw likely gone this off-season, this has the potential to turn the team’s greatest asset into 2016 to it’s greatest weakness in 2019. There aren’t any obvious answers in the minors either as top relief prospect, Ben Heller, went to New York for Miller, as did J.P. Feyereisen. After Santana, the Indians next biggest priority should be to sign one of Miller or Allen to an extension to be the closer through the unknown.
The Indians obviously love Allen. They drafted him twice, promoted him after just 54 minor league games and never sent him back. Since then, he’s become the most used reliever in franchise history. It’s possible he would return that love and sign for slightly less for his first few years of free agency if the Indians were to give him slightly more in 2018. Based on recent signings, three years and $45M might do it, although that would be out of character for Cleveland to spend that much on a reliever.
Zach McAllister
The Indians third pending 2018-19 free agent is less of an obvious case than the other two. McAllister is in his third year of arbitration eligibility and made $1.3M and $1.825M in his first two. MLBTR projects him to get another slight raise to $2.4M this year.
McAllister completely revolutionized his career as a reliever after struggling for four years as a starter and has been extremely reliable since 2015. Considering the extreme expense of reliable relievers, there’s a chance the Indians would offer McAllister a multi-year deal just to keep some stability in the bullpen after Allen and Miller are set to leave, but that doesn’t appear to be the route they are taking. In the post-season, the Indians went with three starters in the bullpen and left McAllister off the roster completely.
With so many starters available within the organization, it’s possible that rather then extending McAllister, the Indians will try to repeat the experiment with someone like Mike Clevinger, Cody Anderson or Danny Salazar. Either way, McAllister will be back for 2018, but don’t expect him any longer than that.
Trevor Bauer
For two years, Bauer has seen his level of importance rise during the post-season compared to the regular season and he will be looking to bank on that in arbitration. In just his second of four eligible seasons, he is already expected to year about $7.4M in 2018. Bauer’s contracts will continue to be higher than normally expected throughout arbitration due to the Major League contract he signed with Arizona directly out of the draft.
Bauer made $3.55M last year and could be an extension candidate if the Indians want to buyout the rest of his arbitration years (through 2020) and a year or two of free agency. Given his command issues (which have improved in each of the last two seasons, but still remain a problem) and the glut of starting pitching talent already at the MLB level and quickly rising (Shane Bieber, Shao-Ching Chiang and Matt Esparza all had great seasons and ended the year in Akron while Triston McKenzie may be two years away in Lynchburg), this really shouldn’t be a priority for the Indians this off-season.
Danny Salazar
Salazar is in a similar situation to Bauer as he heads to year two of four in arbitration, although he’s only projected to make $5.2M despite being the better overall pitcher. Salazar’s worries come from not his wildness, but his elbow. For the second season in a row, Salazar missed significant time with arm injuries including one late in the season that kept him from being a starter in the post-season.
While this would normally be the time the Indians would want to start talking extensions with a pitcher they want to keep around awhile (as they did with Corey Kluber and Carlos Carrasco), giving guaranteed money to a pitcher who has already had Tommy John surgery and is dealing with recurring elbow pain is just asking for trouble. Expect them to bring him back for something between $5M and $7M and to revisit the extension topic next off-season if he can make it 25 or more starts without missing games due to elbow pain.
Abraham Almonte
This is Almonte’s first of what should be three years of arbitration eligibility. MLBTR projects him to $1.1M and he fits best on the Indians roster as a fourth outfielder. Assuming Zimmer, Chisenhall/Guyer and Kipnis as starters with Allen on the team as well, potentially as a starter, but at least as an extra outfielder, there is very little room for Almonte. In addition, Tyler Naquin is still around and has just one minor league option left. The Indians could not use Kipnis in the outfield, buyout Brantley’s option and trade Chisenhall and still have four outfielders better than Almonte. With that in mind, the Indians may be best suited to not tender Almonte a contract and save the million for use elsewhere.
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