TORONTO – Still on the hunt for some relief help, Toronto Blue Jays general manager Alex Anthopoulos says the wide gap in salary arbitration figures he exchanged with Josh Donaldson and Danny Valencia won’t tie his hands from a financial perspective.
Donaldson, the all-star third baseman acquired from Oakland in November, is seeking $5.75 million in his first year of arbitration eligibility while Valencia came in at $1.675 million.
The Blue Jays countered at $4.3 million and $1.25 million, and the collective gap of nearly $2 million would eat into the club’s remaining payroll should the arbitration cases fall the players’ way.
“I don’t expect it to change anything we’re doing in the off-season,” said Anthopoulos. “It’s all things that we’ve planned for and account for.”
The pending hearings would be the first for the Blue Jays since reliever Bill Risley asked for $550,000 but lost and was awarded $380,000 in 1997. Anthopoulos and Jose Bautista were set for a hearing in the spring of 2011 before they requested extra time to negotiate and eventually agreed to a $64-million, five-year contract extension.
MLBTradeRumors.com projected Donaldson’s salary at $4.5 million and Valencia’s at $1.7 million.
Anthopoulos described his talks with the agent for both players as amicable but the sides were never close on a deal.
“I think Daniel Lozano said it best, his quote was, ‘We’re in different sandboxes.’ It’s probably a pretty good way to put it,” the GM said. “That’s why sometimes you need to have a third party to settle these things.”
Blue Jays policy under Anthopoulos is that once numbers are exchanged, the only way to avoid a hearing is to sign a multi-year deal. Also per policy, the team won’t do a contract guaranteeing salary during a player’s arbitration years without getting control over at least one free-agent year in return.
For Donaldson, who has four remaining years of club control, that would mean at least five-year deal.
The Blue Jays avoided arbitration with their three other eligible players – Marco Estrada ($3.9 million), Michael Saunders ($2.875 million) and Brett Cecil ($2.475 million) – bringing their 2015 payroll commitments to $117.35 million for 14 players.
They are believed to have roughly $5-$7 million remaining in available payroll, enough to add some capable arms to the bullpen.
Anthopoulos said the team remains active on that front.
“We’re still talking to free agents and still exploring trades but I don’t think we’re close to anything,” said Anthopoulos. “I thought maybe on the weekend, earlier in the week, we might be moving towards something, but really, we were never able to get close enough to get it done. Right now it’s continue to work on things, but again in the off-season, we still have quite a bit of time until spring training, and even if you look at the past few years, there were some signings in spring training. It will be interesting to see here what happens over the next 4-6 weeks.”
