Via the Pirates Twitter and Rob Biertempfel, the Bucs won their arbitration case against Garrett Jones today (they were at $2.25 million, Jones was at $2.5 million) while settling with Casey McGehee at $2.5375 million, which means they have everyone under contract in advance of pitcher’s and catcher’s reporting.
There was some rumbling online yesterday about the Pirates’ willingness to go to arbitration with Jones over $250K, but I’m not sure how warranted that is. Because Jones is a super-two, whatever his salary is set at in 2012 could have reprecussions pretty far down the road. Because Jones’ skillset lends himself to eventually being a non-tender, I think a case can certainly be made that the Pirates are right to try and get as much control over his salary as they can. That is, how much do super-twos that made $2.25 million in their second year make in their third year vs. super-twos that made $2.5 million? Is there a distinct trend that would lend the Pirates towards wanting to keep his salary down now? I agree that it seems like a piddling amount, but it’s not completely insignifcant given the way that arbitration works and I can see needing to draw a line somewhere.
In any case, arbitration is over now and we can all go back onto AJ Burnett watch. Hooray!
