Yankees President: Dellin Betances’ Arbitration Filing “Had No Bearings In Reality”
By Charlie Wilmoth
Earlier today, it emerged that righty Dellin Betances had lost his arbitration hearing to the Yankees, meaning he will receive $3MM next season rather than the $5MM he had hoped for. Now, Yankees president Randy Levine is criticizing Betances and his representation at Excel Sports Management for what he describes as a “half-baked attempt” to “use a player to change a well-established market,” as MLB.com’s Bryan Hoch writes (all Twitter links). The hitch was that the best-paid relievers are typically closers, and Betances’ experience in that role is limited. Betances’ $5MM filing number had “had no bearings in reality,” Levine says.
“It’s like me saying, I’m not the president of the Yankees, I’m an astronaut. I’m not an astronaut and Dellin Betances is not a closer,” Levine adds.
Joel Sherman of the New York Post writes that there’s “bad blood” between Betances and the Yankees going back to last season, when the Yankees renewed Betances’ salary for the league minimum of $507K despite Betances’ strong performances to that point.
Sherman reports that Betances tried to get the Yankees to negotiate on an extension this offseason, but the Yankees didn’t go particularly far in pursuing the matter. Betances also tried to get the team to settle on a salary for this season, but the two sides disagreed so thoroughly on what Betances should be paid that they instead went to a hearing without much serious discussion.
The basis of the Yankees’ disagreement is that arbitrators generally don’t reward non-closers with big salaries, and that arbitration salaries are mostly based on precedent. Betances briefly closed for the Yankees near the end of last season but didn’t do nearly as well as he’d done in a setup role. Sherman reports that, during the arbitration hearing, the Yankees argued that Betances didn’t have the high saves totals needed to justify a $5MM salary for a first-timer through the arbitration process, and that his struggles down the stretch (he had a 4.30 ERA with 38 strikeouts, 15 walks, and 12 saves in 23 innings following the trade of Aroldis Chapman to the Cubs) were a factor in their reacquiring Chapman this winter. The Yankees in fact felt that even $3MM was too high a salary for Betances at this point but submitted that figure anyway to make it easier to win the hearing.
Over the last several seasons, MLBTR’s yearly Arbitration Trackers in fact demonstrate scant precedent for a salary of $5MM for a setup man with three-plus years of service. It’s worth noting, however, that Betances has mostly dominated throughout his career, posting a 2.16 ERA, 3.5 BB/9 and a ridiculous 14.3 K/9 in parts of five seasons. Those numbers make it difficult to find exact comparables for Betances. Heading into the offseason, MLBTR projected Betances would receive $3.4MM this offseason.
It doesnt matter, he basically said hes not worth 5M when he is probably worth almost as much as the guy who shot a gun based on being an elite multiple inming back to back games reliever, something chapman complains about
I'm really surprised this even got to arbitration. You would have thought they could have settled on 4MM and made both sides happy unless one party really dug their heels in. Once again, Levine demonstrates what a jerk he is.
When he gets his head in the game, he'll get the big bucks in his bank account, not before.
[I have no idea where your coming from on this. Is it because he struggled a little bit towards the end of last season? The last three years Betances has pitched in over 70 games each year. His ERA is just slightly above 2 and he's averaged over 14k's per 9 innings. Most of this done as a back end guy in premium innings. According to Spotrac there are 67 relief pitchers being paid more than Betances. I can think of about 30 teams at least who would love to have this guy and they wouldn't be ****ing him off over a million dollars when that represents about .5% of there team salary.
