MLB will stop awarding prize belt to team that best suppresses salaries in arbitration

Earlier this year, Marc Carig of The Athletic published a report on a belt, awarded as a prize at the GM meetings every year to the team that did the most to “achieve the goals set by the industry.” That’s code for salary suppression in arbitration.

MLBPA executive director Tony Clark responded to the report, saying, “That clubs make sport of trying to suppress salaries in a process designed to produce fair settlements shows a blatant lack of respect for our Players, the game, and the arbitration process itself.”

Does this mean that dozens of authorities will be issuing belts, making it impossible to determine a clear champion?

Super Two eligibility set at earliest point in a decade

MLB Trade Rumors reports that the Super Two cutoff has been set at two years and 115 days of service time. It’s the lowest the threshold has been set in a decade.

Super Two eligibility is a salary arbitration concept. All players who have zero to two years of service time are not arbitration eligible and thus have their salaries unilaterally set by their teams. All players with three years or more of service time — but who have not yet reached the six years required to become unrestricted free agents — are eligible for arbitration. By having one’s salary set via arbitration, their past performance is taken into account and they can begin to make some real money.

A small handful of players who have more than two years but less than three years of service time are considered Super Two players, and they are included with the 3+ players and get to go through arbitration. They go through up to four times instead of the typical three. That small handful of Super Two players consists of the guys who finished the previous year in the top 22 percent of service time among players with two to three years of service time. Depending on when that top 22 percent was initially called up, the exact level of service time to reach Super Two eligibility floats. Sometimes by as much as a couple of weeks one way or the other.

Look, up in the sky!

It’s a bird!

It’s a plane!

It’s Super Two!

This Year’s Super Two Cutoff Is Abnormally Low

This year’s cutoff point to determine Super Two status will be unusually low, per Adam McCalvy of MLB.com (via Twitter). While an exact cutoff point is yet unclear, McCalvy reports that Josh Hader, who has two years and 115 days of MLB service time (abbreviated as 2.115) will be eligible for arbitration this winter. In essence, that means that Hader is about to become a very well-compensated reliever. That would’ve been the case in the 2020-21 offseason anyway, but he’ll now tap into that earning power a year early. It’s also worth noting that this cutoff point will place Miami’s JT Riddle, who finished the season at 2.118 years of service, into arbitration eligibility as well.

A 2.115 cutoff would already be the lowest Super Two threshold in the past decade. The previous lowpoints in that span came in 2010 and 2013, when the cutoff was 2.122. Last year, it settled at 2.134. If the threshold is any lower this season, others could also be impacted. Arizona’s Luke Weaver (2.112) and Oakland’s Matt Chapman (2.109) are the most notable names within reasonable distance of Hader’s 2.115.

MLB Trade Rumors: Projected 2020 Arbitration Salaries

Red Sox (12)
Jackie Bradley Jr. – $11MM
.  .  .
Mookie Betts – $27.7MM
———————————-
Yankees (12)
James Paxton – $12.9MM
.  .  .
Gary Sanchez – $5.6MM
Aaron Judge – $6.4MM

I think that’s low for Aaron Judge. I suspect the formula dings Judge more for his injury time than the actual process will, and fails to consider his enormous popularity. Betts may be a bit low, too. I’ve seen $30M estimates elsewhere.