BRADENTON, Fla. – The Pirates haven’t had an arbitration hearing with a player since Tony Watson in 2017.
Bryan Reynolds is currently slated to be the next.
The Pirates and Reynolds were unable to reach an agreement for a contract for the 2022 season before Tuesday’s deadline, meaning both parties have submitted salaries and an arbitrator will decide what Reynolds’ 2022 salary would be.
Since the Pirates are a file and trial club, meaning they don’t negotiate one-year deals after the deadline to exchange figures, the only way to potentially prevent the arbitration hearing would be to reach a multi-year contract agreement. However, Reynolds said, "I haven't heard anything” when asked if the Pirates made such an offer before filing.
“They didn't say anything about an extension, so it wasn't really on our minds,” Reynolds said. “I would have obviously liked to reach an agreement so we didn't have to do this now.”
Ben Cherington has said that it’s this time of year, when both sides are already talking about contracts, that multi-year offers and discussions can sometimes materialize.
The two sides have previously discussed long-term deals in the past, but nothing came from it.
According to reports Tuesday night, Reynolds’ side has submitted a proposed $4.9 million salary, and the Pirates a $4.25 million salary. That $650,000 difference is less than the minimum salary for a major-league player under the new collective bargaining agreement.
“I guess we had one thought, and they had another,” Reynolds said. “I don’t know. Here we are.”
MLB Trade Rumors projected that he would receive $4.5 million in his first year of arbitration.
Because of the lockout and delayed spring training, Reynolds’ hearing will happen after opening day, though there isn’t a formal date set yet.
Reynolds qualifies as a Super Two player, meaning he qualifies for an extra year of arbitration because he is in the top 22% of players in terms of service time who have at least two years logged but not yet three.
He is under team control through the 2025 season via arbitration.
While the most recent season is the most important in arbitration hearings, for a player’s first year, their entire career to that point is taken into consideration. That will be pivotal for Reynolds, who started in the All-Star Game last year, along with being nominated for a Silver Slugger and Gold Glove, but in 2020, he hit just .189 in the shortened season.
If the case does go to the arbitrator, that sophomore slump will surely be a point of argument for the Pirates.
“I feel like since then, it would be silly to put a bunch of emphasis on a 60-game pandemic season,” Reynolds said. “I guess when it comes down to it, we'll see. Yeah, I don't want to be defined by that. I feel like I've kind of turned a page on that."
That’s what makes arbitration cases so potentially threatening for the player-team relationship. The team is forced to either point out everything it doesn't like about a player, or concede the salary it didn’t want to pay in the first place. The latter almost never happens, even in cases that are just $650,000 apart.
Reynolds doesn’t anticipate it having a negative impact on his relationship with the club, though.
"It doesn't change anything [about] the way I feel about Pittsburgh or anything like that,” he said. “Any of my teammates or the team or anything like that. I understand it's part of the game."
With that said, avoiding any potential unpleasantness would have been preferred.
“I wish it wouldn't have come to this, but it did," Reynolds said. "And now I'll let my agents take over.”
