The “Future” Gets Kicked to the Curb … For Once

Tonight at midnight ET is the deadline for teams to offer arbitration to eligible players.  What does this mean?  A team that offers arbitration to a player, gets a draft pick if that player signs elsewhere this offseason.  But, if that player chooses to take his team to arbitration, he gets a raise and the team is stuck with that player for another year, at whatever cost is decided by a third-party.  Thankfully, Kansas City has said, “Screw the pick, let’s not get stuck with Miguel Olivo.”

Kansas City has passed on offering Olivo arbitration, as they have also done with all of their players eligible for arbitration (Coco Crisp, Jamey Wright, and Bruce Chen).  Olivo’s case was most interesting because he’s the only catcher on the team’s 40-man roster who can handle a piece of lumber (as his team-leading 23 home runs attest to).

But, the team correctly considered three things when looking at arbitration …

1. Olivo would have cost the team between 3.5-4 million dollars if he stuck around via arbitration.  That does not fit into the team’s payroll structure.

2. Olivo might have been very willing to accept arbitration because this winter’s market doesn’t appear to be much different than a year ago.  In other words, Olivo will have a tough time hunting down a multi-year deal or even a one-year contract worth his “value.”  Additionally, he might have been interested in accepting arbitration with Kansas City because he would almost certainly be locked-in as the every day backstop for 2010.

3. Olivo was a “Type B”-free agent meaning that if he did sign with another squad for next season after being offered arbitration by KC, his signing would reward the Royals with a sandwich pick between the first and second rounds of the June draft.  To put it succinctly, these picks are crapshoots just like the rest of the draft, they aren’t a strong enough reward for the risk you would take by offering Olivo arbitration, and such a pick would only eat into the signing bonus money that should be directed at the franchise’s high first-round pick in 2010.

Bravo, Dayton Moore.  The obvious decision was the right decision.  As for Olivo, good luck on finding that starting gig that lands you a multi-year deal for anything close to four-million per season.