Blue Jays starter Marcus Stroman had his arbitration hearing. He lost. He requested $6.9 million and the Blue Jays countered with $6.5 million. Somewhat surprising given how good a 2017 season Stroman had, but arbitration can be like that sometimes. As I recently noted, arbitration is a somewhat complicated process with some often counterintuitive forces at work and thus you can’t just go with “good player should win, bad player should lose” and expect to predict the outcomes with much accuracy.
As I also noted in that post, one weird part of arbitration is that a player has to sit there in the hearing room and listen to his own club talk smack about him. Maybe it’s not blatantly insulting, but the club’s lawyers do cite the problems with a player, his failures and his flaws and argue that, as a result, he should not get the money he’s asking for.
Based on the outcome, the Blue Jays’ lawyers did an effective job of that, but it didn’t leave a great taste in Stroman’s mouth:
Love me some adversity.
— Marcus Stroman (@STR0) February 15, 2018
Just being real. Not mad at all. I’m aware of the business. Just opens your eyes going through the arbitration process. Second time going through it. Still love my team and the entire country of Canada. More upset that I had to fly to AZ and miss my Monday workout. Lol
— Marcus Stroman (@STR0) February 15, 2018
Whatever motivates you, Marcus.