Projected Arbitration Salaries For 2026

October 7, 2025

in Baseball

Reading Time: 3 mins read

Matt Swartz has created a mannequin to challenge salaries for arbitration eligible gamers, which we’ve been publishing at MLB Commerce Rumors for 15 years.

Within the baseball trade, groups and brokers decide arbitration salaries by figuring out comparable gamers. To challenge your entire arbitration class on this means would take an enormous quantity of effort and time. So, Matt has developed an algorithm to challenge arbitration salaries that appears on the participant’s enjoying time, place, function, and efficiency statistics whereas accounting for inflation. The efficiency of comparable gamers issues, however our system will not be immediately deciding on particular person comps for every particular person participant.

As a disclaimer, it ought to be emphasised that our projections aren’t for use as a scorecard for the agent and staff on a person participant degree. A participant doing higher or worse than our projection isn’t indicative of something. Our arbitration projections are created as a instrument for our readers to get a basic thought of a staff’s payroll state of affairs.

Whereas the service time figures included are official, there may be not but a longtime Tremendous Two cutoff, which delineates which gamers with between two and three years of service qualify for early arbitration. That would lead to some late entrants being added to the record. It’s additionally value noting that contracts signed previous to the non-tender deadline aren’t usually thought of to be regular arbitration comparables; contracts signed previous to that deadline might be skewed by mild affords which are offered to borderline non-tender candidates in take-it-or-leave-it vogue (with “go away it,” in such situations, being a non-tender). That’s not common to all pre-tender offers however is incessantly relevant.

One different notice: it’s more and more frequent for groups to barter one-year offers with membership choices or mutual choices protecting an extra arbitration season. We’ve famous the entire gamers who’ve an choice for the 2025 season underneath the phrases of a previous settlement. If the staff buys out that choice, the participant doesn’t develop into a free agent. He merely is paid no matter buyout (if any) was agreed upon underneath the phrases of the prior settlement and heads again by way of the arbitration course of once more this winter.

For those who discover MLBTR’s arbitration projections helpful, please think about supporting us with a subscription. Commerce Rumors Entrance Workplace subscribers obtained early entry to those arbitration projections, and the subscription additionally contains one of the best analysis instruments you may get with out truly working for an MLB staff: our contract tracker, our company database and our GM tracker.

The projections:

Angels (10)

Astros (16)

Athletics (5)

Blue Jays (7)

Braves (9)

Brewers (7)

Cardinals (9)

Cubs (4)

Diamondbacks (11)

Dodgers (9)

Giants (5)