Winning Pitchers

Three starting pitchers won their arbitration cases today:

Starting pitchers went 3-0 against ownership Wednesday, as Gerrit Cole, Trevor Bauer and Alex Wood all won their arbitration cases to ensure a winning record in consecutive years by players for the first time since 1979-81.

ESPN.com

Given these arbitration hearings and the slow free agent market, the owners seem to be underestimating the value of the players. Barry Svrluga discussed this in the Washington Post today:

Another issue, described by all three GMs: agents who aren’t serving their clients well. Now, this is an incomplete evaluation, and maybe Harper will get north of $300 million and Machado will end up with more than $250 million, and then who’s to say the agents didn’t perform well?

But what these three general managers describe are agents who come to teams saying their clients are worthy of everyday roles when the clubs see them as platoon players. Or the agents argue that their player in his early 30s is ascendant, when the clubs, in general, believe that the mid-30s represent a point of decline.

WashingtonPost.com

The agents appear to be getting the arbitration values right, something the teams used to calculate very well.

from baseballmusings.com http://bit.ly/2TO05aJ