Khris Davis is now the highest-paid player in A’s history.
The Oakland A’s entered January with seven players still eligible for salary arbitration. After agreeing to terms with reliever Ryan Buchter on Thursday, they settled with five more players on Friday, the team announced. The only remaining case is for closer Blake Treinen.
Here are the most recent arbitration settlements:
The biggest news here involves Khrush. First off, agreeing to this one-year deal does not preclude the chance to continue negotiating a multi-year extension, so this news doesn’t necessarily affect that quest one way or other. All it means is that he now has a 2019 salary locked in and won’t have to go to another arbitration hearing like he did a couple winters ago.
What Khrush’s agreement does achieve is setting his market. As the Athletics Nation community debates about potential terms for an extension, we’ve been using his $18 million estimate (from MLBTR) as a baseline. That turns out to have been a notable overestimate, which means we can now adjust our expectations of what his future long-term contract might be worth.
As for the others, they are all right around their estimates. Semien came in a bit under, and Profar a bit over, but neither by more than a million. Canha and Buchter were within 100K of theirs. It remains to be seen what Manaea got, but his estimate from MLBTR is $3.8 million.
Here is the updated payroll, with these new figures included:
| Name | Pos | $M |
|---|---|---|
| Khris Davis | DH | 16.5 |
| Stephen Piscotty | OF | 7.3 |
| Joakim Soria | RHP | 6.5 |
| Mike Fiers | RHP | 6.0 |
| Marcus Semien | SS | 5.9 |
| Yusmeiro Petit | RHP | 5.5 |
| Fernando Rodney | RHP | 5.3 |
| Jurickson Profar | IF | 3.6 |
| Liam Hendriks | RHP | 2.2 |
| Mark Canha | OF | 2.1 |
| Ryan Buchter | LHP | 1.4 |
| Josh Phegley | C | 1.1 |
| Chris Herrmann | C | 1.0 |
| Ryan Dull | RHP | 0.9 |
| Arbitration estimates | ||
| Blake Treinen | RHP | 5.8 |
| Sean Manaea (DL) | LHP | 3.8 |
| Other stuff | ||
| 10 more players | -- | 7.5 |
| Moss buyout | -- | 1.0 |
| TOTAL | -- | 83.4 |
According to insider Jane Lee, that salary for Khrush is the highest single-season outlay for any player in A’s history, beating out Eric Chavez’s $12.5 million back in 2010. Granted, salaries have risen around the league over the last decade, but clearly not in Oakland given how long it took to break Chavez’s record. Interpret that as you will as a statement about the team’s evolving attitude toward its present/future budget, and/or their love of Khrush specifically.
As for Treinen, he might be headed toward a hearing to determine his 2019 salary, reports Susan Slusser of the S.F. Chronicle. The last player they went to a hearing with was Kendall Graveman last winter, and the team won that case against a low-salary role player. However, the year before that, they lost a case against Khrush, who like Treinen was a rising star whose key stat (HR for Khrush, saves for Treinen) tends to be overvalued in the arbitration process. That was the only time the A’s have lost an arby hearing since before Billy Beane became GM in 1997, but it does have some similarities to Treinen’s situation.
