The beat guys are reporting that the Pirates and Ross Ohlendorf had their salary arbitration hearing today in Arizona, the first hearing for a player from the club since Jack Splat in 2004 and the first during the Coonelly/Huntington era.
Ohlie is looking for $2.025M this season and the Pirates countered with an offer of $1.4M. The panel must decide on one of those two salaries; they can't come up with a third figure.
The brainy righty was 1-11 with a 4.07 ERA in 108-1/3 innings last year, and landed on the DL twice. He's also had a WAR of 1.1 and 0.9 the past two seasons, which gives him an estimated value of just over $2M per year, so his figures look to be in line with his performance.
Ohlendorf is in his first arbitration year. As a "Super Two," he has three more arb seasons left after 2011. So from a purely business viewpoint, it behooves him to have a plump salary for future arb years, while the FO would like to keep his wages closer to a third-year player's pay scale.
We know the Bucs keep their pencils sharp, but we wouldn't bet against Ohlie. After all, his Princeton thesis used sabermetrics to demonstrate the return on investment from the MLB draft, so he should be able to figure out an arb value without breaking a sweat.
The decision is expected sometime tomorrow if the pair don't agree beforehand.
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