The Chicago Cubs and Javier Baez have settled on a one-year deal avoiding salary arbitration according to Fancred’s Jon Heyman.
Javier Baez settles at 5.2M #cubs
— Jon Heyman (@JonHeyman) January 11, 2019
The deal, worth $5.2MM is nearly $2 million less than estimates. Typically, these estimates are pretty close as they use other “like-players” to project the salaries. When I have seen them be wrong is when they project less than the player will eventually make (they were a bit lower on Kris Bryant’s deal in 2018).
The only remaining player we have not heard from is third baseman, Kris Bryant. He is projected to make over $12 million, but after a record-breaking deal last season, and with Mookie Betts (who we found out has an interesting tie to Bryant) received a $20 million deal and the $17 million Jacob deGrom earned, maybe Bryant and his agent Scott Boras were thinking about another huge increase, while the Cubs were looking to be more modest.
No one should want to go to an arbitration hearing, but as of now, that might be the case with Bryant.
