Young players picked up a good chunk of yardage in baseball’s new collective bargaining agreement.
They wanted to make more money, to share in the sport’s bounty earlier in their careers, to be rewarded for exceptional performance before they reached veteran status.
They got it.
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And that’s good news for Phillies players such as Alec Bohm, Ranger Suarez, Connor Brogdon and beyond them guys like Bryson Stott, Mick Abel, Andrew Painter, Griff McGarry and Logan O’Hoppe, all talented youngsters who could arrive in the majors during the five-year life of the new CBA.
The minimum salary has risen from $575,500 to $700,000 and will jump by $20,000 per season over the life of the deal.
But the real reward for early-career players — those with under three years of service time and not yet eligible for salary arbitration — will come in the form of a new bonus pool earmarked specifically for that class of players.
The pool will be worth $50 million per season, $250 million over the life of the deal. It will be distributed to the top 100 young players in the game, based on performance.
MLB
How will it be divvied up?
Well, a pre-arbitration player who wins the MVP or Cy Young Award will find an extra $2.5 million in his Christmas stocking. The reward for finishing second will be $1.75 million. Third place finishers will get $1.5 million. Fourth- and fifth-place finishers will get $1 million.
Winning the Rookie of the Year Award will be worth an extra $750,000. Bohm finished second in rookie of the year voting in 2020. That would be worth an extra $500,000 under this new bonus system.
Those making the all-MLB first team will pocket a $1 million bonus with second-teamers getting $500,000.
Had this system been in place when Ryan Howard was breaking in, he would have collected an extra $3.25 million because he won the Rookie of the Year and MVP awards before reaching his salary-arbitration years.
The pool was the subject of much negotiation between MLB and the players association.
At first, the players sought a pool of $105 million. MLB countered with an offer of $10 million. The agreed-upon $50 million pool will cost teams $1.66 million (that amount figures into luxury tax payroll) per season. Seems reasonable considering the performance incentive it will provide young players.
After award bonuses are handed out, a WAR-based system to be agreed upon by the two sides will spread the remaining money to the top 100 players in those rankings.
Bohm, Suarez, Brogdon — and even Stott, who is expected to get to the majors at some point in 2022 — are the most notable young players who could be in line for bonuses this season.
Suarez, in his final pre-arbitration season, will get the ball every fifth day in the starting rotation. If he pitches the way he did last season — he had a 1.36 ERA in 106 innings — there could be something extra in his stocking on Christmas.
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