2025 Arbitration Projections
Projecting salaries for arbitration-eligible players.
Welcome to another installment of my series exploring Major League Baseball’s arbitration process, and projecting salaries for players who are eligible for salary arbitration during this upcoming offseason. This is my third season modeling salaries awarded during the arbitration process, and my series discussing the arbitration process can be accessed by using the link below:
https://adamsalorio.substack.com/t/arbitration
Similar to last year, I will be utilizing a regression model to predict arbitration-eligible salaries based off of salaries awarded to players by arbitration panels in recent seasons. While these projections can be used as an “anchor” to predict how much a player should be awarded and/or to predict whether a team or player will win their arbitration case, the main takeaway from these projections is to approximate how much a team’s payroll should be allocated for arbitration-eligible players in the upcoming offseason.
Wearable technology and Statcast metrics are not permissible statistics to be used in an arbitration hearing, so expected stats and metrics such as Hard Hit Rate are not included in the predictive model. Arbitration panels have historically relied more on “traditional” statistics (such as batting average) as opposed to “advanced” metrics (such as wRC+) when awarding arbitration raises, so the model features primarily “traditional” statistics. One development that occurred when formulating the model this year is that there is a stronger relationship present between a pitcher’s awarded raise and FIP than with ERA, signaling that the arbitration panels might be slowly moving towards a more analytical direction. While this development is noteworthy, the model continues to indicate that arbitration panels place a significant importance on traditional counting statistics (such as total number of hits and home runs for hitters, total number of saves for relief pitchers), rather than rate-based statistics which are used ubiquitously in modern baseball analysis. Onto the projections!:
Team Projections:
Notable Projections:
All Projections:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1DmMP61-zeIWlpC5FdsBeKRCUnbWBWIYT8wAadk5IpUk/edit?gid=0#gid=0
Thanks for reading!
Follow @MLBDailyStats_ on X and Adam Salorio on Substack for more in-depth MLB analysis. Data regarding arbitration status courtesy of Spotrac. Photo credits to The Canadian Press.