Cubs catcher Willson Contreras might have made an opening argument in his June 9 arbitration hearing when he homered, doubled and picked off a runner at second Wednesday.
“There’s nothing that’s going top surprise me, believe me,” he said of the negative case the Cubs will make against him during a conversation with NBC Sports Chicago. “I’ve been going through a lot of [criticism] since I was in the minor leagues, and everything they have to say I’ve already heard it. It doesn’t bother me.”
“File and trial” is what people in baseball call it — the unwillingness to negotiate once the deadline for exchanging numbers passes. It’s a tactic used more often, by more teams than even a decade ago and one more hardball tactic by teams to hold down salaries — sometimes unwillingness to compromise on $100,000 or less.“That’s not our policy,” team president Jed Hoyer said on Opening Day. “We went past that deadline.
The reality is Major League Baseball has increasingly put the squeeze on teams to hold hard lines on salaries, and the guidelines its Labor Relations Department analysts spit out annually for arbitration-player values has been treated increasingly like MLB directives in practice. Back to the Cubs and Contreras, Hoyer said during that media conversation last week that “We’ve got a good relationship with Willson.”Unless the organization does an about-face on its plans, Hoyer’s staff will arm its arbitration lawyer with as much negative data to use against Contreras between now and June 9 rather than engage in good-faith talks befitting a “good relationship” to split the difference.
“I’m like, ‘Am I able to say something?’ He said, ‘No, you just sit and hear,’ “ Contreras said. “I was like, ‘OK.’ ““I can tell you in mine, the Cubs did not go over the line,” Happ said. “They stayed on topic and worked through the points instead of doing something that was completely and totally out of line, which other teams have done.”
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