Perrotto: Examining Pirates’ Two Salary Arbitration Cases

The Pittsburgh Pirates have two players scheduled for salary arbitration hearings.

Neither hearing will be high-profile or create a ripple around baseball. Nevertheless, there are some interesting aspects to both cases.

Reliever Dennis Santana is asking for $2.1 million, and the Pirates are offering $1.4 million. Santana’s salary was $1 million last season when he went 3-1 with one save and a 3.89 ERA in 62 games combined with the New York Yankees and Pittsburgh Pirates.

Right-hander Johan Oviedo is seeking $1.15 million while the Pirates are countering at $850,000. He made $765,000 last year when he sat out the season while recovering from Tommy John reconstructive elbow surgery.

A three-member panel of arbitrators will listen to arguments from both sides and then pick the team’s or the player’s figure. The sides can reach an agreement until the arbitrations announce their decision.

What adds a twist to Santana’s case is that he had an awful 23 games with the Yankees to begin last season then pitched well in 39 games after the Pirates claimed him off waivers on June 11.

Santana was 2-0 for the Yankees but had a 6.23 ERA. However, he had a 1-1 record with one save and a 2.44 ERA for the Pirates.

Santana finished 3-1 with one save and a 3.89 ERA in 62 games overall. It will be interesting to see if the arbitrators put more weight on Santana’s statistics with the Pirates or his full-season numbers.

One factor in Santana’s favor from 2024 was his durability. He ranked 25th among major-league relievers with 71.2 innings pitched.

Of the 37 MLB relievers who worked at least 70 innings last season, Santana’s 1.088 WHIP ranked 15th. However, he was 20th in strikeout-to-walk ratio (3.29), 21st in strikeouts per nine innings (8.7) and 29th in ERA.

Santana is one of 110 big-leaguer relievers to pitch at least 140 innings over the last three seasons. However, he was 65th in WHIP (1.227), 82nd in strikeout-to-walk ratio (2.41), 83rd in strikeouts per nine innings (8.6) and 103rd in ERA (4.60).

Those numbers indicate that Santana has been in the lowest echelon of relievers despite his good stint with the Pirates.

Oviedo’s case is a little harder to argue since he did not play last season and 2023 was his only full season as a major-league starter. Oviedo went 9-14 with a 4.31 ERA in 32 starts that year.

Like Santana in 2024, Oviedo’s strong suit a year earlier was his durability. His 32 starts were 10th in the major leagues, and he was 27th with 177.2 innings pitched. Furthermore, he was just one of 44 pitchers to qualify for the ERA title.

However, Oviedo’s performance did not stack up well against those 44 qualifiers. He was last with a 1.90 strikeout-to-walk ratio, 40th with a 1.373 WHIP and 33rd in ERA.

No one knows for sure how arbitration hearings will turn out. A veteran baseball executive once described the process as “a high-tech flip of the coin.”

Thus, it’s a fool’s errand to try to predict results. Regardless, let’s try it and say the Pirates will go 2-0 against their pitchers in baseball court.