Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Phelps gets the win in salary arbitration
David Phelps defeated the Marlins in a salary arbitration hearing Thursday, according to a source familiar with the proceedings. That means the right-handed pitcher will make $4.6 million in 2017, as opposed to the $4.325 million the team wanted to pay him.
He made $2.5 million in 2016.
The Marlins’ franchiserecord payroll for this season is at $109.5 million for 18 players, according to Cot’s Contracts. The seven players who round out the 25-man roster are set to make the major league minimum ($535,000) or something close to it.
A panel of three independent arbitrators made the decision on Phelps’ salary.
Phelps, coming off the best season of his career, is set to be a significant piece of the Marlins’ bullpen in 2017. He had a 2.28 ERA and 1.14 WHIP in 86 2⁄3 innings last year, filling any role the team asked him to — from closing games (four saves) to opening them (five starts) and everything in between.
Phelps’ strikeout rate (11.8 per nine innings), hit rate (6.3 per nine innings), home-run rate (0.6 per nine innings) and strikeout-towalk rate (3.0) were all personal bests.
The Marlins intend on using Phelps strictly out of the bullpen this year. He’ll be part of a relief corps that includes back-end arms A.J. Ramos, Brad Ziegler, Kyle Barraclough and Junichi Tazawa.
“If we can keep a deep bullpen, we can keep him as that multi-inning effective bridge to the back-end guys,” president of baseball operations Michael Hill said in December. “He impacts more games for us that way. But we know he has the versatility if he has to move into the rotation to do that seamlessly and not miss a beat.”
The Marlins had six arbitration-eligible players in all but settled before the filing deadline with Ramos, Tom Koehler, Marcell Ozuna, Adeiny Hechavarria and Derek Dietrich.