Mandatory Credit: Mark L. Baer-USA TODAY Sports
Junichi Tazawa, Mike Carp, and Jonathan Herrera all reached agreement on one year deals with the Boston Red Sox Friday morning, beating the 1:00 PM EST deadline that teams and players had before exchanging arbitration figures. None of the agreements come as much of a surprise as the team was always believed to have a strong chance at reaching agreement with all five of their eligible players.
Boston has one player remaining who could end up with a hearing in February, left-hander Andrew Miller, but the team can still negotiate with him in the coming weeks to avoid that. Burke Badenhop reached agreement with the team on Thursday.
Joel Sherman of the NY Post has the details:
#Redsox avoid arbitration with Junichi Tazawa. He gets $1.275M for 2014.
— Joel Sherman (@Joelsherman1) January 17, 2014
#Redsox avoided arbitration with Mike Carp at $1.4M
— Joel Sherman (@Joelsherman1) January 17, 2014
#Redsox and Jonathan Herrera avoid arbitration. He gets $1.3M in 2014. That leaves Bos with just Andrew Miller unsigned among arb eligibles
— Joel Sherman (@Joelsherman1) January 17, 2014
MLB Trade Rumors projected arbitration totals for every eligible player earlier this offseason and it appears that all three players have landed just above those totals. Tazawa had been projected to see $1.1 Million, Carp $1.3 Million, and Herrera $1.2 Million. The team can certainly afford the differences, but they are cautiously watching how close they are to the luxury tax threshold so it remains to be seen if this will affect any additional spending between now and Spring Training. Of course, we don’t know what they’d projected themselves for this group so there could always been more room in the budget than we can see.
Miller remains an interesting case, given his recent injury history. He’s been solid when healthy and he’ll be a free agent following 2014. Projections have him around $1.9 Million.