Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Bills Gets Plenty of Bills

As Orel picked up on a tweet yesterday, Chad Billingsley got paid yesterday (with a sizable raise from 2010); meanwhile, James Loney and Hong-Chih Kuo are exchanging numbers (assumingly, each with the Dodgers, rather than with each other):

LOS ANGELES -- The Dodgers and pitcher Chad Billingsley reached an agreement on a one-year contract for $6.275 million on Tuesday, then the club exchanged arbitration numbers with first baseman James Loney and reliever Hong-Chih Kuo.

Loney is asking for $5.25 million and the club is offering $4.7 million. Kuo is asking for $3.075 million and the club is offering $2.55 million. Kuo is coming off a 2010 salary of $975,000, while Loney earned $3.1 million.

Billingsley went 12-11 with a 3.57 ERA last year, bouncing back from a second-half slump in 2009. The right-hander earned $3.85 million in 2010. [...]

Since the inception of salary arbitration 35 years ago, the Dodgers are 14-6 in cases decided by a hearing and 6-1 in their last seven cases dating to 1991. That includes the most recent wins over Joe Beimel in 2007 and Eric Gagne in 2004 by assistant general manager Kim Ng, who is in charge of the club's cases.

The last player to win a hearing with the Dodgers was Terry Adams in 2001. The club's first arbitration case was in 1975, when Ron Cey was awarded a salary of $56,000 instead of the club's submission of $47,000.

Kim Ng has a pretty solid streak here; that's gotta be pretty strong incentive for a player to not wait until February, right?

photo swiped from this "pitching mechanic" blog

8 comments:

spank said...

Way,Way Off Topic:

It's a slow ass day and I'm ready to take that midnight train to Georgia.

Fernie V said...

Wednesday's suck balls, big Lasorda balls
I hate wednesday more then Monday
They call them Wacky Wednesdays at my work
they suck

Fernie V said...

I like Bills and think he deserves the money. But I hope we don't go long term I think he crumbles under pressure. He did extremely well when we were out of the race. I do hope I am wrong.

Steve Sax said...

If Starbucks baristas were valued similarly for a 12-11 record (reflecting correct:incorrect orders delivered), I would be a rich man

Jason said...

Sax, was that you making my half-caf-double-decaf nonfat extra whip soy mocha this morning?

Nostradamus said...

I'm perpetually troubled that "Barista" is not a gender-specific word, as I feel it should be.

Kyle Baker said...

@Fernie

Agree re Bills, although the beauty is we're not locking up long term a person who may just not have what it takes to work under the pressure of the pennant drive (H.I. McDonough from Raising Arizona voice). Same as we did for JMart last offseason.

Having said that, I like Bills a lot and am pulling for him to break out and be the pitcher we know he can be (and to his credit has been in many ways).

Steve Sax said...

@Dusty: totally agree with you. $6m should be worth more than a 12-11 record, but at least it's one year. Hoping that Chadley has a great 2011, though.

@Jason 5:29p: sorry about that goat's milk (we were out of soy)