The deadline to complete agreements prior to salary arbitration came and went yesterday afternoon, and the Blue Jays reached agreements with three of their five players who were headed down that route: Kelly Johnson ($6.375M), Ben Francisco ($1.537) and Carlos Villanueva ($2.227M) all received slight raises one-year deals. Nothing out of the ordinary here.
That leaves just two pitchers, Brandon Morrow and Casey Janssen, who at least look as though they are headed towards the Blue Jays’ first arbitration cases since 1997. While contract negotiations clearly broke down in both cases, it’s still very unlikely that either player will actually have to make their case in front of an arbitrator when the meetings are set up about a month from now. The differences in the salary numbers by the player and the team are relatively small ($300K in Morrow’s case, $400K in Janssen’s), and is suggestive that the team is working on multi-year contracts with both players.
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