Why Did Ryan Yarbrough Lose his Arbitration Case?

Ryan Yarbrough lost his arbitration case last week after trying to get a $3.1 million salary for 2021. He will end up receiving the number that the Rays provided – $2.3 million. Let’s take a look at why he lost, and what made the Rays number more appropriate according to the arbitrators.

But first, check out this article about the arbitration process if you need a refresher.

How to Build an Arbitration Case

There are two major things to consider when building an arbitration case:

1. Basic stats – Wins, IPs, Games, ERA, etc
2. Comparable players

You also need to look at:

1. The player’s career performance
2. The player’s platform year performance

The platform year refers to the year that the player is eligible for arbitration.

Ryan Yarbrough’s Basic Stats

The first thing I did was pull Ryan Yarbrough’s basic stats for reference.

We will use these later on as a comparison tool.

Finding Comparable Players

Now we need to find similar players. First, we need to identify players who were first year arbitration eligible (because this is Yarbrough’s first year)

Next, it would be ideal to find players who have experience as a starting and relief pitcher. We want them to have transitioned into more of a starter (similar to Yarbrough) around the time of their platform year.

I did this by going back three years and looking at all first year arbitration eligible pitchers. I came up with the following players (organized by year):

Platform Year: 2019

Platform Year: 2018

Platform Year: 2017

Finding a Starter and Reliever

If we take these lists and pull out all of the pitchers who have experience as starters and relievers, it becomes much smaller.

Then we want to identify those who started as relievers and transitioned into starters.

We are left with three pitchers:

• Tyler Glasnow – $2.05 million
• J.C. Ramirez –  $1.9 million
• Julio Urias – $1 million

We want to compare each of these players to Yarbrough so that we can get an initial feel for what he should be compensated.

When making these comparisons, I looked at the player’s platform year (the year they were eligible for arbitration) and their career stats through their platform year.

J.C. Ramirez

I started by comparing J.C. Ramirez to Yarbrough because Ramirez has the mid-range salary of the three similar players.

Here is what I determined:

Conclusion: Yarbrough should be making more money than J.C. Ramirez >$1.90 million

Tyler Glasnow

Tyler Glasnow has the upper range salary, so let’s compare him to Yarbrough next.

• Glasnow has a higher career ERA than Yarbrough and won 18 fewer games.
• Yarbrough pitched almost 100 more innings than Glasnow (in a similar amount of games)
• During his platform year, Glasnow was placed on the 60 day IL (which would hurt his salary)

Conclusion: Yarbrough should make more money than Glasnow, >$2.05 million

Determining an Upper Limit

We now know that Yarbrough should be making at least $2.05 million. Let’s find some more players to compare him to so we can find an upper limit.

Going back to that original list of pitchers, we can remove everyone who earned less than our lower limit of $2.05 million (from Glasnow).

We can also remove any pitchers who have only pitched in relief. Yarbrough was more of a starter his platform year.

Our revised list is as follows:

Let’s use a similar approach of comparing pitchers to Yarbrough by starting in the middle of the list. We can then work our way higher or lower to determine where Yarbrough fits salary wise.

Matthew Boyd

I started at Matthew Boyd because of his mid-range salary, and determined the following:

• Boyd has more wins than Yarbrough in his platform year, but a higher ERA
• Boyd has better career stats- more games played and significantly more (>100) innings pitched

Conclusion: Yarbrough should be making less than Boyd, <$2.6 million

Lance McCullers Jr.

If we drop down one salary on the list, we have Lance McCullers Jr.

• McCullers Jr. has more wins his platform year, but Yarbrough has more career wins
• McCullers Jr. has a lower career ERA
• Pitched in a similar amount of innings

Conclusion: McCullers Jr. and Yarbrough are very similar, but McCullers Jr. has a slight edge. Yarbrough should be making slightly less than $2.45 million

Eduardo Rodriguez

Eduardo Rodriguez is one below McCullers Jr. salary-wise.

• Yarbrough has a lower ERA than Rodriguez in his platform year and his career
• Yarbrough has more wins, more games, and more innings pitched career-wise

Conclusion: Yarbrough should be making more than Eduardo Rodriguez, >$2.375 million

Yarbrough’s Salary Range

Our previous lower limit from Tyler Glasnow was $2.05 million. We can now refine it to be $2.375 because we know Yarbrough should be making more than Rodriguez.

Our upper limit is set at $2.45 million from Lance McCullers Jr.

So, Yarbrough should have earned between $2.375 million and $2.45 million. I would put him at around $2.40 million

As a refresher:

• Yarbrough requested $3.1 million
• The Rays offered $2.3 million

Arbitrators cannot negotiate or come up with their own salaries. Those hearing Yarbrough’s case ultimately decided to side with the Rays and award Yarbrough $2.3 million.

I am not sure why I my estimate was off by $100,000 from that of the Rays, but I can see why Yarbrough did not win this case.

He might have had a better shot if he had gone into the hearings asking for $2.5-$2.6 million, but even that is pushing it a little bit when looking at what other players with better numbers earned.

Do you think Ryan Yarbrough is being compensated fairly? Let me know in the comments below.