Arbitration process allows young Cardinals to ‘experience’ the Byzantine side of baseball
The St. Louis Cardinals won one of their arbitration hearings and lost the other two, finalizing their as-of-yet unknown salaries for the upcoming season and working through a major point of awkwardness that operates as a necessary evil in Major League Baseball’s Byzantine salary structure.
Brendan Donovan lost his hearing, and as a result, will earn $2.85 million rather than the $3.3 million for which he filed. Both Lars Nootbaar and Andre Pallante won their hearings; Nootbaar was awarded $2.95 million rather than $2.45 million, and Pallante will earn $2.1 million rather than $1.925 million.
All three players were back in Cardinals camp in time for workouts on Thursday morning. Nootbaar’s hearing took place last week, and both Donovan and Pallante were heard this week across the state in St. Petersburg.
“Even a year and a half ago, my agent told me he thinks it’s good for every player to go to a hearing just to see all sides of baseball,” Nootbaar said. “Going into it, I felt well prepared, and I felt like my representation did a good job of kind of walking me through everything, keeping me in the loop.”
“I think the first thing I should mention is I’m not a disgruntled employee by any means,” Donovan said. “I knew walking in that room, it is a coin flip. It really is, with a lot of times hearings favoring the team. I knew that going in, and I’m very humble in victory and very humble in defeat.”
The arbitration process involves presentations by first the team and then the player’s representation in which they present arguments for why their selected salary should be chosen. The right to arbitration is generally earned after three years of service time, though Pallante is among the select group of so-called “super two” players who receive early entry into the system by having some of the highest service time totals among players with more than two but less than three years in the majors.
A panel of three arbitrators then decides between the arguments presented by the club and those presented by the player, setting one of the salaries submitted by the sides. It is an unsparing process that can often be brutal and shocking, with players forced to listen to their current teams describe alleged flaws in their games, some of which may be out of their control.
Donovan, for one, declined to describe the arguments the Cardinals put forth against him, saying only that, “some of the things I was told were valuable (by the team) were held against me.”
Among players who played at least 91 games in left field in 2024, Donovan was one of only four to hit 14 or fewer home runs. One of the others, Steven Kwan of the Cleveland Guardians, is a speed-first, high-contact leadoff hitter archetype who profiles differently from Donovan’s game. The other two, Davis Schneider of the Toronto Blue Jays and Alex Verdugo of the New York Yankees, were significantly below league average hitters.
Donovan’s positional flexibility, then, could arguably work against him under those circumstances, creating unflattering comparisons that bely the truth of his flexible skill set. Nootbaar, on the other hand, acknowledged that the club challenged him directly on his ability to stay on the field and off the injured list, which was precisely the line of attack for which he and his representation were prepared.
“When you just see it laid out in front of you, you kind of get a good idea of what can’t happen,” Nootbaar said. “It’s just motivation to go out there and play better and obviously be healthy and have a full season.”
Despite the hearing not going his way, Donovan was emphatic in asserting the importance of exercising the arbitration right for not only himself but also future generations of players. The precedents set in hearing rooms can reverberate forward through the decades under MLB’s current economic setup, and Donovan was highly attuned to that.
“I think it was important for me to fight for my rights,” he said, “for my family and for players behind me. So yeah, I took that bullet, but I’d do it again.”
Donovan also emphasized that there was never any conversation between his camp and the Cardinals about a multi-year deal that might have abrogated the process altogether. He also said he realized relatively quickly that there would inevitably be a hearing in his case, as “there was minimal effort being made” by the Cardinals to come to an equitable solution on a one-year deal.
That lack of multi-year conversation is stark in the broader context of the team’s arbitration history. Since winning a hearing again lefty pitcher Darren Oliver in 1999, St. Louis has not once signed a player to a contract extension which took them past their team control years as a Cardinal. That group contains Génesis Cabrera, Ryan Helsley, Tyler O’Neill and Michael Wacha; Cabrera and O’Neill were traded, Wacha departed as a free agent, and Helsley is set to hit free agency following the coming season with little to no indication of an extension in the works.
The hearings are not typically conducted by a team’s most player-connected executives in an attempt to soften the blow of their combative nature. Director of baseball administration John Vuch was the point person on the team side for the hearings, working alongside outside attorneys.
That distance can be important. Manager Oli Marmol said that his role in the process is primarily to “do more listening than talking, let them kind of tell you how they’re feeling and how they’re processing some of that.” He made sure to point out that he’d spoken to all three players and that all three were in a “really, really good spot.”
Grace is perhaps easier to access for the winners. Donovan was neither defiant nor outwardly frustrated, but strident in his defense of his abilities and the case presented. Most importantly, he was eager to emphasize a growing presence in the community, with expanded events for injured veterans on his slate this season.
“I’m very glad to be here [in St. Louis], I want that on the record too,” Donovan said.
And then later, laughing as he quoted football coach Bill Belichick, he found solace in one of the stops in the NL Central: “On to Cincinnati.”
This story was originally published February 13, 2025 at 1:54 PM.
