Orioles reliever Brad Brach admitted to being a little uneasy leading up to his arbitration hearing Thursday in St. Petersburg, Fla., but he returned to camp on Friday glad that the process was finally behind him.
“The last two nights, it’s just been tough with sleep,” said Brach, who is expected to receive a ruling today. “I wasn’t nervous about it. I just wanted it to be done with. After we went through everything yesterday, I just want to see how we did basically. Nobody likes to lose. Hopefully I get some good news here.”
Brach was one of the three Orioles’ arbitration-eligible players whose salary was unsettled by the deadline for the team and player to exchange figures last month. The Orioles employed a “file-and-trial” approach this year, telling players they were ready to go to an arbitration hearing with all unsettled players with no further negotiation, but settled with right-hander Kevin Gausman before his scheduled trial date. The Orioles also beat catcher Caleb Joseph in arbitration.
Because he had the widest gap in figures – a $525,000 difference – Brach seemed headed to an arbitration trial all along. He filed at $3.05 million, while the Orioles proposed a $2.525 million salary. There was some negotiation leading up to the trial, but the sides ultimately went to a hearing.
“We never really got close enough to the point where I was thinking about [settling] just because I had a number set in my head,” Brach said. “We just were never able to get to that number. I knew going into it what the process involves and I was just willing to go [to a hearing]. If there’s a year to go, being an All-Star like I was last year and having the numbers I thought I put up, I figured it was a good year to go."
Brach enjoyed his best season as a major leaguer last year, moving into the set-up role in right-hander Darren O’Day’s absence. He was 10-4 with a 2.05 ERA, 24 holds and two saves in 79 innings. He posted a 0.91 ERA in 49 1/3 innings in the first half of the season, earning a trip to his first All-Star game. His ERA in the second half rose to 3.94 over 29 2/3 innings. Brach held right-handed hitters to a .126 clip, but lefties hit .288 against him, a mark that rose in the second half because he struggled with his changeup.
Still, Brach’s wins above replacement (WAR) was 2.6, which was sixth best among all AL relievers. Orioles closer Zach Britton lead all AL relievers with a 4.3 WAR.
Orioles relief pitcher Brad Brach talks about getting ready for the upcoming season.
Orioles relief pitcher Brad Brach talks about getting ready for the upcoming season.
Brach said that the Orioles – who were represented by Glenn M. Wong, who serves as an outside counsel to the team – used many metric numbers to make their case, including ones that Brach admitted he didn’t understand. One of those metrics was gmLI – or game leverage index – which is a statistic to quantify the pressure situations a reliever is under when he enters the game. Brach’s gmLI was 1.26, which is slightly higher than the player average of 1. Britton led the Orioles with a 1.67 gmLI.
“It’s a lot of just numbers and those metric stuff that I don’t really understand, salary raise-type stuff,” Brach said. “It’s a lot of stuff that’s not necessarily my stats versus theirs. … They try to compare it any way they can to try and make it so I don’t get the raise I’m asking for.”
Brach said he didn’t take those arguments personally, realizing that it’s a part of the arbitration hearing process.
“I can understand you taking it personally, but nobody from the team has said anything,” Brach said. “I didn’t say anything. You just kind of sit there and you just have to understand that it’s not personal. And if you take it personal, I can see how you can get mad and it could affect you, but you just have to go in knowing that it’s not a personal thing.”
Regardless of the ruling, Brach will receive at least a 50.5 percent raise after making $1.25 million last year.
“Like I said the other day, I’m extremely lucky to play this game and I get paid a really good salary to play,” Brach said. “We all do and I think if I was going be mad over the difference, I shouldn’t be playing. I should be doing something else. That’s just the way I look at it.”
eencina@baltsun.com
twitter.com/EddieInTheYard
Our editors found this article on this site using Google and regenerated it for our readers.
