Multiple sources have confirmed that the Pittsburgh Pirates won their only arbitration case against first baseman Ji-Man Choi. Jason Mackey was the first to report the news. All of the other arbitration-eligible players in the system agreed to deals before the deadline. The Pirates are one of many “file and trial” teams in baseball, so once they exchanged figures with Choi, they were going to an arbitration meeting.
Choi asked for a $5.4 M salary, while the Pirates countered with $4.65 M. The interesting thing here is that even though he lost the case, he actually did better than projected. MLB Trade Rumors has been posting projected arbitration numbers for years with a very high success rate of coming close to how the numbers play out. They projected Choi for $4.5 M, so win or lose in this meeting, he was still making more than his projected salary.
It’s not 100% accurate, but he likely had very little chance of winning regardless of his asking price, since the arbitrators pick the closest number.
