Indians Avoid Arbitration With Carrasco, Chiz, and Scrabble

Indians Settle Half Of Arbitration Cases

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The Cleveland Indians and all other teams have until Friday at 1PM EST to come to an agreement with their arbitration eligible players.

After that the  players representatives and teams will exchange salary figures and begin the sometimes messy process of salary arbitration.

Last night the Indians came to terms with three of their six arbitration eligible players in Carlos Carrasco, Lonnie Chisenhall, and Marc Rzepczynski.   The remaining three that the Indians still have to negotiate with are Brandon Moss, Bryan Shaw, and Josh Tomlin.

Indians Avoid Arbitration With Carlos Carrasco

The Cleveland Indians and Carlos Carrasco avoid arbitration by settling on a $2,337,500 deal, per Jon Heyman of CBS.

 The deal comes after Carrasco’s break out 2014, which saw him set career highs in innings pitched, strike outs and a K rate of almost 10. The second half surge seen by he they call Cookie was bolstered by his switch to pitching out of the stretch rather than the windup, something he picked up coming out of the bullpen for the Tribe. This also obviously contributed to the substantial raise from the projected $1.4 million arbitration number set forth by MLBTradeRumors.com.

Regardless of how much of an increase it is from the projected number, Carrasco, in his first arbitration year, still projects to be a major source of value for the Tribe. The going rate for 1 WAR on the open market is generally agreed upon to be around $7.5-8 million. Carrasco gave the Indians 3.4 WAR with his abbreviated 2014, shortened only because he pitched so much in relief to start out the year. With a full year of starting expected coming for 2015, he projects to be much more valuable. $2.3 million is more than expected given his lack of innings pitched, but is very good if Carrasco is to keep up his pace. And everything points to Cookie being a monster again.

Indians Avoid Arbitration With Lonnie Chisenhall

Jon Heyman of CBS Sports also reports via Twitter that the Indians and Lonnie Chisenhall have agreed to a one-year $2.25MM deal. After hitting .280/.343/.427 with 13 homers for the Indians in near full time play in 2014 he was projected by MLBTradeRumors to earn $2.2MM.