Dodgers Digest Los Angeles Dodgers Baseball Blog
After agreeing to contracts with Scott Van Slyke and Chris Hatcher to avoid arbitration, the Dodgers still had seven decisions to make. In the end, they tendered deals to Yasmani Grandal, Alex Wood, Darin Ruf, Luis Avilan, Vidal Nuno, and Josh Fields, but did not give a contract to Louis Coleman.
The Dodgers announced Friday that they did not tender a contract to right-hander Louis Coleman, but all the other players on the 40-man roster without pre-existing contracts were tendered for 2017.
Catcher Yasmani Grandal, first baseman Darin Ruf, left-handers Luis Avilan, Alex Wood and Vidal Nuno and right-hander Josh Fields were tendered deals.
Grandal and Wood were no-brainers, and they just traded for Ruf and Nuno, so that was unsurprising as well. The choice to keep both Avilan and Fields is a bit closer to being interesting, but with J.P. Howell gone, Avilan is the third lefty even after the emergence of Grant Dayton, and the Dodgers clearly liked the upside Fields flashed during his tenure with the team (2.79 ERA/3.69 FIP).
As far as Coleman goes, it’s not all the surprising that a 4.69 ERA and a 4.31 FIP (basically replacement level) pitcher isn’t going to be brought back. However, Coleman looked to be a bit of a success story of picking a guy off somebody else’s trash heap (Royals) when he had a 2.73 ERA on June 14. Unfortunately, the rest of the way he had an ERA of 7.06 and missed almost all of August with injury. Given that Coleman was out of options and is heading into his age-31 season, he was going to be a long shot to make the bullpen, so the decision makes sense.
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As for the players who were tendered deals, the deadline for filing salaries for arbitration is sometime in the middle of January, but most of the players listed should settle up before then.
