Dioner Navarro Loses Arbitration Hearing

Dioner Navarro took his case to arbitration yesterday, but unfortunately for him, the ruling was not favorable.

Navarro was seeking $2.5 million for the 2009 season after making $422,500 in 2008 (including a $10,000 bonus for making the All-Star squad). Meanwhile, the Rays only wanted to pay $2.1 million for Navarro's services for the upcoming season. The arbitrator ruled in favor of the Rays.

"It's never ideal to go to a hearing," Andrew Friedman, the Rays executive vice president of baseball operations, said, "but it is the process in place."

Indeed it is never an ideal situation to not see eye-to-eye with your players and to not be able to find some common ground in contract negotiations, but for baseball, the arbitration system works, and now Navi will report on Saturday with the other pitchers and catchers expected to make about $400,000 less than he had hoped for the season.

Hopefully, for Navarro, he is not discouraged by the loss and can put it behind him and produce even better numbers than last season when he batted .295 with 7 home runs and 54 runs batted in. Navarro was also third in the league in throwing out 35.7 percent of runners attempting to steal (throwing out 25 of 70 attempts).

The loss of the hearing might sting, but Navarro's has a tremendous upside, and in a few years, he might not be missing that extra $400,000, either that, or he can make up for it in upcoming contract negotiations. For now, the Rays defend their arbitration record of having never lost a single hearing in the team's history, and having won all three cases since Friedman became the executive vice president of baseball operations.