The Mets and Feliciano agreed on a one year deal today slightly below the midpoint from the two sides. This agreement means that the Mets will not have to have an arbitration hearing with Feliciano and actually with no players this year. This is a very good thing. I am not a fan of having to go through the arbritation hearing process because it really does expose breaks between the front office and the players. Two big free agent signings this year, both had to go to arbritation las year (Krod and Fuentes). What it comes down to is the team basically saying that a player is not worth that amount.
While generally that is true, in some cases it is. (as a disclaimer, I am not a fan of any large salary that any baseball player makes, but I also know that the larger salaries are part of sports and sports culture at this point). For example, when Howard got 10 million in that case, he was worth it.
A team has to be very careful going through with these cases because they could really damage ties with players that they may want to keep. Going with this statement, I don't how much of these feelings of resentment come from fans like me and the media just trying to make sense of what it is liek to go though with these cases. We are not part of baseball, the front office, or the players, so we really dont know what is going on, but its a thought.
