Outside the Box

ESPN.com - Rob Neyer - Rodriguez to M's: Move in the fences

It's good to have baseball's leading sabermetric voice back after a fortnight off. Rob's got a new book in the works and it should be interesting. Today, he deals with A-Rod and the whole Free Agent hitting-pitching thing. One of the things that he doesn't mention, but I've heard elsewhere and is very important is the following.

Batters get paid for home runs and pitchers get paid for wins. This has a dramatic effect in arbitration, especially when offensive levels are so high. Batters' salaries get jacked up due to the high offensive levels and pitcher's are taken along for the ride since they only have to win games not prevent runs.

This means that teams in pitcher's parks may have some advantages in the arbitration front. Their hitters won't do as well, so you will catch some slack on their salaries the first few years. Of course, as Rob points out, this means they may be out the door after six.