I have an Arb. guy I'd like to sign long term.  He's asking for 5.8M over 3 years.  Would he be willing to accept a 4 or 5 year deal for the same overall contract or more?  Thought about offering him 10M bonus plus 2M/ year for 5 years for a total of 20M.

Just not experienced enough to know if a contract offer that a  guy doesn't like will make him not want to sign with me at all.

Players will only sign contracts at their asking length or longer and their asking price per year, or higher.  That is, if he is asking $3 mill a year for 3 years, you can offer him a contract at $12 mill (total, including bonus) over 4, and he will sign it, or $15 mill over 5 (or $9 mill over 3).  You can structure the contract in any manner that meets the following requirements:

Season - This is the actual season salary that you would like to offer the player. In a two-year contract, neither season can comprise more than 60% of the total value of the contract. In a three-year contract, no season can comprise more than 40% of the total value of the contract. In a four-year contract, no season can comprise more than 30% of the total value of the contract. In a five-year contract, no season can comprise more than 25% or less than 10% of the total value of the contract. There is a maximum allowable offer of $20 million for any season. The minimum for any season is the minimum annual salary at that level. For the big leagues, this is 325K. To change the offer for any season, please click in the box next to the season and enter an integer value. For a three year contract, you must enter in values for the first three seasons, but you may leave seasons 4 and 5 blank. The total value of the contract will appear at the bottom of the page.

If you offer a bonus, deduct that amount from the total and meet the above requirements (and the bonus will come out of your first year's Player Payroll budget)

Ok, I am obviously not  understanding something correctly.  After reading the above (thanks kcden), I tried this as it applies to the player i'd like to sign.

He is asking for 5.8M/3 for a total of 17.4M

I structured the following offer:  1.75M/5 with 8.65M Bonus for a total of 17.4M

I got the following response: "Your offer sheet came through the fax machine garbled. There's no other way you would have actually offered what little you did."

You missed the second part of his first sentence.  The average annual value of the deal has to be >= to what he asked for.

He asked for 5.8/year over 3 years, you gave him the equivalent of 3.5/year over 5.   Same total amount of money, more years = worse deal.

Ya, missed that completely.  Thanks AlCheez.