So recently I've noticed that players who don't have much playing time...say 100 ABs who used to ask for minimum salary, will demand the same amount as starters with comparable OVR, but will generally lose their arb cases (aka guy asks for 4 million you say 1 million, you win). Anyway this brought up another question in my mind...

Ocassionally, I'd have a player with 3 years or more of ML service time in AAA, and the next year he would be eligible for arbitration and demand something outrageous because previously demands seemed to be based on OVR/playing time (minors playing time counted). I would always release these players because well who wants to pay 4 million to a guy providing AAA depth. I'm now wondering though if they would all lose their cases if I offered them the minimum salary in arbitration. Has anyone actually gone to arbitration against these minor league players?

I'm not sure if they would lose the case or not, but they changed the arb demands recently from stat based to OVR based because someone in one of my worlds was gaming the system a bit.

ddd... when you say "generally lose their arb cases"... you use the example of lowballing the player by 75%. Have you tested that? Remember if you leave the system to auto arb a player the team will automatically offer 70%. Does that mean that any offer lower than 70% is guaranteed to lose? Or were we just intended to think so?

I offered a player who only had 200 abs last season 1.1 even though he was demanding 2.9, previously such a player would ask for 350k since he didn’t have much playing time. I did this with 2 other players(don’t remember exact demand but offer was significantly less and not near 70), I won all the cases with drastically lower offers, all lower playing time people though(I cut another one, I wasn’t willing to risk 4 milllion for and another similar demand in AAA). I didn’t note what the average salary was in arbitration though. I haven’t tried lowballing players with normal playing time because it has never worked for me in the past (I follow the 70 percent rule for those guys)

So obviously small sample size, but leads me to believe you can lowball people with questionable playing time despite the system changing their demands. My follow up questions, which I touched on in the original post...can I lowball these players with the minimum since that’s what they wanted previously and can I lowball minor league players with sufficient playing time(in the minors)?