Does anyone have an arbitration system that works that they care to share? To me it seems like I win about 50% and lose about 50% no matter what I do. And it seems totally random to me. I can screw a good player coming off of a great season, and some bonehead who had an ERA of 7.5 will win his case against me.

For what it's worth, I generally just offer 85-90% of the asking price. If i am going to arbitration I plan on keeping the player anyway and just see if i can save a few bucks by winning a few cases.

But someone has to have a system that works. Whether they are willing to share is another story.

If you win 50% of the time, then most of us need your system.  I consistently lose 2 of 3 arb cases.

I do what you do (85-90%) of the price.  I think 50% is a good success rate as well.

It's all a crapshoot, but offering 90% is way too much.

Imagine that you have 10 guys demanding $6M and offer all of them $5.4M- you win 5, that saves you $3M.  Now suppose you offer them all $4.5M- you only need to win 2 to save the $3m (highly likely) and there's a good chance you win 3 or 4 cases to really free up an extra wad of cash.

I probably normally offer 75%- win less than half- maybe 1/3.  But that's still going to work out better than winning half of your cases at 85-90%

Good point. Do you just offer 75% to everyone? For instance if the guy is asking for 1.5 million you can afford to lose more than you can afford to lose to a guy asking for 6 million.

My point is that i wouldn't be nearly as scared to offer that 1.5 million 50% as I might be to offer the 6.0 million guy 75%. Do you play it by ear?