With today’s deadline of exchanging numbers with arbitration-eligible players, Boston Red Sox general manager Ben Cherington is staying busy getting the rest of his arbitration-eligible players signed.
After agreeing to terms with Franklin Morales last night, the Red Sox and Jacoby Ellsbury have agreed to a one-year, $8.05 million deal according to MLB Trade Rumors’ Ben Nicholson-Smith. It’s a big raise for Ellsbury after making $2.4 million last year in his first arbitration-eligble season.
The big raise is warranted for Ellsbury after his monster season last year where he finished second in the AL MVP voting, won a Silver Slugger and Gold Glove and was named to the AL All-Star team. He hit .321 with 32 home runs, 105 RBIs and had 39 stolen bases.
This coming after a 2010 season that was lost to injury and he actually came into the 2011 season with a lot of questions. Instead, he went out and proved all the doubters wrong and set himself up for a nice payday which he got.
Cherington now has five contracts to go to avoid going to the arbitrator. They are Alfredo Aceves, Mike Aviles, Andrew Bailey, Daniel Bard and David Ortiz. He’s avoided going to arbitration now with Matt Albers, Andrew Miller, Jarrod Saltalamacchia, Ryan Sweeney and Morales.
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