Ok, so, I thought that tomorrow was the deadline for players to file for arbitration, but it turns out that the actual deadline was today at like 2 or 3PM or something. As result, there were an incredible amount of people who avoiding arbitration with 1-year deals today, and naturally, a few who didn't come to terms with their clubs yet. Some teams treat this date as a deadline, and I'm pretty sure AA/the Jays are one of them to an extent. Any remaining deals will be either multi-year, 1-year with options, or figured out through hearings.
In terms of Blue Jays, Ben Francisco, Kelly Johnson, and Carlos Villanueva all found deals with the Jays and had no need to file their arb numbers. Brandon Morrow and Casey Janssen, however, couldn't find any common ground, and have both filed. Contrary to the opinion of dumb people on twitter, this doesn't make Janssen and Morrow free agents, it just means that the team viewed $X as a fair deal, and the player found $Y fair, and the gap between X and Y was just too wide to make a deal today, which is the exact point of the arbitration system. Janssen and Morrow will now either go to arbitration, or sign a multi-year deal/1-year deal with (an) option(s) before their hearings. Hearings take place between Feb 1 and Feb 21 this year. As a frame of reference, only 3 people went to hearings last year. Jose Bautista was about to, but signed a 5-year extension instead.
MLBTR looked at Morrow at some point this summer as an extension candidate (3/$20+options for 2 arb years and FA year#1), and I'd expect Janssen to get something like 1 year with a player option or two years with a club option.
As far as the signings today, Kelly Johnson got a really small raise on his 2011 salary, agreeing to 1y/$6.35MM. That's a pretty good deal based on any precedent ever, but some people still found a way to complain about that one. Carlos Villanueva signed for $2.2775MM, and Ben Francisco got $1.5375MM. Of course, Colby Rasmus agreed to $2.7MM the other day, and Jesse Litsch and Dustin Mcgowan agreed earlier this week as well.
Elsewhere, Victor Martinez is going to undergo a surgery to repair a torn MCL (or ACL?), which will effectively end his 2012 season. I assume every agent for remaining OF/DH's is contacting the Tigers, but I kind of half expect them to just fill that void from within. Dave Cameron from Fangraphs points out that Casey Kotchmann and V-Mart had very, very similar seasons last year, but that doesn't really take in to account any other year. At least I don't think it does. Martinez isn't anything special anymore though... probably league average or so.
47 minutes ago, Shi Davidi tweeted that there will be a resolution to the Mark Teahen situation "in an hour or so." Teahen was DFA'ed last week, and is probably being either traded with cash for nothing or released. I'll keep that one up to date as I write the rest of this though. Naturally, I could just edit this whole paragraph out once I find out what happens, but sometimes (read: always) I write as if I'm having a conversation with people.
[Update-] Unconditional release. The Jays will still pay Teahen the $5.5MM owed to him, which is a fancy way of paying the Chicago White Sox $5.5MM for the Edwin Jackson trade from last season. Tell me they're not spending money now... If someone signs Teahen, they will be responsible for the pro-rated amount of the league-minimum, and the Jays will be responsible for the rest.
The D-Backs have re-signed Joe Saunders for 1 year and $6MM. I could have sworn that there was a two-year deal on the table for him earlier in the offseason, but you'll have to forgive me for not giving enough shits about that to look it up. Because I'm giving no shits. In fact, I might even take one, and not look that up during. I'd rather Sporcle. The Arizona offseason just keeps getting better and better.
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