One of the pre-agreed upon additions to the compensation structure of Major League Baseball during the most recent Collective Bargaining Agreement was the addition of an annual $50 million pre-arbitration bonus pool. In essence, it’s a way to compensate newer players who haven’t logged enough service time to reach their arbitration (read: bigger earning) years based on their performance over the course of the season.
There are hard and fast numbers in place for awards, for instance. Should a pre-arb
player win an MVP or Cy Young – like Paul Skenes of the Pittsburgh Pirates did this year – they get an automatic $2.5 million bonus. How the voting shakes down in those awards, as well as Rookie of the Year awards, includes scaled bonuses for the players who finish in second, third, fourth, etc.
Beyond that, though, there’s a WAR-based formula to determine bonuses for the rest of the pre-arb corps, and four members of the 2025 Cincinnati Reds made the cut, according to the breakdown of the payouts by AP News.
Leading the way was Elly De La Cruz, who posted 4.3 fWAR/3.6 bWAR and was rewarded with a $631,080 bonus. Just behind him was lefty Andrew Abbott, who took home a $520,065 bonus on the back of his brilliant 3.9 fWAR/5.6 bWAR campaign. TJ Friedl gets a check for $409,167 after posting a 2.9 fWAR/2.3 bWAR season, while Matt McLain snuck in with $206,056 – the second lowest who made the cut – after his 1.4 fWAR/0.0 bWAR 2025.
Not making the cut were likes of Noelvi Marte, Tony Santillan, and Spencer Steer, whom the particular WAR formula simply didn’t appreciate enough.
