Three of the four Dodgers eligible for salary arbitration this offseason are relief pitchers, with outfielder Alex Call the outlier as the only position player in the bunch.
With two years, 161 days of major league service time, Call is eligible for salary arbitration for the first time as a Super Two player. That distinction is reserved for the top 22 percent in service time among players with at least two years but not yet three years of service. The cutoff this year for Super Two status was two years, 140
days of service time.
The Dodgers acquired Call from the Nationals at the July 31 trade deadline, and he hit .247/.333/.384 with four doubles, two home runs, and a 103 wRC+ in his 85 plate appearances with the Dodgers, starting 12 games and playing in reserve in 26 others. Call was active all postseason and had four hits in 11 at-bats plus three walks and a hit by pitch, for a tidy .533 on-base percentage.
On the season, Call hit .267/.361/.385 with five home runs and a 113 wRC+ in 110 games, and in parts of four seasons with the Guardians, Nationals, and Dodgers Call is a .242/.342/.371 hitter with a 102 wRC+.
Let’s see how that compares with other outfielders with similar service time to go through salary arbitration recently, with the help of MLB Trade Rumors and their excellent tracking of such transactions, going back several years.
It’s difficult finding perfectly comparable players, and this group of Super Two players include some outliers. Jarren Duran and Mike Yastrzemski were coming off career years heading into arbitration for the first time. Duran and David Dahl were All-Stars. Daulton Varsho was (and is) an excellent outfielder and also occasionally caught in those early years. Hunter Renfroe averaged over 28 home runs in his first three full seasons. Taylor Ward had a better platform year with 23 home runs and a 136 wRC+ in 2022.
Anthony Santander has similar career numbers to Call, making that $2.1 million from five years ago look like a decent comp. But in 2019, Santander hit 20 home runs in a nearly full season followed up by 11 home runs and a 130 wRC+ in the pandemic-shortened 2020 campaign heading into his arbitration.
Call has been quite clearly more productive than MJ Melendez and Jarred Kelenic were to this point in their careers, but both had more than double the home runs hit by Call to date. It’s hard to know how much playing time weighs, but Melendez had to this point a full season’s worth of plate appearances more than Call, while Kelenic batted 41.6 percent more than Call.
JaCoby Jones through 2019 had nearly the same plate appearances and home runs as Call, with Call outperforming him at the plate and in Wins Above Replacement rather handily. To me, that makes the $1.575 million Jones earned in 2020 the floor for Call in 2026, plus whatever inflation adjustment might be needed.
Call was projected to make $1.5 million in 2026 by MLB Trade Rumors, while Cot’s Baseball Contract had the outfielder at $1.4 million. I’ll guess that Call exceeds that and surpasses Jones as well at $1.75 million.
