(Photo by Ronald Martinez/Getty Images)

The next step in this series of looks at roster moves that face the Tigers is to look at the arbitration eligible players who don’t have the option of turning their team down. These are players with three or more years of service time (usually—it’s explained here ) who are still under team control, but get to negotiate their salary through arbitration.

The team offers and instead of having the option of saying no thanks and going off to find a multi-year deal, they simply have to counteroffer. They say what they think they’re worth, compare it to the team’s figures and either come to a middle ground or go to an arbitration hearing where one figure or the other is chosen.

It should be pointed out that Dave Dombrowski hasn’t gone to arbitration one time since he’s been with the Tigers. League wide, the vast majority of players come to an agreement with their team to avoid a hearing. That's understandable since it's not really in anybody's best interest to talk about why the players aren't valuable.

The Tigers have nine arbitration eligible players and they are Bobby Seay, Marcus Thames, Ramon Santiago, Matt Treanor, Gerald Laird, Edwin Jackson, Justin Verlander, Joel Zumaya and Zach Miner. (Thanks to Eddie Bajek for making this part easy.)

Bobby Seay

Let’s just go right down the list, starting with Bobby Seay. He’s going into his third year of arbitration eligibility and he made $1.3 million last year. His season was pretty similar to what he did in 2008, so I’m going to assume most of his raise would come from the extra year of service.

There is—what I believe is—a pretty widely accepted metric for figuring out a player’s salary in their arbitration years and it’s simply a 40-60-80 system. The idea is in their first year of eligibility, they make approximately 40 percent of their free agent market value. In their second year of eligibility, it’s roughly 60 percent and...well, you see the trend.

If that’s accurate and we assume Bobby Seay’s value in 2009 held even from what it was in 2008, his salary should go up to about $1.7 million this year. I think that’s a pretty good deal for one of the Tigers’ more valuable relievers.

The River

Next we come to Marcus Thames, who’s also in his third year of arbitration eligibility. The River made $2.275 million last year, so if we just assumed his performance stayed flat and he would just get the raise that came with the extra year of service he’d be bumped up to $3 million.

You can quibble with whether his performance stayed flat, but I don’t think you can really argue that the Tigers are not going to want to pay Marcus Thames $3 million. Their most important game of the season went into the 12th inning and had pinch hitters and pinch runners galore, yet they never used Thames.

They don’t trust him in left field, and that reduces his role to being the right-handed side of a platoon at designated hitter. You simply don’t pay $3 million for that role when you’re tight on funds. Marcus Thames is going to either be traded or non-tendered this offseason.

Ramon Santiago

That brings us to Ramon Santiago. He’s a little puzzling to me because Cot’s Contracts shows him as having already avoided arbitration three times. Yet, I haven’t heard any mention of him being a free agent so I’m assuming he’s arbitration eligible.

Regardless, I think the Tigers will be able to bring him back for right around $1 million and I think they’ll do it. They know what they have in Santiago and they seem to appreciate it. He’ll also have a little extra perceived value as some insurance at second in case they decide to go with Scott Sizemore as the starter.

Matt Treanor

Next on the list is Matt Treanor, who serves no conceivable purpose on the roster when you have Gerald Laird, Alex Avila, and Dusty Ryan in the organization. That’s before you consider Treanor is an obvious injury risk. Treanor does, however, serve as a nice segue to Laird.

Gerald Laird

Laird is eligible for arbitration for the third time, too, and his salary in 2009 was $2.8 million. Based on the extra year and his value to the team, he’s probably going to get a raise into the $3.5 to $4 million territory.

I think the Tigers will pay that because I doubt they’re comfortable enough with the defense of either of their young catchers to let him walk. I expect he’ll see something closer to half the playing time for two reasons.

You're currently logged into Facebook

Do you want to share your Bleacher Report activity on Facebook?