Should Scutaro Accept Jays' Arbitration Offer?

The one Type-A free agent who might be well served by accepting his team’s arbitration offer is Marco Scutaro.  Scutaro had a terrific year in 2009, by far the best in his career, and would likely get an enormous sum in arbitration, given his age, experience and ‘09 season.

Only a very stupid team would give Scutaro a long-term deal this offseason.  Players who have career years (it isn’t even close — Scutaro has had only one season in his major league career (2006) in which he had an OPS within 80 points of his 2009 campaign, and in ‘06 he had more than 200 fewer ABs than he had in ‘09) at age 33, have almost no chance at having another season as good before they retire.

Without crunching any numbers, I’d rate Scutaro’s chances of having another season as good as 2009 at any time before he retires at about 3%.  Players who have career years after age 31 tend to regress almost immediately back to their career averages, and then rapidly decline from there.

If Scutaro has multi-year offers in hand by December 7, he should reject arbitration.  Otherwise, he’s got to give it serious consideration.

One more thougtht: if Scutaro accepts arbitration, the Blue Jays are screwed.  They didn’t waste any time resigning John McDonald and signing Alex Gonzalez to a combined $4.25 million.  If Scutaro accepts arbitration, the Jays will find themselves having pissed at least $3 million down a rat hole.  Nobody’s taking playing time away from a healthy Aaron Hill in 2010, so the Jays would have at least one too many over-paid good-field-no-hit middle infielders going into next season.