Mariners Notebook: Non-tender deadline, Ohtani and more

Teams have until 5 p.m. PT Friday to tender contracts to their arbitration eligible players. Below is a list of the Mariners who will fall into this category along with the mlbtraderumors.com estimate of what they would get in arbitration.

• David Phelps (5.156) – $5.8MM
• Drew Smyly (5.154) – $6.85MM
• Erasmo Ramirez (4.158) – $4.7MM
• Nick Vincent (4.067) – $2.7MM
• Mike Zunino (3.165) – $3.2MM
• James Paxton (3.151) – $5.6MM
• Shae Simmons (3.111) – $700K
• Andrew Romine (5.049) – $1.9MM

The Mariners are working on a new deal with Smyly who never threw a pitch in a regular season pitch in 2017 and underwent Tommy John Surgery in July. He is not expected to return until late season 2018 at the earliest. If a deal is not reached he will be non-tendered. I would expect to see the Mariners come up with a new contract for Romine who was claimed off waivers from the Tigers last month as well. The rest are expected to be tendered contracts with the possible exception of Simmons who spent the majority of 2017 on the DL.

Players who are not tendered contracts become free agents immediately. The deadline for teams to submit submit salary figures to their arbitration-eligible players is January 13. The two sides can continue to negotiate up until arbitration hearings which will be scheduled in early to mid-February.

Notes:

-The transfer agreement between MLB and NPB is scheduled to be ratified today. Shohei Ohtani, who is currently in Los Angeles is expected to then be posted. At that point he will have 21 days to come to an agreement with a MLB team.

-If you haven’t seen it already, here is an interesting interview MLB Network’s Jon Morosi had with Ohtani last spring.

-Jon Heyman reports Hisashi Iwakuma’s new deal will pay him a base salary of $2.5 million if he pitches in the majors and have $6 million available in incentives on games started with other incentives if he is in the bullpen.

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