TORONTO — Free-agent reliever Chad Green and the Toronto Blue Jays agreed to an $8.5 million, two-year contract on Tuesday.
The deal includes options for 2025 and 2026 and could be worth $29.25 million over four seasons.
Green is likely to miss at least the early portion of this season while recovering from Tommy John surgery. He injured his pitching elbow last May with the New York Yankees and was sidelined the rest of the year.
The right-hander got off to a solid start last season with a 3.00 ERA and 16 strikeouts over 15 innings. He left New York’s game against the Baltimore Orioles on May 19 with right forearm discomfort and three days later the Yankees announced he needed Tommy John surgery.
Typical recovery time for the ligament-replacement procedure is 12-18 months.
Green gets a $2.25 million salary this year, and the Blue Jays must decide after this season whether to exercise a club option calling for $9 million salaries in 2024, 2025 and 2026.
Green, 31, is 33-22 with a 3.17 ERA in seven major league seasons, all with the Yankees. He has 11 saves and 53 holds.
BRAVES: Pitcher Jesse Chavez and outfielder Kevin Pillar highlight 26 players with minor league contracts invited to spring training by the Braves.
Chavez, 39, had been effective as a long reliever out of the Braves’ bullpen the last two seasons, going 3-3 with a 2.72 ERA in 46 appearances over two stints with the team a year ago.
Chavez re-signed with the Braves in the offseason, giving the team another low-risk option in an already deep bullpen.
Pillar, 34, is looking to bounce back from a fractured shoulder that sidelined him for most of last season. He played in just four big league games for the Los Angeles Dodgers and spent time at Triple-A Oklahoma City, where he batted .315 with 10 homers and 40 RBI.
ORIOLES-NATIONALS: The New York Court of Appeals has scheduled oral arguments for March 14 in the long-running dispute between the Baltimore Orioles and Washington Nationals over television rights fees.
After agreeing in September 2021 to consider the case, the state’s highest court said this week that it will hear arguments on the question of “whether courts have the power, after vacating an arbitration award based on ‘evident partiality’ related to the forum, to order rehearing in a forum other than that provided for in the parties’ arbitration agreement.”
The Mid-Atlantic Sports Network was established in March 2005 after the Montreal Expos relocated to Washington and became the Nationals, moving into what had been Baltimore’s exclusive broadcast territory since 1972. The Orioles have a controlling interest in the network.
MASN paid the Nationals for 2012-16 what the Orioles proposed: $197.5 million. Washington argued it should be paid $475 million.
An arbitration panel of baseball executives – Pittsburgh Pirates President Frank Coonelly, Tampa Bay Rays principal owner Stuart Sternberg and New York Mets chief operating officer Jeff Wilpon – heard the case in 2012 and ruled in 2014 that the Nationals were owed $298.1 million.
The Orioles appealed, and that decision was thrown out in 2015 by New York Supreme Court Justice Lawrence K. Marks, who ruled a law firm representing the Nationals was conflicted because it had worked for clubs of executives on the panel. The case was sent back to baseball to be heard by a reconstituted Revenue Sharing Definitions Committee.
A second panel of baseball executives – Milwaukee Brewers chairman Mark Attanasio, Seattle Mariners President Kevin Mather and Toronto Blue Jays President Mark Shapiro – ordered a slightly lower payment of $296.8 million. That decision was confirmed in August 2019 by New York Supreme Court Justice Joel M. Cohen.
The Appellate Division of the Supreme Court for the First Department unanimously affirmed Cohen’s decision in October 2020, ruling the Orioles failed to establish evident partiality in the second arbitration panel. The First Department’s decision was by Justices Dianne T. Renwick, Cynthia S. Kern, Saliann Scarpulla and Martin Shulman.
MINOR LEAGUES: The U.S. Justice Department asked a federal appeals court to narrowly consider Major League Baseball’s antitrust exemption, a filing made in a case involving four eliminated minor league teams hoping to end the sport’s century-old legal protection.
MLB cut the minimum guaranteed minor league affiliation agreements from 160 to 120 in September 2020 and took over running the minors from the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues, which had been in charge since 1901.
The parent companies of the Staten Island Yankees, Tri-City ValleyCats, Salem-Keizer Volcanoes and Norwich Sea Unicorns sued MLB in December 2021 in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, alleging a violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act caused by “a horizontal agreement between competitors that has artificially reduced and capped output in the market for MiLB teams affiliated with MLB clubs.”
The suit was dismissed in October by a judge who cited the antitrust exemption created by a 1922 U.S. Supreme Court decision involving the Federal League. The teams then asked the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to send the case onto the Supreme Court.
ARBITRATION: The Seattle Mariners defeated Diego Castillo in the first salary arbitration decision this year, and the relief pitcher will get a raise to $2.95 million rather than his request of $3,225,000.
• AL batting champion Luis Arraez went to a salary arbitration hearing against the Miami Marlins, who acquired the infielder from the Minnesota Twins last month.
Arraez asked for a raise from $2.2 million to $6.1 million, and the Marlins argued for $5 million. The case was heard by John Stout, Mark Burstein and Scott Buchheit, who are expected to issue a decision Thursday.
DODGERS: All-Star pitcher Tony Gonsolin and the Los Angeles Dodgers agreed on a $6.65 million, two-year contract that avoided an arbitration hearing.
Gonsolin gets $3.25 million this year and $3.4 million in 2024.
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