Pavano Accepts Arbitration
By Fetch
Excellent. Given the fact that the market was basically bereft of good starting pitching, I thought Carl Pavano would either get overpaid by the Twins, or he would get signed to a big deal by some team and net the Twins a draft pick.
Neither happened.
Instead, Pavano will end up being dramatically underpaid. Thankfully for all of us Twins fans, Pavano’s numbers that he will be evaluated on (14-12 record, 5.10 ERA) don’t tell the story of how good he was last year. His 2nd highest k/9 of his career, 3.77 k/BB and 4.00 FIP point to him being a very effective pitcher.
Fangraphs estimates that Pavano will earn somewhere between 6 and 8 million next year. Honestly I would tend to lean a bit lower than that, but even if it is 8 million, Pavano’s performance in 2009 justified a salary twice that, and I see him justifying at least that salary in 2010.