If there's one thing teams want to avoid with their best players, it's salary arbitration.
It's basically like going to court and trying to prove why a player doesn't deserve X amount of money while the player fights back. It's ugly, and usually doesn't end well, whether it's in the short term or the long term.
The Texas Rangers avoided salary arbitration with one of their young pitchers on Thursday when they signed Neftali Feliz to a one-year deal worth $2.9 million plus incentives. That now leaves David Murphy as the only arbitration-eligible player on the Rangers' roster — another player they would surely like to avoid the process with.
Feliz, who had Tommy John surgery back in August after starting the season in the rotation for the first time in his big-league career, is rehabbing and is set to return to the club at some point this summer, probably at some point in July.
The 24-year-old righty, who was the 2010 AL Rookie of the Year when he had 40 saves, was 3-1 in eight starts in 2012 with a 3.16 ERA.
