Arbitration hearings are never a fun, comfortable thing.
Look it kind of like a family court hearing — a divorce or child custody hearing — and those are never fun.
Players present their case to their team for why they should make X amount of money, and the club counters with the reasons the player doesn't deserve it before an arbiter makes a ruling one way or the other ending with someone being very ticked off.
The Rangers haven't gotten to that point since 2000 with the oft-forgotten Lee Stevens. Now, they appear to be headed there again.
Mitch Moreland is coming off a career year and is in his final year of arbitration before he's a full free agent after the 2016 season. He made $2.95 million a year ago — a number that was a pre-hearing settlement in arbitration. He proposed $6 million to the Rangers for the 2016 season and the Rangers turned in a figure of $4.675 million. That's a pretty wide gap.
Shawn Tolleson, who took over as the Rangers' closer, led the league in saves from mid-May on, when he got the job. He made $519,700 last year and proposed $3.9 million for 2016 while the Rangers said he should earn $2.6 million — another wide margin.
You hate to see players get to the hearing point in the arbitration process but the fact we're approaching February and the sides are this far apart doesn't bode well. You just hope the sides can settle on something before feelings start getting hurt.
