By Estera Gordon
Baseball arbitration is — literally — baseball arbitration. It is used to determine the salaries of ballplayers with, in most cases, more than three full years of Major League Baseball service time and less than six years in the big leagues, who cannot come to salary terms with their teams.1
In baseball arbitration (also known as pendulum arbitration and final offer arbitration), the parties submit their final salary proposals before the arbitration hearing. After the hearing, the arbitrator issues an award that adopts one of those proposals. What distinguishes baseball arbitration from other arbitration practices is that the arbitrator’s discretion is limited to choosing between the parties’ final proposals....