As I understand it, Brad Miller on an ICE contract is eligible for arbitration, and at a negative WAR last season his contract would be reduced from $2.0M to $1.0M.
Some ICE contracts can be offered arbitration, but... Miller is one of 7 players with an ICE who isn't eligible for arbitration. We went back and forth on this, but Miller, Grandal, Pollock, Salazar, Fernandez, Puig, and (most painfully for Darrell) Bryce Harper have already been under contract for 5 years. i.e. Miller was promoted for the 2014 season, played 2015, given an ICE in 12/15, played 2016, played 2017, and will now play 2018. If we allowed arbitration, you could keep him again for 2019 and again for 2020. 7 years of control was a bit too much.
So we drew the line at guys on an 2018 ICE contract from guys on a 2019 ICE contract. I can dig up the discussion from our forums, and explain it a little better, but that was where we ended up.
So he's $2.0M to me in 2018? And he'll be a free agent at the end of the season?
Correct. Basically players that were ICED prior to last season we're excluded. When this change was discussed the biggest winners were all COs and it felt wrong to make any other decision.
That's right. This is the thread where we discussed that item: http://www.msbsim.com/forum/index.php?topic=591.0
What Darrell is saying is that: had we not excluded ICE players on the 5th year of their contract, the biggest winners would have been the CO as we held over 50% of those players.
Thanks
Sorry about that Brendt. I didn't even think about that with Miller and the ICE that was applied to him.
I know. But in the end, it's still money off my books next season anyway. And it's not like I'm up against the salary cap anyway!
No harm done.