I'm completely clueless about this, and also too lazy to look it up. what exactly is it? what purpose does it serve? why does baseball have it and football, basketball, and hockey not have it?
In a nutshell the free agent and his ballclub submit contracts to a neutral third party. Arbitration becomes a option after 'x' number of years of service to a single ballclub (i think its 3, but don't quote me on it). This neutral party pores over the player's statistics, looking at productivity, efficiency, and longetivity. They are compared with players who put up similar numbers on other teams. The neutral party than chooses between the two submitted contracts (team's and player's). There are no compromises. As for why its only done in baseball... I have no idea!
It is done in baseball because they have the most powerful union and weakest commissioner post in sports. One of the main problems is the animosity that may develop between the team and the player. Regardless of how well the player has done, the team has to dig up negatives.
Drapg, Just to clarify, there actually are compromises on the arbitrators behalf. Although not often, the arbitrator has come back with something in between the team and player's offers. Now, this may have changed with the recent CBAs. But I vividly remember that some arbitration cases in years past have come back with an adjusted figure by the arbitrator (in between the two proposals).
True...what i think drapg was saying (i could be wrong) is that the arbitrators decision is final...there are no appeals to his decision.
While the parties may eventually come up with a figure between the two salaries - sometimes as late as during the arbitrator's 'deliberation', I am fairly certain that the arbitrator only has the authority to choose the player's or the owner's offer.
doh, i messed up. i meant to reply to bobrek's post. i was pretty certain that the arbitrator could only choose between the two submissions and could not, in fact, make up his own salary figure. I've always thought this was accurate, but I could be living under false assumptions.
You are correct, the actual arbiter can only choose one or the other. There are a few web articles that say this. Here is one: "The crux of the 1994 strike was, as usual, money: a salary cap and revenue sharing. Previous collective bargaining agreements since 1976 between the players' union and the league had already won players the right to submit their salary disputes with clubs to binding arbitration, during which the arbitrator could not negotiate a compromise between the two parties. (When it comes down to accepting either one offer or the other, the process is known as final-offer arbitration.)"
