Arbitration deadline day for four key Nationals

Perhaps the quietest offseason the Nationals have experienced in a long time will perk up with a little bit of news today. All major league clubs have until 1 p.m. EST to agree to salary terms with their arbitration-eligible players or else formally submit competing offers to the league, setting the stage for hearings next month.

It's not necessarily the most important day of the offseason. We're not talking about decisions that affect whether someone will be playing for the Nationals in 2017 or not, merely how much money the impacted players will make.

But given the dearth of activity over the last month, we'll take any scraps of news we can get our hands on these days.

The Nationals have four unsigned, arbitration-eligible players at the moment: Bryce Harper, Anthony Rendon, Tanner Roark and Derek Norris (who was acquired from the Padres without having yet come to terms on his contract). They had six arbitration-eligible players when the offseason began, but they already signed Jose Lobaton for $1.575 million, non-tendered Ben Revere and traded Danny Espinosa.

For the uninitiated: Players who have fewer than three years of big league service time have no say in their annual salaries and tend to make something close to the league minimum. Players with more than three years but fewer than six years of service time are eligible for arbitration and can negotiate salary figures with their teams. If the two sides can't agree on their own, they go to an arbitration hearing, with a three-person panel deciding which competing salary offer to accept.

Those hearings take place in early February, alternating from year-to-year between Arizona and Florida. (This year they're scheduled to take place in Arizona, adding motivation for clubs and players who train in the Grapefruit League to get deals done on their own and avoid flying cross-country.)

Few cases actually end up going to arbitration, and the Nationals have been involved in only a few of them over the years. Nine, to be exact, in the franchise's 12 seasons in town.

The club has prevailed in nine of those 12 hearings, beating Alfonso Soriano (2006), John Patterson (2007), Felipe Lopez (2008), Brian Bruney (2010), Sean Burnett (2010) and John Lannan (2012). Three players have emerged victorious: Chad Cordero (2007), Shawn Hill (2009) and Jerry Blevins (2015).

So what are this year's arbitration-eligible players looking at when it comes to negotiations with the Nationals? Let's run through all four cases, with last year's salaries and 2017 salary projections from MLBTradeRumors.com ...

BRYCE HARPER
2016 salary: $5 million
2017 projected salary: $9.3 million
Who knows how high that figure might have been had Harper followed up his MVP campaign in 2015 with a comparable 2016. As it is, even coming off a down year by his lofty standards, Harper still is in line for a sizeable raise and one of the biggest salaries in baseball for a player with fewer than five years of service time. He and the Nationals have haggled before over contract terms, and obviously there's an even bigger contract negotiation that may or may not happen sometime in the next two years. But for now, the focus is on Harper's 2017 salary.

ANTHONY RENDON
2016 salary: $2.8 million
2017 projected salary: $6.4 million
Rendon is one year behind Harper in this process. He was a first-time arbitration qualifier last year as a "Super 2" player, now he enters the second of his four years of eligibility standing to earn a significant raise. He got off to a slow start last year but finished strong and that should help his cause in negotiations this winter. The Nationals could look to sign Rendon to a two-year deal (as they've done with others in this situation, including Harper) and lock up his price beyond 2017. He'd still be eligible for free agency in 2019, regardless.

TANNER ROARK
2016 salary: $543,400
2017 projected salary: $6.1 million
Roark becomes arbitration-eligible for the first time, and he couldn't have picked a better time for that to happen, on the heels of a big season in the Nationals rotation. Roark's 3.01 ERA since debuting in 2013 ranks eighth among all major league pitchers with at least 500 innings in that timeframe. And we know how much good starting pitchers are paid. He's going to get a huge raise this winter, and still be in line for two more sizeable raises the next two winters if he keeps performing this way. The Nats would be wise to see if they can convince Roark to agree to a multi-year deal now, locking in his salaries beyond 2017 before they really skyrocket. If the right-hander is willing to do it.

DEREK NORRIS
2016 salary: $2.925 million
2017 projected salary: $4 million
At the other end of the spectrum is Norris, who enters his second arbitration season coming off a horrible performance last year. That will depress his 2017 salary, though as is the case with almost every arbitration-eligible player he'll still get a raise. This is a big year for Norris, who is trying to re-establish his value, and for the Nationals, who are counting on the 27-year-old catcher to fill the admittedly large shoes left by Wilson Ramos' departure.