The Phillies have avoided arbitration with center fielder Ben Revere, agreeing to a one-year, $1.95MM deal, the club announced. MLBTR's Zach Links reports (via Twitter) that Revere can earn bonuses for awards such as an All-Star selection or Gold Glove, among others.
The deal delivers the 25-year-old a cool $450K more than was projected by MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz — a 30% bump over Swartz's $1.5MM projection. The higher mark also sets a nice baseline for Revere to work from. He will pass through arbitration three more times before qualifying for free agency in 2018. (Revere was a Super Two this year.)
Revere saw his 2013 season shortened when he broke his foot on a foul ball. Before the injury, he had a .305/.338/.352 line in 336 plate appearances. Promisingly, however, Revere had improved his OPS in each successive month of the season to that point (.456 in April; .712 in May; .805 in June; and .857 in July until the injury). Revere had also notched 22 stolen bases in that partial season of work. He has still yet to hit a big league home run after exactly 1,400 trips to the MLB plate.
Revere caps the Phillies' arbitration spending for the year. As MLBTR's Arbitration Tracker shows, the Phils paid out a total of $14.113MM, exceeding their total team projection of $12.7MM. The other Phillies to avoid arbitration were Kyle Kendrick ($7.675MM), Antonio Bastardo ($2MM), John Mayberry ($1.587MM), and Kevin Frandsen ($900K).
