Jhoulys Chacin, Drew Stubbs among 8 Rockies players to file for arbitration

Eight Colorado Rockies players filed for arbitration on Tuesday, including rotation stalwart Jhoulys Chacin and productive fourth outfielder Drew Stubbs.

Stubbs will likely receive the most money out of the eight players. He's projected to earn $5.7 million in his final season before free agency, according to MLB Trade Rumors. Chacin isn't far behind; the 27-year-old right-hander could be paid a hair under $5 million in what he hopes will be a bounce-back season before he hits the open market.

Whatever Stubbs, Chacin and the others end up making, it's likely that the terms will be settled before the arbitration hearing phase begins on Feb. 1. The Rockies haven't had an arbitration case since 2008, when Brian Fuentes and the club were roughly $1.5 million apart. Arbitrators wound up siding with the Rockies, awarding Fuentes $5.05 million instead of the $6.5 million he was seeking.

Before that, Colorado went to arbitration with a player only twice: Sun-Woo Kim in 2006 and Dennys Reyes in 2002, per Biz of Baseball's Maury Brown. The Rockies are 2-1 all-time in arbitration cases.

Clubs can begin exchanging figures with players on Friday, and agreements should start falling into place around that time or shortly thereafter.

Rex Brothers, Tyler Chatwood, Jordan Lyles, Michael McKenry, Adam Ottavino and Wilin Rosario round out the list of Colorado players who filed Tuesday. Each of those players will likely crack $1 million in single-season earnings for the first time in their respective careers.

Links

The current all-underrated team - SweetSpot Blog - ESPN
Corey Dickerson finds himself on David Schoenfield's underappreciated list. There are still flaws in Dickerson's game, but he's been able to balance those by hitting the absolute crap out of the baseball on a consistent basis. We'll see if he remains underrated after 2015.

End the Blackouts – The Hardball Times
Nathaniel Grow pleads for Major League Baseball to fix its ridiculous blackout problem -- one that has reached the initial stages of a lawsuit, in fact. As the author says, it would be beneficial for the league to amend its policy now rather than spend time and money to possibly end up with a worse result.

To illustrate how awful MLB's blackout policy is, I live eight hours from Coors Field and about 10 from Chase Field. However, if I drop my satellite service and just pay for MLB.tv, I'll be unable to watch either team's games.