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you've got this all wrong. i have been involved with probably 80 arbitration cases, all on the player's side. the challenge in arbitration is trying to see where the team is filing. it is just a guess. you look at past comparable players and try to find players that support your submittal, and then you try to find players that the team will use to support their number.
but it is always a blind exchange. there is a conference a coupe of days before you submit your number with all agents and the union to just go over everything and make sure that there are no surprises. it is fun to get the team's numbers and take a look to see how close you were.
some agents file high numbers because they want to have negotiation room. but if you file too high, the team can just ignore you and go the hearing and win. if you want to be aggressive, you have to file closer to the player's real value. whomever is closest to the mid-point of the value in the arbitrator's eye wins.
so to be more realistic in this arena, a system would have to be based upon actual awards from previous seasons for other players. as is, we just see what looks to be an arbitrary number. there is no real 'game' in that.
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