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To be honest with you, it's much better than the alternative where in previous versions I could sign any pre-arb player to a 1.5M per year deal for 8-10 years, or an arb player for 5M for 5-7 years.
One thing you have to keep in mind is a player typically has 2-3 arbitration years left after they've been awarded an arb contract, and after that they are a FA. So you have to pay based on that expectation.
So for a RP offered 2.5M extension (arb 2), and you add 250K (arb 3), that's not a good deal for the player who will likely get 3-5M the following season for arb 2 and somewhere in that neighbourhood in arb 3. Then in FA, they could get 6-10M, if not more.
So theoretically, the player could expect to get 3 M and 3.5M in arbitration, followed by 3 years of FA (let's say 7M for easy math). So after a 5 year period a RP could be expected to get 27.5M. Your offer was basically half of what the RP could expect.
So if you're offering 2.5M with 250K escalation, he should deny it - though I wouldn't argue the issue is the length of the deal, rather than you're not offering enough to make it worthwhile.
I know your issue is the player is asking for more money, but I don't see an issue with that either. I'd wait until the following year for arb and make another contract offer then.
It's better than it's been in past versions, I'll say that.
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