This is not a particularly surprising result. The arb system generally causes players’ salaries to increase every year. In cases where a player misses an entire season, his salary usually remains stable. MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz therefore predicted that Graterol would earn the same $2.8 million salary as he did in 2025, which indeed happened.
By agreeing to the number now, the Dodgers will have a slightly shorter to-do list tomorrow. Thursday is the deadline for teams and players to submit arbitration grades if they cannot reach an agreement. The Dodgers started the offseason with nine arbitration-eligible players, but that’s now down to three before tomorrow’s deadline.
Tony Gonolin And Michael Grove were designated for assignment and became free agents. Eva Philips was not tendered. Ben Rortvedt was claimed on waivers by the Reds. The Dodgers picked up a club option Alex Vesia. Now that Graterol has settled in, the Dodgers will be just shy of a run Anthony Banda, Brock Stewart And Alex Bell starting indefinitely tomorrow.
2026 will be Graterol’s last season before he is released. He will be looking to rebound after a pair of injury-marred seasons. He spent many years as a key setup arm for the Dodgers, showing great speed and tremendous groundball rates. From 2020 to 2023, he averaged a 2.69 earned run average over 173 2/3 innings. His four-seamer and sinker both averaged about 99 miles per hour. That strangely didn’t translate into many strikeouts, just an 18.9% clip, but he got grounders on a whopping 62.5% of balls in play.
Shoulder problems and then a hamstring strain limited him to just seven appearances in 2024. In November of that year he underwent surgery on that shoulder. It was initially hoped that he would be able to return in the second half of 2025, but that did not happen. Despite the injuries, he could head into free agency with good momentum as he doesn’t turn 28 until August, though he obviously needs much better health to increase his earning power.
Photo courtesy of Wendell Cruz, Imagn Images
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