The Dodgers and right-hander Brusdar Graterol have avoided arbitration, reports Robert Murray of FanSided. The righty will make $2.8MM this year, the same salary he made in 2025. He missed the entire season due to injury.
This isn’t an especially surprising result. The arb system generally sees player salaries rise each year. In cases where a player misses an entire season, their salary usually holds steady. MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz therefore projected Graterol to make the same $2.8MM salary as he did in 2025, which has indeed come to pass.
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 file arbitration figures if they don’t come to an agreement. The Dodgers started the offseason with nine arbitration-eligible players but that’s now down to three for the deadline day tomorrow.
Tony Gonsolin and Michael Grove were designated for assignment and became free agents. Evan Phillips was non-tendered. Ben Rortvedt was claimed off waivers by the Reds. The Dodgers picked up a club option on Alex Vesia. With Graterol now settled, the Dodgers will have just Anthony Banda, Brock Stewart and Alex Call undetermined going into tomorrow.
2026 will be Graterol’s final season before he’s slated for free agency. He’ll be looking to bounce back after a couple of injury-marred seasons. He spent many years as a key setup arm for the Dodgers, with big velocity and huge ground ball rates. From 2020 to 2023, he posted a 2.69 earned run average over 173 2/3 innings. His four-seamer and sinker both averaged about 99 miles per hour. That oddly didn’t translate to many strikeouts, just an 18.9% clip, but he got grounders on a massive 62.5% of balls in play.
Shoulder problems and then a hamstring strain limited him to just seven appearances in 2024. He underwent surgery on that shoulder in November of that year. It was initially hoped that he could return in the second half of 2025 but that didn’t come to pass. Despite the injuries, he could go into free agency with good momentum since he won’t turn 28 years old until August, though he’ll obviously need much better health to boost his earning power.
Photo courtesy of Wendell Cruz, Imagn Images