Dodgers rookie Gavin Stone received extra pay for being among the top 100 MLB players among those not yet eligible for salary arbitration.
Pitcher Gavin Stone is the only Dodgers player who will receive extra 2024 pay from Major League Baseball’s pre-arbitration bonus pool.
Players eligible for the bonus pool had to have started the season with between zero and three years of major league service time and had not yet qualified for salary arbitration. Players within this group signed as foreign professionals — like Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Shota Imanaga, for instance — to not qualify.
Per the collective bargaining agreement, the pre-arbitration bonus pool is $50 million annually through 2026, funded with equal contributions from all 30 teams ($1,666,667).
Any eligible player who finishes first or second in Rookie of the Year voting, or top five in either MVP or the Cy Young Award, or is named to first- or second-team All-MLB, will receive a bonus. If a player qualifies for multiple bonuses, they only get the higher amount.
Royals shortstop Bobby Witt, for instance, gets $1.75 million for finishing second in American League MVP voting, which supersedes the $1 million he would have received for making the All-MLB first team. Similarly, Pirates right-hander Paul Skenes gets $1.5 million for finishing third in National League Cy Young Award voting, which supersedes both $1 million for All-MLB first team and the $750,000 he would have received for winning NL Rookie of the Year.
Orioles shortstop Gunnar Henderson received a $1 million bonus for finishing fourth in AL MVP. William Contreras received $1 million for finishing fifth in NL MVP, which is what he would have received for his first-team All-MLB status without another honor. Royals pitcher Cole Ragans got $1 million for finishing fourth in AL Cy Young Award voting.
Yankees pitcher Luis Gil got $750,000 for winning American League Rookie of the Year, and Orioles outfielder Colton Cowser got $500,000 for finishing second. Padres centerfielder Jackson Merrill qualified for two awards with the same prize, finishing second in NL Rookie of the Year and named to All-MLB second team; he’ll get $500,000. Red Sox outfielder Jarred Duran got $500,000 for second-team All-MLB.
The remainder of the bonus pool is split among the top 100 players as rated by “Joint WAR,” though it’s unclear which versions of Wins Above Replacement are used by MLB to determine this number. Associated Press has the full list of payouts for 2024.
All of the above players received their proportional amount from the remainder of the pool in addition to the award bonuses. Witt got the highest overall payout at $3,077,595.
Stone won the Dodgers’ fifth-starter job out of spring training and ended up leading the team in starts (25) and innings (140⅓) with a 3.53 ERA this season, though he missed the final month with a shoulder injury that required surgery in October. He’ll miss the 2025 season.
Stone, who averaged 1.9 WAR using Baseball Reference and FanGraphs, received a pre-arb bonus of $350,022.
Andy Pages made his major league debut in April and got a nice long runway in the outfield, hitting .248/.305/.407 with 13 home runs and a 100 wRC+ in 116 games. He had 1.3 fWAR and 1.3 rWAR, and did not make the top 101 among pre-arbitration players.
With a major league minimum salary of $740,000 in 2024 — Stone earned $742,500 — these bonuses, coupled with the Dodgers’ full postseason share coming to $477,441, represent a healthy extra amount earned for most players.
This is the third year of the pre-arbitration bonus pool. To date, eight Dodgers players have received extra pay: