NEW YORK (AP) The New York Yankees plan to go to salary arbitration with reliever Dellin Betances, which would be the team's first hearing in nearly a decade.
Eligible for arbitration for the first time, Betances submitted a proposed $5 million salary last week and the Yankees filed at $3 million. A hearing before three arbitrators will be scheduled for next month.
''We're not going to reach a resolution with Dellin,'' Yankees general manager Brian Cashman said Thursday. ''Based on all our discussions it was clear that the different perspectives were such a wide bridge.''
New York renewed Betances at the major league minimum $507,500 last year. A setup man for the first four months, he took over as closer after the trades of Aroldis Chapman to the Chicago Cubs and Andrew Miller to Cleveland.
Betances, a right-hander who turns 28 in March, figures to be primarily a setup man again following Chapman's decision to return to the Yankees, who gave him an $86 million, five-year contract - a record for a relief pitcher. Betances struck out 126, leading big league relievers for the third straight year, and went 3-6 with a 3.08 ERA and 12 saves in 17 chances.
Cashman said there had been limited discussions about a multiyear deal but he did not anticipate additional talks.
Since defeating Mariano Rivera in 2000, the Yankees' only arbitration hearing was in 2008: Pitcher Chien-Ming Wang was awarded a raise from $489,500 to the team's $4 million offer instead of his $4.6 million request.
''We'll go about and just basically have a polite discussion about market value and history of where the marketplace sits vs. attempts for new market creation,'' Cashman said.
