Beltre Is Signed for $5 Million

The Dodgers avoided arbitration with Adrian Beltre on Monday, agreeing to terms with the streaky third baseman on a one-year, $5-million contract. But negotiations with Cy Young Award-winning closer Eric Gagne will likely be more laborious.

Gagne’s agent, Scott Boras, and the Dodgers will exchange salary figures as the first step in the arbitration process today, and the All-Star reliever, whose contract was unilaterally renewed for $550,000 in 2003, is expected to seek a salary in excess of $9 million, almost double the $5 million New York Yankee shortstop Derek Jeter made in 1998, a record for players in their first year of arbitration.

Gagne’s request probably won’t be a record for first-year arbitration-eligible players, though. The agent for St. Louis Cardinal star Albert Pujols is expected to file an arbitration figure in excess of $10 million today.

Dodger General Manager Dan Evans wouldn’t discuss specifics of the Gagne case, but the team is expected to counter with a figure in the $5-million range, creating a considerable gulf between the sides.

The Dodgers will have until early February to reach an agreement with Gagne and avoid a potentially adversarial arbitration hearing. Because of the uncertainty surrounding Dodger ownership, there has been little talk about a multi-year deal for Gagne, who led the major leagues with 55 saves in 55 opportunities last season.

“We’re not afraid of arbitration -- sometimes that’s the only thing you can agree to do,” Evans said. “But we always prefer to have a contract [agreement] when possible.”

The highest salary awarded to a reliever in his first year of arbitration was the $4.5 million given in 1998 to Yankee closer Mariano Rivera, who went 6-4 with a 1.88 earned-run average and 43 saves in 52 chances in 1997.

But it is almost impossible to find first-year arbitration-eligible players comparable to the dominant Gagne, the 27-year-old right-hander who went 2-3 with a 1.20 ERA in 2003, allowing 37 hits, striking out 137 and walking 20 in 82 1/3 innings, after going 4-1 with a 1.97 ERA and 52 saves in 2002.

There is also a clause in baseball’s collective bargaining agreement that will enable Boras to request that Gagne be considered a “special accomplishments player,” a status bestowed upon elite players that gives agents grounds to seek higher arbitration awards.

The Dodgers have three other arbitration-eligible players -- starting pitcher Odalis Perez, who is expected to receive a raise from the $3.4 million he made in 2003 to about $5 million; reliever Guillermo Mota, who is expected to jump from $675,000 to about $1.5 million, and utility player Jolbert Cabrera, who will probably go from $435,000 to about $1 million. The team was negotiating late into Monday evening in hopes of agreeing to terms with the three.

Beltre, also represented by Boras, made $3.7 million in 2003 and might have jumped to the $6-million range had he won an arbitration case, but victory was hardly assured considering his sporadic production in 2003.

Beltre, 24, ranked second on the team in home runs (23) and runs batted in (80), but he hit .240 and struggled so much during the first four months of the season (.224, nine homers, 41 RBIs through July) that there was speculation the Dodgers would not tender him a contract for 2004.

But Beltre, as he did in 2002, got hot in August and September, hitting .266 with 14 homers and 39 RBIs, 26 of them in August. Though he struggled offensively for much of the season, Beltre was solid -- and sometimes spectacular -- defensively.

“We came to a middle ground both sides could live with,” Evans said of the Beltre negotiations. “Kim [Ng, Dodger assistant general manager] was working with Scott for an extended period of time, and they got it done.”