Victorino seeks $5.8 million from Phils

By Fred Guzman

MauiNow.com

It’s an admittedly clumsy procedure giving baseball players not eligible for free agency a chance to enhance their incomes while enabling the clubs to sign younger players for relatively affordable salaries.

It’s called arbitration and Maui’s Shane Victorino, the starting centerfielder of the Philadelphia Phillies, is in the midst of that process.

Here’s how it works: Players need six full years of service to become outright free agents; those with at least three years but less than six are eligible for arbitration.

The club makes an offer. The player submits his number. And the arbitrator must choose between one of those two figures.

Increasingly, the two sides end up negotiating a mutually satisfactory one-year deal to avoid acrimony on either side.

In Victorino’s case, the Phillies are offering $4.75 million while Shane is seeking $5.8 million.

Victorino has some solid stats to back his case. He led the two-time National League champs in batting last season with a .292 average and ranked eighth in the NL in hits with 181. He led the majors with 15 triples and ranked in the top ten in both doubles and stolen bases.

Victorino also started in last summer’s All-Star Game and made his second appearance in the World Series in as many years.

The question is whether Shane and the Phils can reach agreement on a deal or take their chances on the ruling of an arbitrator. My guess is that the two sides settle somewhere in between.

VOLLEY: Overcoming a slow start, the ninth-ranked University of Hawaii men’s volleyball team ended a 12-game road losing streak last night with a four-set victory over University of the Pacific.

Freshman Jonas Umlauft had 21 kills and Joshua Walker added 17 as UH beat the Tigers to 27-30, 33-31, 30-25, 30-22. The two teams will stage an MPSF rematch tonight at Stockton. Hawaii is 3-3 overall and 1-2 in the conference, while Pacific has marks of 4-3 and 0-3.

PREPS: In soccer, the Baldwin girls clinched the D-I title with a rout of St. Anthony and the Bears’ boys opened up a five-point lead over idle King Kekaulike by beating the Trojans 4-1 behind a hat trick by Mattias Thompson. Kekaulike can still take the title by winning out its remaining two games against the Lunas today and D-II champ Seabury Hall in their regular-season finale. In other action, the Maui High girls defeated Seabury Hall 2-0. … In basketball, Malia Chang scored 17 and Jessica Malknecht has 14 for the Baldwin girls in a 57-48 win over Kekaulike. Tim Pang’s 14 led the Bears’ boys to a 53-22 romp past Na Alii.