Daily Distractions: Ellis and Belisario headed for arbitration?

Happy salary figure exchange day. May the odds be ever in your favor.

The Dodgers’ two salary arbitration-eligible players, A.J. Ellis and Ronald Belisario, will present their contract proposals to the team today. Both might end up signing a new contract today. They might end up negotiating with the Dodgers for a couple weeks. Or, they might let an arbitrator decide how much they should earn next year — their proposed salary or the team’s. That rarely happens.

In fact, the Dodgers haven’t had an arbitration case since Joe Beimel on Feb. 9, 2007.

Last year, only Clayton Kershaw got close to going to arbitration before signing a two-year deal on Feb. 7.

Ellis made $490,000 in base salary last year and Belisario made $480,000, according to Cots. Roll out a starting catcher and a set-up man with comparable stats, at comparable points in their careers, with comparable injury histories (or the lack thereof, in the case of these guys) and you have the basis for a negotiating point. Sometimes that’s easy to get to, sometimes it isn’t, but it’s fair to expect these guys will be getting raises very soon.

For other arbitration resolutions around the league, MLBtraderumors.com has set up an updating “arbitration tracker” link here.

Or, just do what everyone else does and stay glued to Twitter. Today’s links …

• GM Ned Colletti shares his thoughts on Hanley Ramirez‘s participation in the World Baseball Classic.

• From the where-are-they-now file: Raul Mondesi is the mayor of the 13th-largest city in the Dominican Republic. Curt  FloodJoe Torre and Kim Ng were there yesterday. So was Pedro Martinez, scouts from all 30 teams and a bunch of Dominican prospects.

• An Angels minor-leaguer blogs about being “Catfished,” á la Manti Te’o. (His Heisman chances were not harmed.)

• Today would have been Curt Flood’s 75th birthday. Flood played a small but important role in the most important chapter in the history of sports business.

• Interesting anecdote from the Chicago Tribune (free or paid subscription required):

One low-level Cubs prospect deleted his Twitter account this week with no explanation. The same player was instructed by management earlier this winter to delete an inappropriate tweet. McLeod acknowledged the Cubs brass monitors what its players say on social media. “We do to a degree,” he said. “I have placed phone calls to players about certain things that they tweet.”

• For the first time ever, a president has released his inauguration ceremony playlist on Spotify. Here’s a decent song chosen by DJ Obama:

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About J.P. Hoornstra

J.P. Hoornstra covers the Dodgers, Angels and Major League Baseball for the Orange County Register, Los Angeles Daily News, Long Beach Press-Telegram, Torrance Daily Breeze, San Gabriel Valley Tribune, Pasadena Star-News, San Bernardino Sun, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, Whittier Daily News and Redlands Daily Facts. Before taking the beat in 2012, J.P. covered the NHL for four years. UCLA gave him a degree once upon a time; when he graduated on schedule, he missed getting Arnold Schwarzenegger's autograph on his diploma by five months.