Thursday is the date for players and teams to exchange salaries for those eligible for arbitration, which serves as a soft deadline of sorts for deals to be struck. All four Dodgers eligible avoided an arbitration hearing by agreeing to one-year deals.
Banda has found stability the last two seasons in the Dodgers bullpen after playing for seven major league teams in his first seven years. At four years, 135 days of service time, Banda is going through arbitration for the second time. After earning $1 million in 2025, he’ll make $1,625,000 million in 2026, per Katie Woo at The Athletic.
In the 12 offseasons since Andrew Friedman was hired to run the front office, the Dodgers have signed 83 of 91 arbitration-eligible players (91.2 percent) by the exchange deadline. They’ve only had two salary arbitration hearings in the last 19 years — Joc Pederson and Pedro Báez, both in 2020.
With these agreements, the Dodgers now have 19 players under contract for 2026. With assumptions for minor league salaries, team benefits, and the pre-arbitration bonus pool, the team’s payroll for competitive balance tax purposes this year is estimated at roughly $323.3 million.