The Pirates have won their arbitration hearing against left-hander Tony Watson, reports Jon Heyman of FanRag Sports (via Twitter). As can be seen in MLBTR’s 2017 Arbitration Tracker, Watson had filed for a $6MM salary, while the Pirates filed at $5.6MM. He’ll receive the lesser of those two sums, which comes in about $300K shy of the projection from MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz.
The 31-year-old Watson stepped into the closer’s gig in Pittsburgh following the trade of Mark Melancon last summer and is the early favorite to reprise that role in 2017.