Dodgers sign Dustin May, avoid salary arbitration with 1-year deal

Friday’s deadline to tender contracts in Major League Baseball sometimes serves as a soft deadline for some players eligible for salary arbitration and others on the fringes of the roster. Dustin May qualifies as the former, and has already come to terms with the Dodgers on his contract for 2025.

Per the Associated Press, May and the Dodgers on Friday agreed to a $2.135 million contract for 2025 for the right-hander. Fabian Ardaya of The Athletic also reported the pact. That’s the same amount May made in 2024, also avoiding salary arbitration last January.

May missed the first half of this season while recovering from his July 2023 elbow surgery, but any plans for a potential comeback late in 2024 were thwarted by an esophageal tear that required surgery in July.

Getting the same salary, or close to it, in the arbitration years after missing an entire season is pretty much par for the course. It was the same last offseason for Walker Buehler, who avoided arbitration in January for an $8.025 million contract for 2024, matching his 2023 salary after missing all of the previous season.

May already has five years, 59 days of service time, but only 191⅔ major league innings under his belt, with a 3.10 career ERA. Thanks to elbow surgeries in both 2021 and 2023, he hasn’t topped 56 professional innings in a season dating back to 2020.

With May now signed, and with Connor Brogdon electing free agency after getting sent outright off the 40-man roster, the Dodgers still have seven players for salary arbitration this winter — Michael Kopech, Brusdar Graterol, Tony Gonsolin, Evan Phillips, Gavin Lux, Alex Vesia, and Anthony Banda.