Eric StephenTue, December 2, 2025 at 6:11 PM UTC·2 min readAmong the news items during Thanksgiving week was the allocation of the annual $50 million bonus pool for players not yet eligible for salary arbitration. Outfielder Andy Pages and pitcher Emmet Sheehan were the two Dodgers to receive bonuses under the system, which began in 2022 with the current collective bargaining agreement.
All 30 MLB teams put in $1,666,667 each to fund the pre-arbitration pool, which gives bonuses to players based on certain award voting and also the top 100 pre-arb players by a hybrid version of Wins Above Replacement, the formula for which has not been publicly revealed.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementPages earned $513,082 from the bonus pool, per Associated Press, and Sheehan got $248,666. Pittsburgh Pirates ace Paul Skenes was the top pre-arb bonus earner at $3,436,343, which included $2.5 million for winning the National League Cy Young Award.
The bonus pool was derived as a way for performing younger players to earn extra money in the years most of them are making near the major league minimum salary. Sheehan’s salary in 2025 was $780,000, for instance, and Pages was at $770,000. Foreign professionals are not eligible for the pool, which means no $1.5 million bonus for Yoshinobu Yamamoto for finishing third in NL Cy Young voting in his second MLB season, after signing a 12-year free agent contract with the Dodgers in December 2023.
Catcher Will Smith has earned the most by a Dodgers player in the four years of the pre-arbitration bonus pool, getting $973,374 in 2022, which included $500,000 for being named to the All-MLB second team that season.
In the four years of the bonus pool, 10 Dodgers have been paid from the pre-arbitration bonus pool, with nobody so far earning a bonus in more than one season.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisement2022: Smith ($973,374), Tony Gonsolin ($529,938), Evan Phillips ($359,470), Gavin Lux ($312,331), Trayce Thompson ($283,904)
2023: James Outman ($580,948), Bobby Miller ($406,035)
2024: Gavin Stone ($350,022)
2025: Pages ($513,082), Sheehan ($248,666)
