Tidal Sports Group · Private

Louis Varland

1Today

2Career projection

3Player intelligence

4Arbitration

5Free agency

6Market analysis

7Extension consideration

8Trade analysis

9Financial tool

10Marketing

11Representation

12Tidal

The locked sections are built and ready. Ask and we will open them.

1TODAY

Where the road starts.

One of the best relief seasons in baseball, at close to the league minimum — with every dollar you'll earn through 2030 still unwritten.

1.34Two relievers in baseball have kept runs off the board at a better rate. Nobody has done it over more innings.

2.4More value than every reliever in the game but one — and more than most teams got from a starter.

60.2No pitcher in baseball with twenty saves has thrown more. You are not a matchup arm. You are the whole back end.

1.88Strip out defense and sequencing and the season still holds. This is not a hot streak wearing a full year's clothes.

98.8Top-ten velocity among every reliever in baseball, held from April into August without a single dip.

$821.5KNear the league minimum. The distance between what you produce and what you are paid is the whole reason for this conversation.

Super-Two. Four trips through arbitration, not three.

Free agency after 2030. Everything between here and there gets decided in four winters — and the first one starts in November.

2PROJECTION

Value peaks first. Money comes later.

Your two best seasons are 2027 and 2028 — the two you will be paid least for.

You produce the value now and collect for it later, and the probability you are still there to collect falls the whole way. That gap is the entire argument for getting the arbitration years right.

3THE TOTAL

Where the money actually comes from.

Four arbitration years build the base. Two free-agent seasons outearn all of them.

$37.0M through arbitration, then $42.6M in two years. Everything we do between now and 2030 is about arriving at that contract healthy, in the ninth, and priced off four strong numbers.

4TRAJECTORY

You are not the same pitcher you were two years ago.

Nearly two miles per hour of fastball and sixteen points of ground-ball rate in two years.

Velocity and contact quality are the two things that do not fluctuate randomly. Both moved in the same direction, and they moved because of work — not because a season broke your way.

5EARNED

The underlying numbers say the same thing.

Your batted-ball luck this year is exactly league average.

A .285 BABIP against a league median of .276, and a strand rate of 74.3% against a league median of 74.3%. The 1.26 ERA is not a mirage — expected ERA and FIP both put you in the 97th percentile or better. In 2024 the same underlying numbers said you were fine while your ERA read 9.87. The peripherals were right then, and they are right now.

6OUR EDGE

We built these systems inside front offices.

Every number in this section came from the same public sources a club uses. The difference is knowing which ones matter, and what a front office does with them.

Brandon · the pitching side in HoustonSeven seasons with the Astros through their run as perennial World Series contenders, where he was the front office's pitching expert. He worked directly with Gerrit Cole, Justin Verlander and Charlie Morton, among many others, integrating data into pitch development, usage patterns and workload planning.

Zack · fifteen years running R&D in ColoradoBuilt and led the Rockies' research and development group for fifteen years, on a fraction of the budget and organizational backing the big-market clubs had. Doing more with less is a skill you only learn one way.

We speak the club's languageWhen Toronto explains a decision in their terms, we understand exactly what they are saying and where the argument is soft. That matters in an arbitration room, in an extension discussion, and in a conversation about your role.

We find what they missedA club carries more than two hundred players to evaluate every day. Things get overlooked — a pitch that should be used more, a platoon split nobody has flagged, a usage pattern working against you. We look at one player at a time.

An organization has two hundred players to study. We have you.

Not a bigger analytics department than the Blue Jays. A more focused one — pointed entirely at your case, your market, and the specific decisions in front of you.

7MARKET

What a season like this has earned.

First-time closer	Platform SV	Career SV	Platform ERA	First arb
Corey Knebel 2017	39	41	1.78	$3.65M
Gregory Soto 2022	30	53	3.28	$3.93M
David Bednar 2023	39	61	2.00	$4.51M
Jordan Romano 2022	36	64	2.11	$4.54M
Alex Colomé 2017	47	84	3.24	$5.30M
You 2027	~33	~33	~1.30	??

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Settled, one-year deals · 2016–2025, excluding 2020 · median $4.22M · $4.51M across 2021–25

$3.9MNo first-time-eligible reliever with a 30-save platform year has settled for less.

$4.5MPair 30 saves with a sub-2.50 ERA and the floor itself climbs to this. Your ERA is less than half that.

Only 10Ten first-time-eligible arms have reached twenty saves since 2021. That is the entire comparison pool.

Your platform season beats every name on this list. Your career saves trail all of them.

That tension is the case. Everything between now and January decides which half of it the panel hears first.

8CASE

Both sides of the table.

What the club will argue

The median first-timer arrives with 53 career saves. You will have about 33.
A mixed career — some starting, some middle relief, one year closing.
Every closer paid above $3.9M arrived with a multi-year track record.
One season should not reset an entire earnings curve.

What we will argue

The role you finish in is the role you comp to. That is the foundation.
An All-Star, in the platform year that sets the number.
~33 saves — third-most in the first-time class since 2021.
The most valuable inning in the bullpen, held all year, with the best run prevention in the group.

You sit on the right side of nearly all of it.

A true closer who finished as the closer, with saves as the headline — if the case is built by people who know the room.

9MISTAKES

Relievers lose hearings the same five ways.

Reliever cases fail on construction, not talent. From years on the club side, we know exactly what the mistakes are — because we used to win because of them.

01 · The single-anchor compBuild the case on one comparable and the league office spends months preparing to turn it back against you.

02 · Leverage instead of savesGame Leverage Index looks like a hero stat. In this market it runs inverse to salary while saves run with it.

03 · Losing the role-finish fight"Who finished as the closer?" beats "who was most valuable?" every time.

04 · Building on a hot stretchA big two months, stripped of context the moment the club shows the full season and the full save log.

05 · Starting too lateThe league builds a custom historical-query slide for every case. An agent playing catch-up the week of filing has no answer ready.

Where you standYou sit on the right side of four of the five. The one that is live is the anchor comp — and that is the one we have already started building.

These are not theories. We wrote the attack.

The traps that sink most reliever cases do not apply to you, provided the case is built by people who have seen the room from the other chair.

10COMPOUNDING

The first number is a multiplier.

A $1.5M head start in year one compounds into $11.5M by 2030.

The higher number does not just stay higher — it earns bigger raises, because a player at that salary gets compared to richer salary neighbors every year after. The gap widens on its own. This is an argument about who is in the room the first time a number gets set, because there is no going back for it.

11SYSTEM

You're not facing a club. You're facing a system.

MLB centralized arbitration into a coordinated operation. The player side never did.

Every player, one officeThe Labor Relations Department sets a figure for every arb-eligible player in the league.

All thirty clubsIt coordinates across all of them, and pays the hearing attorneys at no cost to the club.

The information edgeIt holds the data advantage and turns your own history against you.

54%Reliever hearings won by the club

63%First-time reliever hearings

0Hearings we have lost

Have the people who helped build the machine working for you.

Zack personally wrote and argued a reliever's hearing — and won it — from inside a front office. He knows how the figures get set and where there is flexibility.

12CALENDAR

How the winter actually unfolds.

Preparation and real conversations about your value should already be underway. Here is what the months ahead look like.

NovemberTender deadlineClubs set who they keep.

DecemberClub conversationsEarly talks begin — and the CBA expires on the 1st.

Mid-JanuaryExchange weekFigures filed. Thursday, 1pm ET is the last window to settle first.

FebruaryHearingsCases are heard as spring training opens.

File and trial: once numbers are exchanged, most clubs will not settle a one-year deal at all.

From there it is a hearing, or a multi-year offer made from a position of leverage — which is always priced in the club's favor. Everything that decides your number happens before that Thursday.

13FREE AGENCY

What an elite closer actually gets paid.

Every reliever free-agent contract signed from 2011 through 2026 — 824 of them. These are the largest.

Reliever	Signed	Age	Years	Guarantee	AAV
Edwin Díaz NYM	2023	28	5	$102.0M	$20.4M
Josh Hader HOU	2024	29	5	$95.0M	$19.0M
Aroldis Chapman NYY	2017	28	5	$86.0M	$17.2M
Tanner Scott LAD	2025	30	4	$72.0M	$18.0M
Edwin Díaz LAD	2026	31	3	$69.0M	$23.0M
Wade Davis COL	2018	32	3	$52.0M	$17.3M

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Source: 1,000 reliever free-agent contracts on file. The 824 signed from 2011 onward are used here; earlier deals predate the current market.

10Deals of $40M or moreOut of 308 signed since 2021. That is the whole club.

28–31Age of nearly every oneThe biggest guarantees go to closers who reach the market young.

$23.0MHighest AAV ever paidDíaz, again, in 2026 — the ceiling is still moving.

This is the tier we are aiming you at. It is very small.

Ten contracts in six years. Every one belonged to a pitcher who was unambiguously his team's closer when he reached the market.

14THE MARKET

You arrive at thirty-three.

The median reliever your age signs for $6.5M over two years.

The best of them signed for $52M. That distance — roughly eight times — is not about age. It is about whether you are still the closer when you get there.

15POSITION

And if you are not the closer?

There is still a real market below the top — good relievers do sign multi-year deals. But the drop from the closer tier is steep, and it happens in one step rather than gradually.

$6.5MMedian at 32–33Over two years. That is the middle outcome for a reliever your age who is not closing.

$10–20MThe tier just belowSixty-two deals since 2021, median two years. A strong setup man can land here — it is roughly a fifth of the market.

$50M+What the ninth is worthThe gap between that tier and the closer tier is not a raise. It is a different category of contract.

Losing the role does not cost you a raise. It costs you a tier.

You would still get paid. You would not get the contract we are building toward — and the distance between those two outcomes is what an extension is designed to price.

16MARKET ANALYSIS

The reliever market has not gotten richer.

Median AAV in 2011: $4.4M. In 2026: $5.0M.

Roughly flat in raw dollars, which means it has gone backwards against inflation. Deals of $20M or more actually run slightly fewer per year than they did a decade ago. Whatever has happened to baseball revenue, almost none of it reached the middle of this market.

17THE TIERS

It did not inflate. It stratified.

Three percent of relievers get the money. Forty-one percent get one year at a time.

Clubs stopped paying for relief pitching in general and started paying enormous sums for a very small number of arms they consider certain. There is no comfortable middle any more — and that is the entire reason role matters more than performance.

18ROLE

Role is the only thing that moves you between tiers.

Two relievers with identical numbers land in completely different markets if one finished the season closing and the other did not. The data does not reward quality. It rewards the ninth inning.

$40M+Requires the closer labelEvery one of the ten largest deals since 2021 went to a pitcher who was his club's closer at the moment he hit the market.

4 yearsWhat the elite tier buysMedian guarantee length at the top. Everywhere below it, the median is one or two.

FlatThe middle of the marketFifteen years of essentially no growth. Being good is not a financial strategy in this market.

2031When you arriveUnder whatever agreement replaces this one. The tiering has held through two CBAs already.

Everything we do between now and 2030 is about which tier you arrive in.

Arbitration sets the base. The role protects the ceiling. And an extension is the one instrument that can take the tier risk off the table before the market decides for you.

19THE ROLE

Very few closers hold the job all the way through.

Everything to this point — what arbitration pays, what free agency pays, and how the reliever market has moved — is what makes this next conversation possible. Only with those three pieces in hand can you weigh an extension honestly. It starts with one question: how long does a closer actually stay a closer?

100%Arb 1 · 2027The job is yours today.

48%Arb 2 · 2028Still closing one year on.

34%Arb 3 · 2029Still closing two years on.

~16%Arb 4 · 2030Projected at the same rate.

One in six is still closing by the last arbitration year.

The drop-off is identical every step — 47% hold the ninth from arb one to arb two, and 47% again from arb two to arb three. Elite run prevention is what separates the ones who last, and that is exactly your profile.

20PROFILE

The ones who last are the ones who prevent runs.

Saves get you the job. Run prevention is what keeps it when the bullpen turns over — and it is the single clearest thing your 2026 season says about you.

1.34ERA · #3 in MLBSecond-lowest of any reliever reaching first-time arbitration in the last decade.

1.88FIP · #4 in MLBStrip out defense and sequencing and it holds. This is not a season built on luck.

2.21xERA · #3 among closersThe expected-run models agree with the actual results.

54.9%Ground-ball rateSecond among every pitcher with twenty saves. Contact on the ground is the most repeatable skill a closer has.

0.30Home runs per nineThe one number that ends closers' careers, and yours is near the bottom of the league.

98.8Average fastballTop-ten velocity, held from April into August without a dip.

One in six closers is still closing at the last arbitration year. Everything about your profile says you are that one.

Which is exactly why the four-year plan is worth building properly, and why guaranteed money is a conversation worth having from strength rather than after something goes wrong.

21HORIZON

Arbitration pays for saves. Free agency pays for you.

Through 2030 you are paid on role and counting stats, not on value. These four years are a discount window for the club no matter how well we do.

2031Your first open marketThe first time you are paid what thirty clubs say you are worth, rather than what a formula decides.

33Age when you get thereOld enough that the deal will be shorter than you want. Which is why the four years in front of it have to be maximized.

4 wintersBetween here and thereEach one sets the base for the next. No year in this stretch fails to follow you forward.

1Chance to get it rightYou do not get a second run at arbitration, and you arrive at free agency once.

The job isn't one winter. It's arriving at 2031 healthy, in the ninth, with four clean years behind you.

Usage, role protection, pitch mix, health — those are representation decisions too, and over a career they are worth more than any single hearing.

22LABOR

The labor deal expires mid-negotiation.

The CBA runs out December 1, 2026 — after tender day, before figures are exchanged. Your first arbitration sits on both sides of that line.

No contactCoaches, trainers, front office — the line goes quiet.

No negotiatingTalks stop where they stand until a new deal is signed.

No facilitiesClub facilities close. Your offseason becomes your problem.

Whatever groundwork exists on December 1 is the groundwork you keep.

Nobody knows how long a stoppage lasts. What we do know is that the work setting your number has to happen before the freeze, because once it starts the table is closed to everyone.

23THE WINDOW

Better to play by rules you know than rules you don't.

The owners have put a salary cap and floor on the table with the players' association. Nobody knows what the next agreement looks like. We do know what this one pays.

Under a ceiling, clubs spend in orderBats first. Then starting pitching. Then the bullpen. Put every dollar under a cap and relievers are the group most likely to get squeezed — and you are a reliever whose earnings curve has not been locked in yet.

Today's rules have no capA multi-year deal signed before December 1 is priced by today's market, not by whatever the negotiation produces. That is not a prediction about who wins the labor fight. It is simply the difference between a known system and an unknown one.

There is a real reason to explore an extension now rather than after.

We are not telling you to sign something. We are telling you the window to have the conversation under rules we can price closes on December 1, and that nobody gets it back.

24EXTENSION

There is a market. It just moves early.

Every extension signed by a reliever at your service window — one to four years of service — since the practice began. Thirty-four deals, $320M guaranteed.

Reliever	Service	Guar yrs	Options	Guarantee
Craig Kimbrel 2014	3.066	4	1	$42.0M
Raisel Iglesias 2018	3.154	3	0	$24.1M
Felipe Vázquez 2018	2.162	4	2	$22.0M
Emmanuel Clase 2022	1.059	5	2	$20.0M
Justin Martinez 2025	1.024	5	3	$18.0M
Pete Fairbanks 2023	3.057	3	1	$12.0M

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Relievers and hybrids, 1.000–3.999 service at signing · Pitcher Extension Tracker, updated 1/15/26

14 dealsAt $10M or moreMedian 4 guaranteed years and $17.0M. That is the tier a closer with your platform year belongs in.

$320MGuaranteed across the groupSixteen of the thirty-four were signed since 2020 — median $8.4M over four years. The market is active, not theoretical.

Every one of these was signed before the player had leverage — which is the only time clubs offer them.

Guarantee versus upside is a real decision and we will lay both out honestly. But it is a decision you only get to make if the conversation is already underway. We should be having it now, not reacting to an offer in January.

25TRADE VOLUME

Relievers are the currency of the deadline.

Every trade in baseball from September 2020 through August 2026 — 2,314 players moved. Relievers were 672 of them, nearly a third of everyone traded.

Most are pre-arbitration churn. But 137 were in an arbitration year.

Deadline volume keeps climbing — 42 relievers in 2021, 56 this year — and 42% of all reliever trades land in that three-week window. When a club decides to sell, the bullpen is the first place it looks.

26NOT PROTECTED

Being the closer is not protection.

Twenty-four closers were traded. Fourteen were in their arbitration years.

Closer	Traded	Service	Saves	ERA	To
Josh Hader	Aug 2022	4.115	36	5.22	Padres
Paul Sewald	Jul 2023	4.072	34	3.12	Diamondbacks
Jhoan Duran	Jul 2025	3.000	32	2.06	Phillies
Taylor Rogers	Apr & Aug 2022	5.145	31	4.76	Padres, then Brewers
Gregory Soto	Jan 2023	3.102	30	3.28	Phillies
David Bednar	Jul 2025	4.076	27	2.30	Yankees

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Closers traded 2020–2026, matched to their season stat line. Service time as of the trade date.

14 of 24Traded closers were in arb yearsArbitration is when a closer becomes both expensive and valuable — the moment clubs move him.

3.24Median ERA of traded closersTwenty-two saves at the median. These are not salary dumps.

2.06Duran's ERA when Minnesota moved himThirty-two saves, exactly three years of service. Your profile, two years from now.

A closer pitching well on a non-contender is the most tradeable asset in baseball.

Taylor Rogers was traded twice in the same season. If Toronto is out of the race in 2029 or 2030 and you are pitching like this on an arbitration salary, you are the call other clubs make. An extension is the one instrument that changes it.

27FINANCIAL

One place where all of it lives.

Every number in this deck sits in a model we build with you at the start and keep current for as long as we work together. Not a report once a year — something you open whenever a decision comes up.

Live earnings modelSalary, bonuses, endorsement income and what you actually keep, updated as each number is set rather than annually. When your first arbitration figure lands, every year after it re-prices that night.

Scenario planningExtension versus year to year. Signing now versus after the labor deal. We run the decision before you have to make it, with the same comps and the same assumptions we would take into the room.

Tax and residencyCanada and the United States, state by state, jock tax by city. Two contracts with the same headline number can differ by millions in what reaches you. We model the take-home, not the announcement.

Planning past the gameWhat the money becomes — savings targets, insurance, real estate, whatever matters to you and Maddie. Built on your timeline, revisited every offseason.

We would build this in our first month together and keep it current for the rest of your career.

Most agencies talk about money once a year, when there is a number to negotiate. We would rather you always know exactly where you stand, so that when a decision arrives — an extension offer, a trade, a market that moves — you are looking at real figures instead of hearing an opinion.

28MARKETING

A closer in Toronto has real off-field value.

One club, one country, and the most visible inning in the game. Toronto is the largest single-team market in baseball, and the ninth inning is where the cameras already are.

Third-party opportunitiesAppearance fees, endorsements and event work, negotiated by us and paid directly to you. Money that sits entirely outside your salary.

Deals we build ourselvesConcepts we structure and run, shaped around the closer role and an All-Star season. You approve what carries your name and how often you show up.

Brands that fit a player like you in this market.

TD Bank · Canada Goose · Rogers · Pizza Pizza · BioSteel — illustrative examples of the category of partner available to a Toronto closer, not deals in hand. Nothing here is promised. It is the shape of the market we would go build in.

29PUBLIC APPEAL

Public appeal is written into the CBA.

The Basic Agreement lists what an arbitration panel may weigh. Alongside performance and leadership, it names public appeal outright. Off-field work is not separate from your case. It is admissible inside it.

Paid once, counted twiceEvery appearance is income now and a documented line in the file later. The same hour of work shows up in two places.

Community and serviceFoundation work, hospital and youth programs, causes that matter to you and Maddie. It builds standing in the city, and it is exactly the kind of contribution the criteria contemplate.

Build the profile on purpose, and it pays you twice.

Most players treat marketing and arbitration as separate conversations. They are not. We would run them as one plan, and we would start it this offseason rather than after the number is set.

30RECORD

This will be your first arbitration. It would be his, too.

Your current representation runs a practice focused on minor league players, pre-arb players and international signings.

Public record	Tidal Sports Group	Nello Gamberdino
Arbitration salaries negotiated	127	0
Arbitration dollars negotiated	$465.8M	$0
Cases written and argued	3	0
Wins in reliever cases	1	0

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Based on publicly available contract and arbitration records, reviewed through August 2026.

Your first arbitration should not also be someone else's first.

This is the most complex and most consequential part of the game, and it is the one part of it he has never done.

31HEARINGS

Even the biggest shops struggle here.

Reliever cases are among the hardest in the sport to win. This is the record of the agencies you would expect to do it best.

Agency	Overall record	Reliever cases
CAA	2–10	0–2
Excel Sports Management	4–9	0–2
Octagon	1–5	0–1
Tidal Sports Group	3–0	1–0

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Tidal figures reflect cases written and argued on the club side by a Tidal partner.

An elite platform season paired with one year as a closer is a complicated case.

There will be obstacles reaching a settlement and more still if it goes to a hearing. Experience is the entire margin, and this is not the file to learn on.

32THE CHOICE

For most of your career, you've had to choose.

Players have traditionally had two imperfect options. We built the agency we wished existed.

Big agenciesWhat you get: resources, reach and infrastructure.

What you give up: senior attention, direct access, and the preparation that only comes from a short client list.

Small agenciesWhat you get: attention, accessibility and a real relationship.

What you give up: the experience, market intelligence and leverage that move the biggest numbers.

The expertise of a major agency. The attention of a boutique. The preparation of a front office.

No amateur clients, no minor-league pipeline, and a deliberately small roster — built for the years that matter most.

33THE PEOPLE

You pitch. We handle the rest.

Brodie Scoffield · FounderTwenty-plus years representing Major League players, with multiple nine-figure deals done. He has sat on your side of the table for more than two decades.

Zack Rosenthal & Brandon Taubman · PartnersTwo former Major League assistant GMs. Zack spent 20 seasons with the Rockies, the last 11 as Assistant GM. Brandon spent seven with the Astros, the last two as Assistant GM.

Full conciergeTravel, cars and car services, private aviation when it is needed, housing and family logistics through a trade or a move. Joey ran the day-to-day for an All-Star and does the same here.

One job, off the fieldMake sure the only thing you think about is the ninth inning. You have all five of us on call — never one file among hundreds.

Both sides of the table, and nobody to hand you off to.

The people who build your case are the people who argue it, and the people who answer the phone when your family needs something in February.

34TIDAL

We've built 127 of these.

Every figure below was negotiated personally by a Tidal partner — each of whom will work directly on your behalf.

218Across arbitration, extensions and free agency — every one negotiated personally by a partner who will work on your file.

$2.3BGuaranteed dollars moved on both sides of the table. We have sat in the club chair and the player chair, and we know what each one is thinking.

50+Front-office and agency time combined, including two former Major League assistant general managers.

127$465.8M in single-year salaries. Salary arbitration is not a service line for us — it is the thing we are built around.

3–0Cases written, presented and won. Most agencies outsource this work to attorneys who have never sat club-side. We do not.

5A deliberately small roster means you are never one file among hundreds. You get every one of us, directly, at every stage.

Don't take our word for it — ask around.

Kevin Gausman. Drew Butera. Jeff Hoffman. They all know exactly how we work. There's a lot more to show you — just say the word.