Dellin Betances, Yankees will head to arbitration

With Dellin Betances and the Yankees unable to find common ground on a new contract for 2017, the two sides will head to an arbitration hearing in February, GM Brian Cashman confirmed Thursday at Yankee Stadium. The Yankees offered $3M while Betances filed at $5M. Although both player and team have until next month to close the $2M gap, preliminary talks with Betances' representatives have made no progress. "We're not going to reach a resolution with Dellin," Cashman said. "The conversations we had with the representatives [for Dellin] were 'if we file, we trial.' Based on all our discussions, it was clear that the different perspectives were such a wide bridge, so we'll go out and just basically have a polite discussion about market value and history of where the market place sits versus an attempt for a new market creation." Whatever the arbitrator decides, Betances will earn a substantial raise from last year when he made $507,500. The question will be whether or not he'll make closer money or setup money. Betances notched 12 saves over the final two months of last season following the trade of Aroldis Chapman. "I just know we filed what we felt was appropriate, they filed what they felt was appropriate and somebody else will make that determination. Either way we have a good pitcher," Cashman said. Betances, who turns 29 in March, went 3-6 with a 3.08 ERA and 126 strikeouts in 73 innings last season. Since becoming a full-time reliever in 2014, he's gone 14-10 with a 1.93 ERA and 392 strikeouts in 247 innings over 217 games. Over that span, he's made the American League All-Star team each year.