Tampa Bay Rays' Choi JI-man seeks arbitration over pay

Choi Ji-man of the Tampa Bay Rays in the Major League Baseball uploaded a short video clip on his Tweet account on Saturday. In the video, Choi shakes his head and protrudes his mouth as if he is disgruntled with something. He also put an emoji of a long nose like Pinocchio’s, which extends whenever telling a lie. According to Emojipedia, an emoji search site, the long nose emoji represents a lying face, lies, liar, or various forms of deceitful feelings.

Analysts say Choi apparently made the posting to reveal his regret and discontent. As he and Tampa Bay failed to reach an agreement on his pay by the Saturday deadline, Choi applied for arbitration over his annual pay. The two sides failed to strike a deal as Choi demanded 2.45 million US dollars, while his team offered to pay only 1.85 million dollars. In the previous season, Choi had a batting average of 0.230, three homers, and 16 RBIs, earning 850,000 dollars in salary last year. The South Korean first baseman revealed weakness when facing off left-handed pitchers, and suffered a hamstring injury around the season’s closing, but he earned fame with his so-called ‘split defense’ during the post season when his team advanced to the World Series. The Tampa Bay Times said that Choi Ji-man revealed his emotion through tweets.

Having started arbitration for his salary, Choi will continue negotiations through an arbitration committee meeting, scheduled for next month. If the two sides reach an agreement before the meeting, it will not take place. Apart from Choi, Shohei Ohtani at the Los Angeles Angles, and Walk Buehler of the Los Angeles Dodgers also applied for salary arbitration.


Hong-Gu Kang windup@donga.com