J.D. Davis released, loses most of his $6.9 million salary after Giants exercise a

Major League Baseball players scored what they considered a long-sought victory when the last Collective Bargaining Agreement was ratified prior to the 2022 season. For the first time, one-year contracts for arbitration-eligible players — encompassing most players with greater than 2 1/2 and fewer than six years of service time — would be fully guaranteed.

But there was a loophole. And it didn’t take long for a team to exploit it.

The Giants were that team. Third baseman J.D. Davis was the ensnared party.

In a dramatic reversal of fortune, the Giants placed Davis on unconditional release waivers on Monday, cutting ties with a player who had won a $6.9 million salary when he beat them in an arbitration hearing in February. Because the provision in the CBA specifically does not guarantee arbitration salaries arrived at through a hearing, the Giants owe Davis just 30 days of termination pay, which amounts to a little more than $1.1 million.

It’s an uncommon decision that will be viewed as ruthless and cold-blooded by many in the industry. Others will view it as a pragmatic decision that is well within the rights of teams under the CBA. What’s not in dispute is that Davis, who played in a team-high 144 games last season but became redundant after the signing of free-agent third baseman Matt Chapman, has been thrust into an insecure position two weeks before Opening Day: with no team and suddenly receiving only 16 percent of the salary that an independent panel had just determined he was worth.

Giants president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi, who appeared on a hastily arranged Zoom call with reporters on Monday, said the team attempted to trade Davis with no traction. The Giants placed Davis on outright waivers this past weekend in the hopes that another club would claim him and speed the process along.

“As soon as we got the word he went unclaimed on outright waivers, we decided to make this move,” Zaidi said. “It just boils down to role and other guys we had ahead of J.D. in terms of at-bats. If we had a 28- or 30-man roster, we’d keep everybody. But given the reality of our roster constraints, this was just the move we decided to make.

“Everything we’ve done in this case is well within our rights as a team,” Zaidi continued. “And that’s recognized. It’s very cut and dried in the CBA.”

J.D. Davis became redundant on the roster when the Giants signed Matt Chapman. (Ross D. Franklin / Associated Press)

At issue will be how actively the Giants exploited those rules, and how much of it might have been premeditated.

The Giants recently defaulted to what has become an industry-wide “file-and-trial” policy among teams in which all negotiations stop after the deadline for clubs and players to exchange salary figures to be presented at a hearing. The policy is meant to be a deterrent to negotiations reaching the hearing stage, Zaidi said. Davis said last month that he would have happily accepted the Giants’ filing figure of $6.55 million prior to the hearing. But the team was not willing to reopen negotiations after the exchange.

Zaidi said Monday that the Giants “negotiate all our arbitration cases in good faith” and that Davis could have accepted the club’s offer prior to the exchange of figures.

Davis’ agent, Matt Hannaford, disputed that characterization. Hannaford said the Giants made one offer to Davis that GM Pete Putila sent in a text message that arrived one hour before the filing deadline. The club’s offer was for “hundreds of thousands” less than what the team filed at, Hannaford said.

“In my 22 years in the business I’ve never seen a club in arbitration make their one and only offer less than an hour before the exchange deadline that ended up hundreds of thousands of dollars below their filing number,” Hannaford said. “The way the Giants negotiated gave J.D. no choice but to go to a hearing, which he did, and which we won.”

Industry sources indicated that it was unlikely that Davis, who is now an unrestricted free agent, would have grounds to file a grievance.

“It’s unfortunate the club has handled things the way they have, but I’m confident in the player J.D. is and the value he will bring to his next team,” Hannaford said. “I know he will end up in a better situation when all is said and done.”

Zaidi, asked to corroborate Hannaford’s account, said the Giants formally offered Davis “just slightly under $6.4 million, matching the raise of what we believed to be one of the most relevant comps in the case.” Zaidi said the club did not consider it a best-and-final offer but Davis’ representatives did not respond until 10 minutes before the deadline nor did they make what club officials considered a formal counter, saying only that the number “has to start with a 7.”

“They then filed at $6.9 (million), and several hours after the deadline, called looking to engage in a settlement,” Zaidi said. “We said that out of…