By now you have probably started to come to terms with the following ideas:
- Starting pitcher Stephen Strasburg and reliever Drew Storen were wizard acquisitions by the Washington Nationals in the June 2009 draft.
- Fans are apt to see both pitchers at Nationals Park on some date in 2010.
- That date will not be Opening Day.
You may be wondering why these highly promising college-trained arms shouldn't be getting right to work on South Capital Street come April 5, especially since both pitched professionally in 2009 after they were signed and have looked good in 2010 Spring Training thus far.
The cold truth is that any major-league ballclub would like to control its players' contractual statuses as long as possible, however fair or unfair it might be to the players or however sound or unsound it might be as a business practice. But maintaining such control involves some tiresome concepts -- options, service time, arbitration and the 40-man roster -- that can be confusing for the fan to try to keep track of. Part of the confusion stems from the fact that some of the applicable provisions appear in the Major League Rules (the business rules, not the playing rules) and some in the Collective Bargaining Agreement.
Anyhow, let's take a few moments to look at each of the relevant concepts so we can gauge their effect on Strasburg and Storen.
The 40-Man (MLB) Roster
With regard to career mobility, this is the first major pinnacle a professional baseball player wants to reach. Until a player signs a major-league contract, he can find himself toiling in the minors for up to six years with no say on how much he gets paid or by whom.[1] This matters a lot, since players at the lowest levels of the minors have to get by on a couple thousand dollars a month or less, and for only half a year at that. (It does not, however, matter to Strasburg, who -- unlike Storen -- signed a major-league contract as a condition of agreeing to join the Nationals organization.)
When a player gets onto the 40-man major-league roster, life gets a little better in several ways. One is that he'll either get paid at the major-league level -- currently a minimum of $400,000 per season, prorated to the number of days he plays -- or at a similarly prorated minor-league rate of no less than $32,500 per season.[2] (Strasburg's contract calls for $2 million in 2010 and a $500,000 raise in each of the following two seasons.)
Another is that there's a limit to the number of years in which the player's club can send him back to the minors, either by assigning his contract outright to a farm club -- which they cannot do more than once during a player's career without the player's consent[3] -- or via a process called optional assignment.
Options
Once a player's on the 40-man roster, his club, in addition to that one-time prerogative to assign the player outright to the minors, can either keep him on the 25-man major league roster or optionally assign him to a team in their minor-league system. The "option" actually refers to the year in which the assignment is made: once a player has been "optioned" during a season, he can be shifted between the major-league and minor-league club any number of times during the season, but only one option is charged. (No option is charged if the player spends less than a total of 20 days on optional assignment to the minors during a season.[4])
Optional assignment ordinarily can take place in up to three seasons with no right of recourse by the player. A fourth optional assignment year is available, however, if the player has less than five years' professional experience.
After the final (either third or fourth) option year, unless the club's one-time right to assign the player's contract outright -- which, by the way, expires after the player has accrued three years of major-league service[5] -- remains to be exercised, then he can't be assigned to the minors without clearing waivers.[6] (Nationals Farm Authority has even more on options, including a list of all current Nationals' option statuses.)
Service Time
What's a "year of service"? It depends on whether we're talking about the player's eligibility for salary arbitration, or about the ability of a club to option a player to the minors.
For the purpose of determining when a player is eligible for salary arbitration, every day he is under contract from Opening Day to the end of the regular season counts toward his service time. In the major leagues, 172 days of service equals one year of service.[7]
This is different from the number of years of professional experience used to determine option status: in that context, any season in which the player occupies an active roster slot for at least 90 days at any professional level counts as a year of professional experience.[8]
Salary Arbitration and the "Super Two" Rule
Once a player has three years of major-league service under his belt, he gains a say in how much he'll be paid: either he and his club will come to some agreement, or each will file a salary figure to an arbitration panel that will choose one figure or the other.[9]
You can imagine that this is why clubs might prefer not to give their top prospects an Opening Day debut. If they could manage to have the player on the roster for only 171 days, that'd be one day less than a full year of service.
Such potential gaming of the system is foreseen by the CBA, which includes the following provision (aka the "Super Two" rule):
. . . [A] Player with at least two but less than three years of Major League service shall be eligible for salary arbitration if: (a) he has accumulated at least 86 days of service during the immediately preceding season; and (b) he ranks in the top seventeen percent (17%) (rounded to the nearest whole number) in total service in the class of Players who have at least two but less than three years of Major League service, however accumulated . . .[10]
Implications for 2010
So how does this all relate to Strasburg and Storen? The bottom line is that the Nats have three alternatives with respect to each player, listed below in increasing order of likelihood as estimated by this columnist.
- They can bring him up on Opening Day 2010 and resign themselves to having the arbitration clock start at the end of the 2012 season.
- They can wait till (approximately) after the All-Star break and be assured of not having to go to arbitration until the close of the 2013 season. (But if they do this with Strasburg, they'll have to start burning his options right away, since he already has a major-league contract whose outright assignment may not be a realistic possibility.)
- They can bring him up before the All-Star break, but at a time when they calculate that he won't fall into that top 17%.
What's your guess as to when we'll see Strasburg and Storen called up to the big club?
Sources
Note: This columnist has thus far been unable to locate an official copy of the Major League Rules either online or in hardcopy, but helpful citations and explanations are provided by Mike Andrews at soxprospects.com. The Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) is available as a PDF from the MLB Players Association.
Also, nothing in this article should be construed either as legal advice or as the final word. Comments pointing out errors and omissions will be gratefully received.
[1] Major League Rule 55.
[2] CBA Article VI(B).
[3] CBA Article XX(D).
[4] CBA Article XIX(E).
[5] Major League Rule 11 (options); Rule 10 (waivers).
[6] CBA Article XX(D)(1).
[7] CBA Article XXI(A)(1).
[8] Major League Rule 11.
[9] CBA Article VI(F)(5).
[10] CBA Article VI(F)(1).