The Prospect Callup Calendar

[amjgt]

The Tristan Gray callup and a brief discussion in yesterday's game thread got me thinking about prospect callups again, the motivation behind them, and how the CBA expiring might be adding a wrinkle or two that we don't normally worry about.

Normally this time of year we aren't talking too much about service time suppression. By the end of July, those dates have long since passed. In a baseball season there are 3 prospect callup dates that matter (or actually "windows of dates" because the actual dates always vary a little bit):

Mid April - Another year of service time. Teams get 6 years of service time from players before they become free agents, but if teams call up a player and start the service time clock after mid-April, then those new players don't accumulate enough service time that year to have it count as a full year, so you end up getting 6+ years. In some cases, almost 7 full years.

Mid June - The Super 2 date. It feels like we talk about this one less than we used to. If a player is called up after mid April, but before the Super 2 cutoff, then they get pushed into the arbitration process a year earlier than their service time clock might indicate. Normally teams get a player for 3 years at a pre-arbitration salaries (less than $1M) and then 3 years of arbitration begins and their salaries escalate. If a player is "Super 2" (Like Luke Keaschall is on track to be) then what would normally be their last year of pre-arbitration salaries converts to an arbitration year. In that case, that player has 4 years of arbitration rather than the usual 3. This date doesn't affect years of team control, but rather how much a player will earn over those years.

Mid August - Maintaining rookie eligibility. I won't get into all of the thresholds of plate appearances or inning pitched, but usually if a player is called up after mid-August, there's a good chance they will maintain their true rookie status for the following year. This matters for offseason prospect lists. Mick Abel barely crossed one of the rookie thresholds last year. Most people use rookie eligibility to decide whether they can appear on a prospect list. If Abel was still rookie eligible last offseason he probably would've appeared on some top 100 lists and been in the 4-5 range on the Twins top 20 list. Does this REALLY matter? No. But how this has historically mattered more is for Rookie of the Year voting the following year. And these days with the Prospect Promotion Incentive (PPI) tied to RotY voting, there's maybe a little more motivation for a team to maintain rookie status for their players than there always has been.

Those are the normal dates and motivations, but does the impending CBA expiration, potential lockout, and lost 2027 games provide a couple more things to think about?

One of those considerations has been talked about a decent amount. If a player is called up, then they must be on the 40 man roster and if there is a lockout, players that are on the 40 man roster cannot participate in team activities. But if a prospect is NOT on the 40 man roster then they are still eligible to participate in minor league activities. Emmanuel Rodriguez is on the 40-man roster already and if there's a lockout, he'll be part of that lockout. But Kaelen Culpepper and Walker Jenkins are not yet on the 40 man roster. If they are not called up this season, they will remain off the 40-man roster over the offseason and thus will be eligible for minor league activity. I don't personally believe that's a good reason to keep them at AAA the next couple months, but it's certainly something the Twins are discussing. 

The second thing to think about is more speculative. One of the likely negotiating items for the new CBA is team control of a rookie player. Currently, as was laid out above, that's 6 years of service time. But in practice, it ends up being closer to 7 years. Almost certainly the players will be looking to shrink that. The sooner they hit free agency the better. Let's say the players are successful. What happens to players already in the "pre-arbitration" process? They've started their service time clocks. Do they get to switch to the new rules? Or because they've started the clock, are they forced to live by the rules that were in place when they got called up? Not sure. And who might get grandfathered in? It seems like there are 4 possibilities:

1. No grandfathering in. Pretty straightforward. Old rules don't apply any more. Everyone lives under the new rules
2. Players on 40 man rosters get grandfathered in, regardless of whether their service time clocks have started.
3. Players who have started their service time clocks at all (even 1 day) are grandfathered in.
4. Players who are not longer rookie eligible get grandfathered in. 

I have no idea if this is a consideration, but it seems like it might be. Teams obviously have more knowledge about what's being talked about, but given how early we are in the negotiations, they might need to do some speculating here as well. Normally, all things being equal, you're rather a prospect maintain rookie eligibility than not, but might there be different motivations from teams this August and September related to keeping their young players under control as long as possible. 

 

Sorry... that went way longer than I intended when I clicked "Create New Topic." If I messed anything up, please let me know. 

[Mike Sixel]

Of course it's a consideration. But then be honest with yourself, Twins, that winning this year or next isn't a priority and act that way.