The New CBA — Service Time Manipulation
The Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) between MLB and the Players Association (PA) expires on December 1st. The new CBA will be a hot topic this offseason. Negotiations could delay the 2022 season and potentially cause a lockout or strike. We will look at a number of changes you might see in the next CBA.
On April 17, 2015 the Chicago Cubs promoted one of the top prospects in baseball, Kris Bryant. What made the promotion interesting and controversial was that April 17th was the exact day that the Cubs would attain an extra year of control for the Superstar.
The Cubs maintained control of Bryant for nearly 7 full seasons. Had the Cubs promoted Bryant a day sooner, they would not have controlled him for the 2021 season, losing a year of control. This is what fans and front office personnel (if they could) might call a no-brainer. His agent, Scott Boras, and the Players Association immediately cried foul, filing a grievance against the Cubs for service time manipulation.
Rules are rules. Players bend them. Teams exploit them. The rule states that a player must accrue 172 days out of a 187 day season to earn a year of service. If a player spends 16 days in the minors, they do not earn that year of service. The Cubs followed the rule and made an easy decision. They can give up 16 days of production now, the difference between Bryant and a replacement player (Mike Olt in this case), for a full season of Bryant in the future. That sort of decision will happen until the rule is changed.
So how should the rule change? The issue lies in that ratio of 16 days now for 187 days later. They net gain 171 days, albeit at a much later date. If the team had to wait 90 days, they’d be giving up 90 days now, for 187 days later. Most teams will not make that trade. But let’s take it a step further and use 100 days.
To implement this, we simply have to change the service time requirement for the FIRST year of service. Rather than requiring 172 days, you earn your first year of service in the season that you accrue your 72nd day of service.
This will do a few things:
- A few part-time fringe players will get to a year of service quicker than they typically would. That won’t really change all that much as they’ll still be earning very close to the league minimum. They probably won’t make it through the arbitration process to benefit that much from the quicker service.
- Some true mid-season call-ups will get to free agency a year earlier while others will have their promotion delayed a few weeks to get the extra year.
- It will disincentive holding a player down at the start of the season for the purpose of gaining service.
You might argue that it just moves the date that teams will promote and they will still maintain 6.5 seasons of control. For the players that would typically get promoted at the beginning of the season, teams will have a different decision, and this rule may actually mean we see these players a half season earlier.
Prospects generally prove they are ready during the minor league season. The current rule incentivizes teams to wait to promote the player until the following season after those 16 games. Instead, we may see teams take their extra half season of control early and promote the player after the All-Star break of the PRIOR season. This allows the player to get acclimated to the Major Leagues early.
What GM wouldn’t prefer to get their superstar for an extra half season now, rather than in 6 years when they may not even be the GM? This rule change is easy. The PA will have their players get to free agency earlier and fans won’t have to wait for their superstars.
