Atlanta Braves and the new service time agreement for 2020

The Atlanta Braves could be watching the clock if this new 2020 labor adjustment agreement between MLB owners and players is exploited for service time reasons.

Today, there was peace in the business world of baseball.  Players and owners both agreed to terms on how to handle a shortened season.  The result could have some Atlanta Braves‘ being impacted… though we’re a long way from figuring that out completely.

Much of what follows can be found in this (paywalled) story on TheAthletic, but myriad industry sources are also reporting the same today.

What’s almost amazing in this agreement between players and owners is that players will all get credit for a full season of major league service time… even if there is ultimately no baseball season played at all.

Now you could look at that fact in purely clinical terms:  for example, Chris Sale of the Red Sox will be on the 60-day Injured List for the entire season thanks to Tommy John surgery.  He isn’t going to pitch a single inning, yet he will accrue a year of service time.  The same goes for the Mets’ Noah Syndergaard.

That’s been a normal practice for … well, for as long as service time has mattered in this free agency era.  So in essence, the owners have agreed that everyone will be treated in the same manner:  if there’s no baseball in 2020, then everyone will be advanced a year on their collective service clocks – essentially as if they had been injured for the duration.

That negotiation point was number one on the player’s association list:  they had to have the service time, even if a number of other issues were given away to the owners.

And give they did:

• All salaries will be pro-rated to the number of games played for the year.  So Cole Hamels and Marcel Ozuna, for example, will get 2/3rds of their $18 million contracted funds if we end up with a 2/3rds season (108 games).
• Apart from that, there is a $170 million payment plan established to provide what could be called ‘sustaining’ funds for the next two months… kind of like a ‘short-term disability’ plan.
  • This plan breaks players into 4 groups, with higher payments per day depending on your group.
  • Players can choose to opt-out of the plan if they feel charitable:  their monies are thrown back in the pot and distributed to others, thus increasing their share.
  • This fund serves as an advance on 2020 salaries, which gets players some financial coverage in the event of a long delay (hey – they aren’t all millionaires, here).
  • These monies also give the players some security in the event of a cancellation of the full season:  if that happens, no repayment of these ‘advances’ is required.

Service Time Implications

But this superficial/blanket set of bullet points doesn’t help us with some of the details.  There’s a big question about how to treat players like Austin Riley or Johan Camargo.  Both have 40-man roster protection, but there is a real question about which one (if it’s only one) makes the 25-man active roster and whether the other is shipped to the minors.

This sequence might provide some clarity:

One of the next details that will come into play next off-season…

HOWEVER, there is a service time implication that could impact players like Riley and Camargo.  Witness this answer to a question from Atlanta Braves fan Dayton:

There’s a typo in there, but the essence is this:  if the season ends up being 100 days long (I’m intentionally not saying 100 games), you get half a (normal) season of credit if you’re in the majors for half the season played.

So if Riley, for example, is on the MLB roster for 50 days and at Gwinnett for 50 days, he gets half a (normal) season of MLB service time… 172 days divided by 2, or 86 days.  So it sounds like it’s pro-rated out.

That calculation will be important in determining a lot of things down the road:  arbitration eligibility, length of team control for each player, Super-2 status, and more.

As such things could be manipulated starting now, both sides have agreed to freeze rosters until some mutually-agreeable point in the future.

But suppose that the season is canceled?  At some point, teams will have to make a declaration:  who “made” their phantom 2020 team for the purpose of assigning that service time.

Everybody on that active roster gets a free year of major league service time.  Everybody else gets either released (with no time added) or shipped to the faux-minors.

So in a cancellation scenario, perhaps Riley gets assigned to the minors and the Atlanta Braves gain back that year of team control for his services?  It’s not completely clear from the information released today but does appear to be possible.

There were several other aspects to this agreement – Jake covered some of that earlier today – but the most egregious thing involves something we’ll defer to another day:  the MLB Players Association basically made a huge concession on behalf of a group that they don’t even represent:  the next year (or two) of amateur draftees.

But since their interest was strongly tilted to the service time issue and the need for interim payments to their members… sure:  give away something that didn’t even belong to them.  Draft bonus payments and length of the draft.

More on that topic another day.