The end of service time manipulation in MLB?

Bryant, who just played April 17 against his former team to coincide with the seventh anniversary of his major league debut with the Chicago Cubs, has been the poster boy for service time manipulation, a phenomenon that has long kept top prospects in the minors rather than allowing them to start the season with their big league teams.

During recent Collective Bargaining Agreement negotiations between players and team owners, the union held up Bryant’s case as an example of a system that doesn’t work. One of the Players Association’s top priorities this year was to implement changes that would benefit the young stars of the future.

Bryant was taken by the Cubs second overall in the 2013 draft out of the University of San Diego, and it didn’t take long for him to take Minor League Player of the Year honors the following season. In the spring of 2015, Bryant broke out in the Cactus League hitting for .425. He then led the Majors with nine home runs in spring training. Instead of going to Chicago’s big team, however, he was sent to Triple-A Iowa as a 23-year-old prospect, intending to “get into a good rhythm defensively,” as stated by then-president of the Cubs organization, Theo Epstein.

Bryant was promoted less than two weeks later, which caused him to accumulate 171 days of service time by the end of the year. As a result, he fell one day short of the required number of days to count as a full season of service, delaying his free agency for an entire campaign.

The shortstop won the National League Rookie of the Year award and earned the prorated minimum salary of $570,500. The following season, Bryant won the National League Most Valuable Player title and the World Series with the Cubs. He earned $652,000.

After his rookie season, Bryant and his representatives filed a grievance with the league, claiming that Bryant’s virtually complete (and incredibly productive) 2015 season should be included in his six-year tally under the organization’s control. After losing that case in a January 2020 arbitration ruling, Bryant became a free agent in the just-concluded offseason to sign a seven-year, $182 million contract with the Colorado Rockies.

Bryant’s defeat in the grievance process served as a rallying point for many ballplayers during the recent lockout.

“When we went to the hearing, I told Kris there was no way an arbitrator would legislate new rules,” says Scott Boras, Bryant’s agent. “This step would lay the groundwork to overcome the Commissioner’s Office thesis that, if there is actual manipulation of service time, a grievance would serve to resolve any wrongdoing.”

“The ‘Bryant Rule’ was created on the basis that no arbitrator would, in fact, legislate new rules, as evidenced by the clear and factual premise that clearly illustrated the existence of service time manipulation. It was boldly used, asserting that no rule existed to prevent it and was so stated in testimony made at the hearing.”

Then, during contract negotiations last winter, the Union lobbied hard against the manipulation of duty time. The League and the Union agreed to implement several changes going forward:

Regardless of when a player is promoted from the Minor Leagues, he will be recognized for a full year of service if he places first or second in Rookie of the Year voting.

The newly implemented system will reward teams with extra draft picks if they promote their top prospects on Opening Day. A player who receives a full year of service and finishes in the top three in Rookie of the Year voting or in the top five for Cy Young or Most Valuable Player will earn his team an additional selection spot in the draft after the first round.

A new pre-arbitration bonus pool will allow the top players in a prospect class to significantly improve their salary based on their on-field performance, even if they are in the early years of their contract to reach arbitration. The top 100 players according to a formula based on WAR and end-of-season award winners will share $50 million each year.

Although all of the above comes too late to help Kris Bryant, the next Kris Bryant will benefit greatly from these deals.

It feels good that guys will be better compensated for what they do on the field. If I paved the way, that’s great.”

There is perhaps no other rookie in the 2022 class whose trajectory more closely resembles Bryant’s than that of Detroit Tigers first baseman Spencer Torkelson. A first-round draft pick by the Tigers organization in 2020 after a college career in which he rewrote the record books with Arizona State, Torkelson dominated last minor league season, using his power swing to blast 30 home runs and push across 91 runs in 121 games.

Like Bryant with the Cubs in 2015, Torkelson is the face of a wave of young ballplayers stirring excitement within the Tigers organization at the thought of having several years as contenders on the horizon. Unlike Bryant, Torkelson made his major league debut with Detroit on Opening Day earlier this month, rather than spending more time in the minor leagues to gain more experience.

Torkelson, 22, is well aware of Bryant’s situation, as well as the Union’s sustained fight during the offseason.

“Younger ballplayers appreciate the work done by the veterans, not only on their behalf, but fighting for the younger generation,” Torkelson says. “They were us at one time, and they wanted us to get a fair shot, too.”

Executives at the various Major League teams have spent several years caught in the middle of that struggle, weighing the immediate on-field advantage of having their best players play 162 games against the long-term benefits of a system that rewarded delayed debuts.

“As an industry, we shouldn’t hold these guys back from becoming stars,” says Seattle Mariners general manager Jerry Dipoto. “It’s not lost on me, with this new Collective Bargaining Agreement, that we saw more instances [of highly rated prospects moving up to their big teams] this year. Simply put, it could be that we’re managing an extraordinary group of ballplayers, or it could be because these two planets aligned.”

Dipoto insists that Julio Rodriguez, the top prospect in the Mariners organization who also started the season on Seattle’s roster, made the big team because of his level of play, and that he also moved up because Seattle put him on its 40-man roster last season in order to protect him from the Rule 5 draft. The veteran executive insisted on such a difference when comparing Rodriguez’s situation to Bryant’s.

“The biggest hype we hear is service time, service time, service time, service time,” Dipoto expresses. “The problem is options. Julio is a 40-man roster player. The day he goes to the minor leagues, you’re burning an option. Once you’re part [of the 40-man roster], there’s no real decision to make.”

Teams have only three seasons in which they can opt to send a player to the Minor Leagues, and another new addition to the Collective Bargaining Agreement is the inclusion of a rule limiting teams to five player options per season.

This philosophy regarding Rodriguez’s position on the roster represents a change from the way the Mariners organization treated their outfielder prospect Jarred Kelenic, the subject of last year’s service time manipulation debate. After Kelenic began the 2021 minor league season, comments made publicly by then-president Kevin Mather made it clear that his only intention was to extend the team’s control over Kelenic after he turned down a contract extension offer. Kelenic, who was in no danger of being part of the Rule 5 draft, was not placed on the 40-man roster until last May, when he made his major league debut.

While the changes implemented so far appear to be accomplishing their objectives, it remains to be seen whether these Collective Bargaining Agreement developments will produce some unintended consequences. The biggest tentative fallout would be if teams end up holding on to players longer, with the goal of making sure they don’t get enough time in the majors to be at the top of the Rookie of the Year voting. A team could get a highly productive midseason while being able to retain him for that extra year, despite the loss of draft picks.7

“I’m interested to see how this all plays out,” Bryant expresses. “Hopefully it doesn’t lead to worse behavior, where they hide a ballplayer for four times to deny him [the opportunity]. But all that remains to be seen.”

Even with six of this year’s top prospects making their Opening Day debuts, there was one notable exception: Pirates shortstop Oneil Cruz, ranked 13th in Kiley McDaniel’s preseason Top 100. The 6-foot-7 infielder generated headlines with his long-range homers during spring training. Despite this, Cruz began the season playing in Triple-A, leaving fans waiting to see their brightest young star in the Major Leagues.

Nevertheless, the progress made by the Union in terms of money earned daily by the best players already playing in the Majors is undeniable.

Bryant cites the case of 2001 National League Cy Young-winning pitcher Corbin Burnes as the perfect example. “Burnes was worth five times what the Brewers paid him last season,” Bryant points out.

In his fourth year with the Milwaukee organization, Burnes posted an 11-5 record with a 2.43 ERA and led all pitchers with 7.5 WAR according to the FanGraphs formula. However, due to the fact that he is still in the pre-arbitration phase, the right-hander barely earned a salary of $608,000. After changes made to the Collective Bargaining Agreement, if the Brewers ace takes home the recognition again in 2022, he would get a bonus, which Bryant did not get after his award-winning seasons of 2015 and 2016.

Bryant knew he had little chance of winning his grievance, even at the time he filed it. However, the change needed a visible face, and his case brought a major issue for young ballplayers to the forefront.

“Going through all of it, I knew it wasn’t necessarily in my favor,” Bryant said. “It was very unlikely that it was all going to end up working in my favor. I took it on thinking, ‘I’ve got to do it for those who will come after me.'”