Wacha Clock Explained from STLToday
WHAT IT ALL MEANS FOR WACHA
I’m trying to put all this in the most accessible terms possible, offering up a verbal flow chart – so to speak – of the mechanisms in place. Examples help. Let’s consider Michael Wacha.
The Cardinals’ top pitching prospect came to the club as the 19th overall pick last summer. Let’s follow his progress through the steps mentioned above …
40-man roster: As a college junior he was older than 19 at the time of the draft, so he has four Rule 5 drafts before he’s eligible for his first one. That means 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2015 have to pass before he needs to go on the 40-man roster.
Options: It won’t take that long. So, if Wacha is added to the 40-man roster and then sent back to Class AAA at any point this summer, 2013 will be the first of his three option seasons. No one expects him to use all three. In fact, if the Cardinals wait until, say, September to promote Wacha and put him on the 40-man roster then – as they did for Miller and
Adam Wainwright – he’ll stay on it all winter. And if he makes the team out of spring training in 2014 he won’t have spent an option at all.
Super Two and Arbitration: Of course, when Wacha reaches the majors his clock starts ticking. In theory, a major-league team has control of a player for 13 years. The four years after the draft and before the 40-man roster, the three option years, and then the six years of service time before free agency. The better the player, the more that clock speeds up because the quicker he gets on the 40-man roster and the quicker he starts accumulating service time in the majors.
The Super Two concern is all about the salary a player can command, not the free agency he can achieve. What bringing up a player now does is puts him in line to reach Super Two status and gain a fourth year of arbitration eligibility.
If Wacha arrived today to pitch tonight and stayed in the majors from now on, he would reach arbitration eligibility before the 2016 season. He will then be eligible in 2017, 2018 and then 2019 before reaching free agency after that year. (There is no Super Five, so if a player hits six years of service time in April or August it’s all the same. Free agency arrives at the end of the season.) A prospect who arrives in August of this season and remains in the majors will be first eligible for arbitration in 2017.
Free Agency: If Wacha starts the 2014 in the rotation or joins it before then, free agency will arrive after he has at least six years of service of time. That will hit after 2019 season.
This is where the formality of all these rules and clauses and clocks comes crashing into reality.
For the elite players, they rarely matter. Allen Craig’s clock doesn’t tick so loud because the team negotiated an extension with him that swallows whole his arbitration years. The Cardinals did the same with Wainwright before that and
Albert Pujols before that. Yes, arbitration eligibility does frame each of those extensions. Craig’s salary spikes every year to reflect the arbitration process. A player with an extra year of arbitration rights – a Super Two player – would not only have the leverage for an extension earlier but have those four years of escalators in place.
In that way, five days does matter.
But not as much as you may think.
For many contending teams, one earlier and extra year of arbitration is a palatable exchange for the return on another month or two with an elite player on the roster. The cost isn't as high as the perceived angst.