Quote:
Originally Posted by BigRedChief
Heard this point on a podcast when he got injured last year. Forget which podcast but they said the Cardinals couldnt do what you are talking about to stop service time because the contract Reyes signed. That many of the elite players have similiar contracts, injury cant stop the service time from ticking.
No idea if true or not, it was a podcast.
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It's not accurate.
All signing a major league contract earlier in your career does is force teams to start burning up your options immediately (that's what happened with Drew). It forces teams to give guys a shot a little earlier which increases their earning potentially immensely when they get through their 6 years for FA. We know Reyes didn't sign a Major League contract when he first came into the Cardinals organization because we can confirm that he still has all 3 option years intact. So that path is irrelevant.
So if he has options, he can be sent down. If he can be sent down, he won't accumulate major league service time and if he doesn't accumulate the requisite 6 years of major league service time he CANNOT be a major league free agent.
The only thing that could change that is a contract similar to what Mikolas or Cespedes signed where the team that signed him is contractually prohibited from tendering him a salary when he is arbitration eligible. Mikolas, by rule, shouldn't have been a FA after this season but because his deal with the Cardinals prohibited them from offering him a tender, he'd have been a FA anyway. Oh was the same way.
Reyes, as an amateur FA, could've never negotiated a deal like that and if he did we'd have damn sure known about it before now because he's already burned 2 of his 3 pre-arb seasons and would theoretically be in his FA season this year.
Whoever said that is just flat-ass wrong and if it were accurate, you wouldn't see someone like Vlad Jr having his service time ****ed with right now. Or Eloy Jimenez. Or Acuna last season. All of those guys were much more highly regarded prospects when signed than Reyes was.
They're just wrong. The best argument they can make is a technical one -that INJURY can't stop it. That's technically right for any player. It's right for all MLB players regardless of contract. But that's not my point - my point is that you're not citing injury here. You're expressly taking him off the 60 day. You're saying he's sound but that he needs to go to the minors to be stretched out.
The Cardinals actually believed that last season. They kept him on the 60 day DL as a roster mechanism to avoid having to clear the additional 40 man spot. But they didn't believe he was still hurt. They could've taken him off the 60 day, activated him to the 40 man and then simply used an option year to 'stretch him out to start'. That has absolutely nothing to do with injury and he'd have no grounds to contest a service time issue. And then when he would've gotten hurt down there he'd have already been optioned off the 25 man so his service time wouldn't have continued to run while in the minors.
The Cardinals had a clear path here but they ****ed up.