So you're still struggling to understand 'options' in major-league baseball; here's how it works

JR Radcliffe
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Mar 12, 2018; Glendale, AZ, USA; Milwaukee Brewers pitcher Junior Guerra against the Los Angeles Dodgers during a Spring Training game at Camelback Ranch. Mandatory Credit: Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports

Two weeks into the 2018 major-league baseball season, and the Milwaukee Brewers have already racked up plenty of frequent flyer miles to Colorado Springs.

Ji-Man Choi, Christian Yelich (injured), Corey Knebel (injured), Brandon Woodruff and Adrian Houser have all been on the 25-man roster at one point and then off it. Dan Jennings, Houser, JJ Hoover, Taylor Williams and Brett Phillips have been the guys taking their place. On Wednesday, Junior Guerra and Jorge Lopez were recalled before the game with the St. Louis Cardinals, with Phillips optioned and Hoover designated for assignment.

Roster construction can be maddening to grasp, especially as it relates to “options,” one of the more misunderstood concepts in major-league baseball. This won’t be the only primer out there on options and roster construction, but we'll offer a reminder of how these things work.

Instead of 'options,' we really should call them 'option years'

When a player has an “option” remaining, that doesn’t imply he can be sent down to the minor leagues one time and one time only. It means he gets the whole year to be shuttled back and forth (without consequence, anyway). Brandon Woodruff could be sent up and down 10 times this year if it played out that way – one option covers all of 2018. He was just added to the 40-man roster in 2017, so he will definitely have an option next year, too. He could do the same thing all of 2019, going up and down all summer.

Optioned players have to spend 10 days in the minors before getting recalled unless a Major Leaguer gets placed on the DL (which happens all the time, but that's still one more restriction on the process).

Once a player is added to the 40-man roster, he gets three option years. They don’t have to be used consecutively – Orlando Arcia didn’t get optioned at any point in 2017 and therefore still has two options left, even though he was added to the 40-man in advance of the 2016 season (so he used his first one in 2016 when the team optioned him out of camp).

But once a player hits five years of major league service time, he can refuse an option assignment and become a free agent, so it’s not as if teams can wait to use those options forever. Many players, particularly high-tier stars who don’t go back to the minors once they get here, will never use all three option years. Troy Tulowitzki has never used any, and now he never will.

And you probably know this, but so we’re clear: players cannot appear on the 25-man major-league roster unless they’re also on the 40-man.

A twist: you can get optioned down and NOT use an option year

Brewers centerfielder Keon Broxton gets ready to glove a fly ball against the Athletics on Friday.

An option year only gets used up if a player accumulates 20 days in the minors over the course of the season.

That came up this year, because it meant Keon Broxton still had his third and final option year remaining. The outfielder was optioned to the minors from July 22 to August 1 in 2017, but that's only 10 days, and thus the team was still able to option him down to Colorado Springs to open the season this year.

The small upside for the player in this situation is that he’d also get retroactively credited for Major League service time for those days that he's off the big-league roster (as if he never left), but Broxton's roster flexibility worked against him in 2018.

Not only that, but a player can wind up with a fourth option year

If a player has fewer than five years of “professional service time” and has already burned through three options, then he will be granted a fourth year. It winds up being a pretty small sample of players who qualify, but this is what happened to Junior Guerra and is probably the most confusing part of this whole option thing.

That’s because professional service time can be a challenge to calculate and isn’t really sorted cleanly in a database for public consumption. A service year is classified as at least 90 days of pro ball (frequently, players who begin their minor-league careers late in the season after they’ve been drafted don’t achieve a year of pro service in their first work as a minor leaguer). Not only that, but a player cannot spend more than 30 of those 90 days on the disabled list, or they also don’t get credit for the service year. It’s never a simple proposition to find out just when a player was placed on the disabled list in the minor leagues.

Guerra has had a unique career where he’s bounced around quite a bit, including to independent leagues, and it turns out he hadn’t hit that five-year threshold of pro service time (remember, that's MLB and its affiliates only) coming in to 2018. Which means he’s granted a fourth option year, one that the Brewers have already taken advantage of by sending him to Colorado Springs to start the year.

Even people who follow the team closely can get caught off guard by this one.

Guerra is an unusual case. Usually, this fourth option comes into play when an older prospect reaches the big leagues quickly after getting drafted. He may use his three options before his first five years of professional ball, and then he’d get a fourth option year. But once again, a full-fledged five years with the big-league team means the player can choose to refuse the option and become a free agent, so there’s a tight window for this whole thing to work.

Guys who are optioned at the beginning of the year and miss the year with an injury can also get a fourth option year – but not a fifth, even if there's another year missed by injury. A player will never get more than four options.

Here’s why you add guys to the 40-man; spoiler alert, it’s the Rule 5 Draft’s fault

San Diego Padres relief pitcher Miguel Diaz pitches in a game last May. The Brewers lost Diaz to the Padres in the Rule 5 Draft last year. He struggled but appeared in 31 games and can now stay in the Padres system after (by rule) spending all of 2017 with the parent club.

If a player is signed at age 18, he gets five years in the organization before he must be added to the 40-man. If signed after, he gets four. If the club doesn’t add a player, he can be picked off the roster by another club in the December “Rule 5 Draft,” a competitive balance mechanism that has its own convoluted set of rules. It aims to prevent teams from keeping too much talent (both for the teams’ sake but also the players’ sake, so they’re not buried under six feet of depth chart).

Additionally, a minor-leaguer can become a six-year free agent if he hasn’t been added to the 40-man after six years within the organization.

Every year in December, there’s always a flurry of moves involving the 40-man, and frequently teams have to make tough calls whom to add and whom to “expose” to the Rule 5 process.

Once a player is added to the 40-man, that’s when these option rules kick in.

Optioned vs. outrighted

It’s not as if a team is barred from sending anyone to the minors. The Brewers could send Ryan Braun down there if they wanted. But the three option years are basically “send a dude down without penalty.” After the options are used up, to send a player to the minors, you then have to expose him to waivers, meaning any one of the other 29 teams can have him if they put in a claim (and assume his salary).

This is when you see the term "outrighted." To move a player out of options back to the minors, he's going to get booted off the 40-man roster, and every other team gets to take a look-see.

There are a number of reasons why a team might not claim him (health, contract, early in the year when organizations are pretty content with what they have, the player is just not very good), but if the player has value, he’s going to get claimed and put on someone else’s 40-man.

Hoover being "designated for assignment" Wednesday is a pre-cursor to getting outrighted (unless he gets claimed first). Hoover, who is out of options, made it through waivers the first time around when the club elected not to put him on the 25-man roster out of camp. After the club designated him, the rest of the league gets another crack.

If the other 29 pass, the player will stay in the organization. He can still get added back to the 40-man again, but once a player has been outrighted, he can refuse any assignment if a club elects to outright him a second time (though he'd forfeit his salary in doing so). So, if other clubs don't want to add Hoover, he'll have his own decision to make. It's possible he gets a better chance elsewhere as a free agent, where he can sign a minor-league deal without taking up a 40-man spot (and have a perceptively easier path to getting placed on the roster down the line).

For what it's worth, Ryan Braun has been in the league far more than five years, so he has the right to refuse an assignment, anyway.

Let’s review

  • You add a player to the 40-man roster to protect him from the Rule 5 Draft (must be added within four years if signed at age 19 or older and five years if signed at 18).
  • Once added to the 40-man, a player gets three “options.”
  • Those options mean “option for the whole year” – up and down, up and down, doesn’t matter.
  • If you stay down in the minors for fewer than 20 days in a given year, you don’t actually use up an option that year (you get paid like a Major Leaguer for the whole year, too). It happened to Keon Broxton.
  • If you have burned your three options but have five years or fewer of “professional service time (majors and minors),” you are granted a fourth option year. Likewise if you are injured throughout an option year. It happened to Junior Guerra.
  • If you have five years of Major League service (this is different from professional service mentioned above), you can refuse any options going forward.

Editor’s Note: A previous version of this story indicated that a player who did not exceed 20 days in the minors was paid Major League salary for that tenure. He is compensated with Major League service time but minor league salary.