Starlin Castro will end up with 4 years of arbitration

In Commentary And Analysis by dmick8952 Comments

Although I reference that the Cubs did sign Castro to an extension, perhaps it wasn't clear that this was written as if Castro would instead go through the arbitration process. This was the time at which I read these articles.

This is something I've been meaning to write for at least a month, but just haven't gotten around to it. About 4-6 weeks ago I read in more than one place about how Starlin Castro would become a super-two eligible player, which means he'd have 4 years of arbitration eligibility rather than 3. The articles I read, some of them blogs, said flat out that Jim Hendry was a moron for calling Castro up when he did. People said that because the Cubs were trying to win games in early 2010 when they likely wouldn't contend they should have waited.

Winning games is kind of what teams try to do. Even last week we heard Dale Sveum talking about trying to win games and the Cubs are 300 games out of first place. You're never going to find a team in any sport who freely admits that they're not trying to win games. Of course they should try to win games. Especially in early May when all kinds of things could wrong for your opponents and the Cubs could have taken advantage of that.

Because of Castro becoming super-two, he'll earn more money than if the Cubs had waited 6 to 8 weeks to call him up. It may have been a factor in whether or not the Cubs decided to extend him already.

Calling up as early as the Cubs did undoubtedly cost them a couple million bucks, but when you consider the likelihood that a player that young stays on the roster for good, the risk in calling him up is minimal.

Furthermore, the Cubs have money. I don't want the Cubs to act like the Tampa Bay Rays or Kansas City Royals when it comes to spending money. The Cubs have a whole hell of a lot more money than those teams. They have more than those two teams combined. The Cubs payroll this season isn't double those two teams, but it's pretty close. Combined the Royals and Rays are paying their players about $128 million to the Cubs $108 million. Last season though, the Cubs payroll was closer to $130 million and those two combined paid less than $85 million. The Cubs are not the Rays or Royals and they shouldn't act like they do.

Are Theo Epstein and Jed Hoyer idiots for calling up Anthony Rizzo at the end of June? Rizzo had 68 days of service time in 2011 and he'll finish the season with exactly 100 days this year. He'll have 0 years and 168 days of service time. The expected cutoff for super-two at this point is 2 years and 139 days of service time. The Cubs could have waited a month to call up Rizzo and avoid him being a super two, but they didn't. Are they also stupid?

Are the Nationals stupid for calling up Bryce Harper at the end of April?

Then there's the issue of when to call a player up. Do you call him up in the way that most benefits the team or do you call the player up when he is ready to contribute? While I can respect the Rays for what they've done since it's been necessary, I don't like it. A player should be called up to the big leagues the moment he is ready to contribute to the MLB roster and not a moment later.

A lot of things can be said about Jim Hendry. He had the statistical knowledge of a fly. He overly relied on scouting info when statistical info was also necessary. After becoming GM he allowed the very farm system he build into the best in baseball to fall apart. He didn't hire the right development personnel in the minors, which has led to the Cubs getting little contribution from the minor leagues. His love for signing relievers to 3-year deals was ridiculous. He was passionate about having as many 2nd basemen and left fielders on the roster as possible.

What can't be said about Jim Hendry is that he wasn't fair to the players. He called them up when they were deserving of a call-up. He paid his own free agent well, but not as well as they'd have been paid in free agency.

Castro was more than deserving of the call-up. Ryan Theriot was off to a decent start, but he was a poor fielder and Mike Fontenot was OPSing under 700 at the time of Castro's big league debut. Even more important, Castro was posting a 155 wRC+ in AA after skyrocketing through the minors. He had little else to prove by staying in the minor leagues and he was clearly the team's best SS at that moment. Calling Castro up only made sense.

If your argument is that it cost the Cubs a couple million bucks, it's a weak argument. That's a couple million bucks over a 6-year span by the way. I'm pretty sure the large market Cubs can afford it so the only question is this: is the player ready and will he be replacing a lesser player? If the answer is yes then the player should be called up regardless of future salary implications. We ain't rooting for the Pittsburgh fucking Pirates here.

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  3. mb21

    @ Jackson Scofield:
    Of course, but this was written in response to the people who were upset he’d be a super two. Because after all, the entire reason the Cubs had to sign him to that extension was because of 4 years of arbitration, so they said.

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  10. GW

    I was one who was critical of the callup at the time, and will stand by it. Barney was the obvious choice to fill in at shortstop for a couple of weeks. I don’t think anyone is advocating young players get the desmond jennings treatment, or even the wil myers treatment, for that matter. When it’s two or three weeks for a 20 year old with a couple hundred plate appearances at AA on a shitty team, though, I think it’s a pretty easy decision.

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  12. mb21

    @ GW:
    To be fair, the Cubs were 13-16, 5 games out of 1st and had lost 6-9 (before that they were in 2nd place and 2 out). I can easily see why a team might call its best SS prospect at that point in the season. The only reason he was even in the minor leagues to begin with was to gain the 7th year of club control. Were it not for that word was he’d have made the roster out of spring training. I think that additional year is valuable enough that it’s worth waiting, but a few million bucks over 7 years isn’t enough reason to wait another 4-6 weeks in my opinion.

    I don’t remember anyone complaining when a 25-48 Cubs team called up one of its best prospects guaranteeing he’d be a super two.

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  14. GW

    @ mb21:

    there was at least one person calling for him to start the season with the org (Bush or Hughes, can’t remember which), but it definitely wasn’t something that was agreed upon (as evidenced by the fact that the Bush or Hughes opinion was notable).

    each case is unique, and it’s not fair to point at Rizzo and act like the one must take the same stance on both. Rizzo had a full season’s worth of PA at AAA and had put up historic-ish numbers, was older, had previous mlb experience, etc…

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  15. GW

    @ mb21:

    and the projected difference between less than a month of the older slick-fielding barney, and the phenom Castro?

    sorry, just can’t get on board with you on this one, though I don’t care that much. (cue dick cheese)

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  21. Rice Cube

    So in tonight’s White Sox game they decided to walk Jeff Francoeur with two outs with their RHP. Then they brought in Matt Thornton to face Hosmer and Hosmer walks off.

    Something didn’t smell right before the Hosmer hit. Maybe I was overthinking it, but it seemed really really dumb to IBB Jeff Francoeur. I mean, it’s Jeff Francoeur.

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  24. Carne Harris

    It is a delicate balancing act between calling a prospect up when he’s ready (doing what’s best for the player) and calling him up so as to extend club control (doing what’s best for the team). It’s not just, “Is he ready and is he better than who we got?” If it was, Rizzo would have been called up at least a month before he was. But they waited that extra month and that allowed them to extend club control through 2018. Ethical gray area for sure, though.

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  27. mb21

    @ Carne Harris:
    I mentioned in an earlier comment that the benefit to a team even similar to the Cubs in revenue for gaining that extra year is probably worth keeping the player in the minor leagues. Generally speaking it’s early May (Castro was called up on May 7th IIRC). However, delaying a call-up to potentially save a few million bucks over the course of the cost-controlled years is just not how I want the Cubs to act.

    I’m really surprised the MLBPA hasn’t addressed this loophole teams are taking advantage of.

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  31. Berselius

    mb21 wrote:

    I’m really surprised the MLBPA hasn’t addressed this loophole teams are taking advantage of.

    What can they even do about it? Teams have all the power to decide when to call up players, I don’t know how you can codify it legally. If they make the service time stuff more granular you’d probably see players held out even longer.

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  32. Mish

    I can’t think of any situation in which I’d care to calculate the expected RBI. Mostly because I can’t think of any situation in which I’d care about RBI. I couldn’t even tell you who led the leagues last year in it, or the NL this year (I know Cabrera because of all the MVP kvetching)

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  35. Mercurial Outfielder

    Berselius wrote:

    (dying laughing) at this headline in the Hobbiton Mirror-Picayune

    “Sveum looks forward to reflecting on Sons of Anarchy 4th season”

    What the original headline said.

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  37. mb21

    @ Berselius:
    You could make it so that anyone who has 2+ years of service time is eligible for arbitration. This eliminates teams waiting to call a player up at a certain point in a season, which is most often done when that player is already deserving of being on the 25-man roster (and therefore should be on the roster). Or they could keep the system as it is and then have all players become free agents the moment they reach 6 years of service time (this would create some exciting mid-season transactions too).

    None of this addresses the ridiculous length of time that an MLB team can actually have a guy in their organization before he’s even eligible for free agency.

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  38. Berselius

    @ mb21:

    It might help, but that’s basically just moving the limit where it happens, and teams will continue to play games with it. They’d just hold a guy out till September then if they don’t feel like they need him. Brett Jackson and Vitters probably wouldn’t have been called up at all this year. Though maybe that would have been a good thing (dying laughing).

    I love that free agency idea.

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  39. mb21

    @ Berselius:
    Well, September service time counts (that would have to be changed for first-time call-ups). This would force teams to call up the players when they are ready because there would be no advantage to waiting.

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  44. GW

    Berselius wrote:

    It doesn’t count right now, unless you were called up before Sep 1

    I’m pretty sure you are right on this. Only 25 man roster time counts. (I think this is true because in a keeper league that I help run, the b-ref provided service time numbers don’t match up with rookie eligibility status, which is dependent on service time).

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  45. Berselius

    @ GW:

    I looked for a september callup from last year (John Gaub) who didn’t pitch this season. His only time in MLB was last september, and according to Cot’s he has some service time accrued.

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  47. GW

    @ Berselius:

    yeah, i’m just not sure that cot’s and bref have it right. (i know that bref doesn’t, as mentioned…)

    wikipedia is never wrong…

    If a player is drafted and is offered a contract by his drafting team (or any team to which he is traded) each year, he may not become a free agent until:

    His contract has expired with at least six years of service time on a major league 25-man roster or disabled list, OR
    His contract has expired with less than six years of service time, but is not tendered a contract or salary arbitration offer (if eligible) by the tender deadline (usually in the second week of December). Such players become non-tender free agents.

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  48. mb21

    @ GW:
    The 25-man roster is the same as the active roster. In September the active roster expands from 25 to 40, but all players called up in September accrue service time. However, for a player called up in September, that does not count for rookie of the year purposes. It does count towards service time.

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  50. mb21

    My suggested plan would of course require the union give something up and I couldn’t begin to speculate on that. Considering Selig’s interest in increasing the amount of excitement for fans, I would think he would behind a plan that would create in-season excitement with regards to potentially huge transactions. Baseball fans would love it. This site and ACB before it has been busiest around the trade deadline and Winter Meetings. Fans love that shit.

    Let’s use Anthony Rizzo as an example. He’ll have 0.168 (years.days) of service time. 172 is considered a full season so Rizzo is 4 days shy of having 1.0 service time. At the end of 2014 he’ll have 2.168 and be eligible for arbitration for the next 4 years. At the end of 2018 he’ll be a free agent. Under my plan he’d be eligible for free agency on the 5th day of the 2018 season assuming he isn’t signed to an extension.

    Because of this, there is no way that teams would do what they do now. None. It just wouldn’t happen under any circumstances.

    The only drawback I can think of is that it’s entirely possible teams would choose to call up prospects earlier than they do now. It’s my opinion that calling a player up early is used an excuse for a struggling young player and not the cause of it, but I could see teams beginning to believe that it is the cause of a struggling young player.

    No matter what, teams would do their very best to ensure that every young player has 6 full years of service time at the end of the season.

    Using Rizzo again, the Cubs would have called him up 4 days earlier than they did. The Cubs either wouldn’t have called Castro up in 2010 when they did or he’d have started the season with the Cubs (this is what I think they’d have done).

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