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January 10, 2006

The BP Guide to Transaction Rules

Options

by Thomas Gorman

Our third entry tries to explain the complicated "option" rules, as outlined in Major League Rule 11 (MLR 11). Most fans have heard of options, most serious fans know basically what they are, but few outside the Commissioner's Office understand all their ins and outs. The provisions of this rule take up just four and a half 9" by 5" pages in the Major League Rules, but they're complicated and confusing, so bear with me.

To be placed on the 40-man roster, a player needs to be given a major-league contract. When teams want to assign those contracts to a minor-league club (that is, when teams want one of their 40-man players to play for an affiliated minor-league franchise) they give the player an "optional assignment" down to the minor-league team (as opposed to an "outright assignment," which we'll leave for another day). An option is not used only when a player is shifted off the 25-man roster and down to the minors. An option is also expended when a player on the 40-man is assigned to a minor-league roster. For example, a player with a 40-man contract who spends his entire season in the minor leagues does use an option even though he never made it to the 25-man active roster of the major-league squad.

The optional assignment language signifies that the team has reserved a "right of recall" and can recall the player to the active list of their major league roster. Optional assignments are not subject to waiver approval from the other 29 clubs, and they give a team a great deal of freedom to move players onto and off of their major-league active rosters.

That's the basics of an option. It's an agreement to assign a player with a major-league contract to a minor-league roster, and the assigning organization reserves the right to recall the player to the active list of their major-league club. There are a number of rules that limit the use of options, and there are exceptions and caveats that further complicate the rules. These details are what make options so difficult to understand.

First, there is a limit to how many times a team can option a player down. Once a player gets a major-league contract (viz. "is added to the 40-man roster") he is typically eligible for optional assignment in three different seasons. He can be optioned down and called back up as many times as the club likes in each year, but the club only has that right in three individual seasons. There are some exceptions and qualifications to this hard three-season limit:

• An option is not expended if the player is optioned down for less than 20 total days in a season. As long the total number of days a 40-man player is on the farm doesn't add up to 20, then an option hasn't been burned.

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