Question was raised in one of my world CC (by me), but thought I'd take here to get the general opinion and should WIS do anything about it?

It appears that the way service time is set up, you can call up a guy 20 games into the minor league season to avoid a full season of service time.  No problems there.  So lets say a guy burns his 1st option using his 20 days in the minors, then spends all of the next season in the majors to accumulate 1 full season of service time.  Now in season 3, he's optioned down to the minors prior to ST to avoid a demotion penalty, spends 20 games down there, and is recalled to the majors for the rest of the year.  Since he spent less than 172 days (or what ever the number is) in the majors, he doesn't accure a 2nd full season of service time.  He spends the whole next season (essentially his 4th) in the majors and at the end has only 2 seasons of service time showing up.  The following 2 seasons he repeats the process w/ his last option and has spent 6 years in the majors before hitting arbitration.  Now that he's out of options, he spends the next 2 years getting his demands, then is signed to a 5 year deal.  So if he starts the process when he's 22, he'll be under your control, and for cheaper than he'd make on the open market (if you do it w/ an all-star caliber player) until he's 35, at which point he's more likely to resign with you w/o testing the market.

Am I right in that reasoning?  If so, you could control a guy for his entire career, w/o him every hitting the market, and seems like it would be bad for the overall health of a world.  If everyone did it, you'd never see a decent max contract worth free agent.

Posted by mitchrapp on 6/18/2010 3:08:00 PM (view original):
I don't think so. Once the clock starts, it keeps on going.

so under the scenerio above, once they get past 20 games their 3rd season, they'll show as having 2 seasons of service time, then 3 the following season, then hit arbitration after season 4 just like they would have otherwise?

Yeah probably.

I think Taz has it right I haven't seen a difference After waiting the first 20 days to call the guy up. there is not much differance. Look at service time on his profile. It will show how long he is in the majors. At the end of the second it should show someting like 1.7 years and after 3 years 2.5 at the lowest. It's not how long he is in the majors in one season but his whole career that triggers the arb years.

Go figure. As much vie played HBD, I've never seen a 1.7 or 2.5. I always thought they were solid numbers like 2 or 4.

I don't see how you can get 6 years in the majors before arb though If you had three full years + three yars at 80 % played though. by year 6 he should have 5 + years playing time.  I was refering to taz's second post earlier.

www.whatifsports.com/HBD/Pages/Popups/PlayerProfile.aspx Matos has 2.010 Ml years.

Just move the mouse over the 2 on ML years in his profile.

I'm pretty sure that once a guy has more than 1 year at rollover, they stop tracking service time by days from year to year and just add a year in any season where he's on the ML roster at all - unless all my players with more than 1 year of service time were at exactly x years of service time coming into the season, because they all show x.154 years of service time (on day 154 of this season).

Posted by spursbasebal on 6/18/2010 3:40:00 PM (view original):
www.whatifsports.com/HBD/Pages/Popups/PlayerProfile.aspx Matos has 2.010 Ml years.

That's 2 years, 10 days, and I'm guessing every player on the ML roster of that team with more than a year will show up as x.010.

I check all my guys with options that have not reached arb at the beging of every season to see if they can be rotated to the minors. if they are at 1.00 or 2.00 I drop them down for 20-25 days to get the extra year.

www.whatifsports.com/HBD/Pages/Popups/PlayerProfile.aspx  Baez 1.092 Same team as matos

Yeah, you're right, now that I think about it, of course my guys always start each year at x.000, since once they've gotten that first year in, they are always up for a full year, or at least enough time to get credited for the full year. You might be able to do what is being described here...

Posted by spursbasebal on 6/18/2010 3:44:00 PM (view original):
I check all my guys with options that have not reached arb at the beging of every season to see if they can be rotated to the minors. if they are at 1.00 or 2.00 I drop them down for 20-25 days to get the extra year.

So in otherwords, you can squeeze 3 extra seasons out of them if you do it the first time at 0.0 seasons, again when they roll to 1.0 seasons, and again when they roll to 2.0 seasons assuming you do so the first time they have to burn an option (after 4 seasons of minor league service time.