Sorry for what I'm sure is an easy question. I've searched the boards and can't find anything specific to this...

I traded for a guy who has been up and down a little between the big leagues and minors. He's not a great prospect by any means, but given that I'm not contending for anything this season, I'd like to keep him down long enough to delay his first arb year. I know that people usually wait 20+ days to call their prospects up for this reason. Well, this particular guy has 2.020 years of service time. We are roughly 50 days into our season (44 MLB games, 43 AAA games, and some off days sprinkled in). So I would think it'd be safe to call him up now and I'd get another year before he's arb-eligible. But when I look at my arb report for next season, he's on it.

So is the service time calc somehow different for people once they are beyond their first year of service time? Is there something else I'm not considering? And can I use the arb report as a guide for when it's safe to call him up (i.e. If/when he disappears from the arb report, it's safe to call him up)?

Thanks!

He'll be fine.

Once a player gets called up to the bigs, the AI assumes that a player will add BL seasons each year.
That's why he shows up on the arb report. He has 2 seasons already and they assume he'll have 3 next season.

Okay - that makes sense. Thanks a lot for the response!