The Common Man's Guide To Understanding The Kris Bryant Contract Stuff
The NCAA Tournament is underway, which can only mean one thing: you want more nuanced baseball coverage from a b-teamer at barstool sports. Well guess what? You’re in motherfucking luck because this Kris Bryant “controversy” (FYI I used quotes to emphasize that it’s really not a controversey FYI) has provided the perfect platform for me to explain baseball’s #1 panty dropper, calculating service time. And as always, the goal is to help you win more arguments/act like you know your shit. Hopefully that’s the case. On to the important stuff.
Generally speaking (which is exactly how this will be explained – generally), baseball teams have 6 years of club control when you get to the big leagues. Two things on that: (1) “Years” and “service time” mean the exact same thing and (2) it’s calculated by the number of active days in a major league season (about 183) you spend on the 25 man roster divided by 172. That sentence looks confusing so I’ll shut up and give you an example.
Assume everything goes according to plan and Kris Bryant is promoted April 18th. His service time for the 2015 season would be calculated as follows: (183 eligible MLB days – 14 days Bryant was in Iowa)/172 = .983 years. That’s important because the CBA says (again, generally) that you can’t become a free agent until you’ve accumulated 6 full years of service. Not 5.983 years of service. Not 5.999. The magic number is 6 and nothing less. So for those of you keeping score at home, yes, it is conceivable that Kris Bryant can essentially play 6 nearly full seasons for the Cubs and still have one more year of control.
It’s unlikely any of this matters in the long run. Kris Bryant is on a fast track to the big leagues where inevitable success awaits. To suggest otherwise would make you some combination of retarded and/or unreasonable. I’m not saying we need to start laying red carpet from Wrigley to Cooperstown for the kid, but let’s at least call a spade a spade – Kris Bryant will be a very productive major leaguer. It’s far more likely than not that he will make an immediate impact and carve out a successful career in the big leagues. And as such, you can expect Theo to sign him to a healthy major league deal much like he did with other critical building blocks in Castro and Rizzo, and much like the rest of baseball has been doing with every other top flight young player. And when those negotiations do begin 3 years from now, Theo’s gonna get the deal done – without hard feelings over the present situation – because money fucking talks and Ricketts has a lot of it.
As for Scott Boras and Kris Bryant, they’re aware that Giancarlo Stanton signed a 13-year/$325 million deal this offseason, right? I hope so because Stanton had only 3.111 years of service time when he signed it. That means there’s now some kind of early mega-deal precedence for elite power. So if that’s Kris Bryant’s ultimate goal, all he has to do is go earn it… starting April 18th.
@barstoolcarl