There will be 450 fewer roster spots in the domestic minor leagues in 2024 than there were a year ago.
It will be easy to miss the change. Teams will still field five U.S. minor league teams, one Rookie complex affiliate and four full-season clubs. The change means that teams will go from having 36 to 33 rosterable
players per team. Since Triple-A and Double-A teams are limited to 28 active players and Class A clubs are limited to 30, how big of a deal is it to have the number of non-active players reduced?
For a lot of coaches and front office officials, it’s huge. “All 30 farm directors, the first thing and last thing we do each day is
(figure out) ‘do we have enough bodies?’ This is going to make that part of the day tougher,” one farm director said. “You want to make sure you’re covered every night. It will get tougher.”
MLB this year reduced the number of active minor league players an organization can have under contract from 180 to 165. The 15-player reduction applies to organizations’ domestic minor league rosters and does not include Dominican Summer League players.
Even the old limit of 180 players, which was enacted in 2021, was a dramatic change from the previous model. Before the pandemic, an organization could effectively roster as many minor league players as it wanted by adding affiliates—and thus roster spots—to its farm system.
The Yankees in 2019, for example, had four minor league clubs below the full-season level: two Rookie-level Gulf Coast League affiliates, one in the Rookie-advanced Appalachian League and a fourth in the short-season New York-Penn League. Today, the Yankees are permitted only one such domestic short-season club, their Florida Complex League affiliate.
Before MLB took over the minor leagues following the 2020 season, organizations with more minor league clubs could roster and develop more players than those with fewer affiliates. A lot more.
Today, the scope of the minor leagues has been reduced overall. A 40-round draft has been cut to 20 rounds. Short-season and Rookie-advanced leagues are eliminated. The total roster limit has been scaled back, twice.
The new 165-player roster limit was an initiative driven by both Major League Baseball and MLB owners. MLB has agreed in recent years to significantly raise the salaries it pays minor league players. Minor league players also receive guaranteed in-season housing and are paid during spring training and at other times where they work at team facilities outside of the regular season.
But as part of the first minor league players’ Collective Bargaining Agreement, MLB held to a very firm line. If it was going to pay players more, it wanted to make sure it had the right to pay fewer players.
That minor league CBA, agreed to last spring, allowed MLB the option to cut the active roster limit to 165 after one year. MLB has exercised that option.
Even with the reduced player limit, each MLB organization has enough roster spots to ensure that it can field four full-season clubs and one domestic Rookie complex team. The Giants and D-backs even managed to field two complex league teams with the 180-player limits last year, so it’s disingenuous to say that this will keep teams from fielding full rosters.
But what keeps farm directors and pitching coordinators on edge are worries about how they will handle the unexpected moments that crop up. The previous system had enough roster spots to ensure every organization had some “slack in the system” as multiple people described it. There were always a few hitters and pitchers available to plug in when unexpected circumstances arose.
So if a team had a run of bad injury luck with sprained ankles, jammed fingers and tight hamstrings, there were always a few players who could be sent to fill in.
A pitcher who blows out his elbow or a shortstop who tears an ACL can be put on the 60-day injured list and won’t count toward the 165-player limit. Each team can place up to 15 players on the 60-day injured list and add an active roster spot for each long-term injury.
But players on the seven-day IL still count against the limit of 165. So do players on the temporarily inactive list. Farm directors say a run of minor injuries will be a lot tougher to handle. How can they ensure that their Double-A team has a starter ready to fill in if they don’t have reinforcements ready to go?
“You’re stressing me out right now just talking about it,” a farm director said.
The biggest impact will come on the mound, where teams face a math problem.
Every team has to figure out how to fill roughly 4,800 innings in full-season leagues—1,300 at Triple-A, 1,200 at Double-A and 1,150 at each Class A level. And then they need another 600 in the Arizona or Florida Complex League.
Organizations have to spread an estimated 5,400 innings among 80 to 90 pitchers. If one rosters 90 pitchers, it needs to average 60 innings per pitcher. If it uses 80, it needs each to average 67.5 innings.
That seems like a reasonable expectation. After all, if one pitcher throws 100 innings and another throws 50, the organization is covered with an average of 75 innings between those two pitchers.
But the math quickly becomes more difficult. Drafted pitchers count toward the 165-player limit once they sign, whether they pitch or not, and nowadays, they don’t often pitch in their first pro summers.
In 2023, teams drafted and signed 318 pitchers in the 20-r...
It will be easy to miss the change. Teams will still field five U.S. minor league teams, one Rookie complex affiliate and four full-season clubs. The change means that teams will go from having 36 to 33 rosterable
players per team. Since Triple-A and Double-A teams are limited to 28 active players and Class A clubs are limited to 30, how big of a deal is it to have the number of non-active players reduced?
For a lot of coaches and front office officials, it’s huge. “All 30 farm directors, the first thing and last thing we do each day is
(figure out) ‘do we have enough bodies?’ This is going to make that part of the day tougher,” one farm director said. “You want to make sure you’re covered every night. It will get tougher.”
MLB this year reduced the number of active minor league players an organization can have under contract from 180 to 165. The 15-player reduction applies to organizations’ domestic minor league rosters and does not include Dominican Summer League players.
Even the old limit of 180 players, which was enacted in 2021, was a dramatic change from the previous model. Before the pandemic, an organization could effectively roster as many minor league players as it wanted by adding affiliates—and thus roster spots—to its farm system.
The Yankees in 2019, for example, had four minor league clubs below the full-season level: two Rookie-level Gulf Coast League affiliates, one in the Rookie-advanced Appalachian League and a fourth in the short-season New York-Penn League. Today, the Yankees are permitted only one such domestic short-season club, their Florida Complex League affiliate.
Before MLB took over the minor leagues following the 2020 season, organizations with more minor league clubs could roster and develop more players than those with fewer affiliates. A lot more.
Today, the scope of the minor leagues has been reduced overall. A 40-round draft has been cut to 20 rounds. Short-season and Rookie-advanced leagues are eliminated. The total roster limit has been scaled back, twice.
The new 165-player roster limit was an initiative driven by both Major League Baseball and MLB owners. MLB has agreed in recent years to significantly raise the salaries it pays minor league players. Minor league players also receive guaranteed in-season housing and are paid during spring training and at other times where they work at team facilities outside of the regular season.
But as part of the first minor league players’ Collective Bargaining Agreement, MLB held to a very firm line. If it was going to pay players more, it wanted to make sure it had the right to pay fewer players.
That minor league CBA, agreed to last spring, allowed MLB the option to cut the active roster limit to 165 after one year. MLB has exercised that option.
Even with the reduced player limit, each MLB organization has enough roster spots to ensure that it can field four full-season clubs and one domestic Rookie complex team. The Giants and D-backs even managed to field two complex league teams with the 180-player limits last year, so it’s disingenuous to say that this will keep teams from fielding full rosters.
But what keeps farm directors and pitching coordinators on edge are worries about how they will handle the unexpected moments that crop up. The previous system had enough roster spots to ensure every organization had some “slack in the system” as multiple people described it. There were always a few hitters and pitchers available to plug in when unexpected circumstances arose.
So if a team had a run of bad injury luck with sprained ankles, jammed fingers and tight hamstrings, there were always a few players who could be sent to fill in.
A pitcher who blows out his elbow or a shortstop who tears an ACL can be put on the 60-day injured list and won’t count toward the 165-player limit. Each team can place up to 15 players on the 60-day injured list and add an active roster spot for each long-term injury.
But players on the seven-day IL still count against the limit of 165. So do players on the temporarily inactive list. Farm directors say a run of minor injuries will be a lot tougher to handle. How can they ensure that their Double-A team has a starter ready to fill in if they don’t have reinforcements ready to go?
“You’re stressing me out right now just talking about it,” a farm director said.
The biggest impact will come on the mound, where teams face a math problem.
Every team has to figure out how to fill roughly 4,800 innings in full-season leagues—1,300 at Triple-A, 1,200 at Double-A and 1,150 at each Class A level. And then they need another 600 in the Arizona or Florida Complex League.
Organizations have to spread an estimated 5,400 innings among 80 to 90 pitchers. If one rosters 90 pitchers, it needs to average 60 innings per pitcher. If it uses 80, it needs each to average 67.5 innings.
That seems like a reasonable expectation. After all, if one pitcher throws 100 innings and another throws 50, the organization is covered with an average of 75 innings between those two pitchers.
But the math quickly becomes more difficult. Drafted pitchers count toward the 165-player limit once they sign, whether they pitch or not, and nowadays, they don’t often pitch in their first pro summers.
In 2023, teams drafted and signed 318 pitchers in the 20-r...
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Baseball America (Digital) - 1 Issue, March/April 2024