Dear Mr. EFL Answer Man:
So now that I’ve won the bid on him, will I need to allocate Dylan Cease? I guess there’s not much risk involved.
— Dylan’s New Babysitter
Dear Babysitter:
You can leave him unallocated, in the minors. If you don’t allocate him, his clock doesn’t start running when he first appears in MLB — if you leave him inactive all his debut year, you get the next five years as if you had drafted him in the rookie draft.
That pathetic Wolverine owner, on the other hand, stupidly activated Dan Vogelbach in September of 2016, his debut year, trying (and failing) to catch up with the Dragons. So The W’s lose him after 2020, rather than 2021.
— Answer Man
Dear Mr. EFL Answer Man:
But Cease is a Rule 5 pick so he HAS to allocate him, doesn’t he?
— Captain of the Newly-Created Rule 5 Brute Squad
Dear Captain:
Yes. That’s right.
You passed the test! What a great Rule 5 enforcer we have!!
— Answer Man
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Woah, EFL Answer Man!
But Cease is at Low A, correct? Optimistically, he might make it to MLB by 2020. So if I am required to allocate him in 2018, I will lose two years of his rookie contract eligibility.
That doesn’t seem right. With that ruling, he loses a lot of value.
— Dylan’s New Babysitter
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Babysitter:
There, there. Don’t cry!! He did state that before the draft…to be fair…
— Brute Squad Lieutenant (Self-appointed)
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Mr. EFL Answer Man:
If a player is allocated, but never appears, does his clock start running?
— Tenderhearted Bystander
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Dear Tender:
Excellent question! You prompt me to finally READ the rule rather than work from memory. (Still getting used to this new-fangled writing technology.)
Here is the rule:
If the minor league player has not yet debuted in MLB, he can be owned in the EFL at the minimum wage until his debut. In the season of his debut, his EFL team may play him by allocating him to a position (or as a pitcher), making that year the first of his five consecutive Rookie years in EFL, or may hold him out of play by allocating him 100% to be inactive for the remainder of the debut year, in which case the next year is perforce his first Rookie year in the EFL.
Let’s consider the phrase “In the season of his debut…” and the verb “play.” Clearly this rule (the Vogelbach Rule, in fond memory of the lame owner who forgot about it mere months after he wrote it) is directed at the situation where a player appears on the field. The rule refers to the debut year, and to the player “playing.”
We have long had the practice of activating players deep in the minors without using up their eligibility. We never formally adopted a rule permitting this, but we could just as well call it the Hak Ju Lee Unwritten Rule (See! Writing is not mandatory for rules!), after the Dragon shortstop who was active for EFL roster purposes on several occasions even though he never appeared in Major League Baseball despite playing four straight full seasons at the AAA level!
Hak Ju Lee never shed his 2099 contract expiration date.
When we adopted the Vogelbach Rule, I don’t recall anyone thinking it repealed the Lee Rule. We were aiming to limit the number of years we can benefit from a rookie we acquired in trade as a minor leaguer. What constitutes a benefit? Having a player help make a roster legal is a benefit, but a slight one. True, Lee did the Dragons more good by not playing than Vogelbach did in his 2016 efforts on the field (14 plate appearances of .083, .154 .083). But that”s just bad managing on the Wolverines’ part.
So I believe the Vogelbach Rule requires a player’s clock to start when he appears in a game, not when he is merely activated on a roster.
This, like any Answer Man opinion, is subject to being overruled by a majority of the league on the petition of three owners. Should anyone be inclined to make such a petition, I would request we also allow an EFL team to turn off a Rule 5 player’s clock in subsequent years if the player hasn’t yet debuted, to give ourselves the same opportunity any MLB team has.
While we ponder our options here, I have received an announcement from Wolverine Headquarters in Old Detroit:
“The Old Detroit Wolverines hereby decline in advance to take Dylan Cease back by operation of the Rule 5 rules.”
This frees Cottage from any duty to activate Mr. Cease under any conceivable interpretation of our rules.
— Mr. EFL Answer Man
Thanks, Ron.
It seems to me that the purpose of the “must activate” clause of the Rule 5 draft is to make sure that eligible rule-5 draftees play. This is at most a minor inconvenience to the drafting team. Few of our teams have any trouble allocating another player.
The purpose of the “must activate” clause is not to reduce the value of minor league players by forcing them to start their clock early. While such enforcement is the letter of the law, it seems to me that we could modify the clause to apply only to players that are on MLB rosters. And for minor leaguers drafted under Rule 5, it would make sense to apply the “must activate” clause during the first year that they on the MLB roster. (Yes, hard to track, I know.)
I would be happy to apply the “must activate” clause to Cease for a whole year as soon as he appears in MLB.