Is “out of options” too big of an issue?
You’ve heard it, and you’ll continue to hear it here and there this Spring Training: so-and-so is probably going to make the roster because he’s out of options, while some other guy won’t because he has option years remaining. This has, more or less, become a fact of baseball life these days.
But I don’t know if anyone’s ever asked whether this is ultimately a good thing, or whether it warrants amendment of some sort. Sure, MLB and the MLBPA agreed on a change to being able to option players on the 40-man roster in a single year, eventually exposing them to waivers if they get yo-yoed between the minors and majors too much. But option years remain as they are: three, with specific injury-related edge cases granting a fourth.
The current system basically puts a cap on how much teams can leverage organizational depth with regard to certain players. It also combines with the Rule 5 Draft (which puts a clock on adding players to the 40-man roster, lest they be snatched away) to prevent teams from hoarding organizational talent that could probably play in the majors on another club.
I don’t have any solutions in mind — I don’t even know if a solution is “needed” beyond what already exists. But I think of a lot of MLB arcana in terms of, “Could I explain this to my kid in a way that makes sense” or even whether a non-baseball-interested friend would think of whatever the topic is as off-putting or not, and I think the idea of teams heading out of Spring Training with not their best roster, but the one that tiptoes around option year considerations, probably qualifies. Anyway, what say you — how would you change the MLB option years system, if at all?