All in the name of inventory
Baseball teams try to win games.* To win games, you need good players. And since there is a roster size limit, you can’t just stuff your team full of an infinite amount of great players—even the Dodgers must abide by the 26-man active roster rule. Therefore, you would think that baseball teams break Spring Training with the best and highest quality roster available to them.
*Unless your team is owned by John Fisher, in which case, well, I hope you like gambling, scorpions, and sadness, in that order.
But pretty much none of the 30 MLB teams do that. Each year, just about every team usually makes at least one odd Opening Day roster decision that leaves some fans scratching their heads. Kansas City will almost certainly do that this year, even.
So, why would they do that? Why not break the camp with the best roster? While this might be a simple question for some of you, it is a calculus quiz for many others. Let’s get that answered.
MLB roster basics
MLB teams bring a 26-man roster, also known as the active roster, to every game. Players cannot appear in those games unless they are a member of that 26-man roster (or 27-man roster in the case of doubleheader days).
Those players are drawn from a broader pool called the 40-man roster. This roster of players is the eligible group from which teams can compose their 26-man roster—in other words, you can be a member of the 40-man roster without being on the 26-man roster, but not vice versa.
Every player on the 40-man roster has three Minor League options. An option is burned when a player is sent to the Minor Leagues at any point in the year he is on the 40-man roster. This can occur in the middle of the season or at the very beginning of a season if a player added to the 40-man roster in the offseason does not make the 26-man active roster out of Spring Training. Only one option is burned per year, meaning that a player can be freely sent to the Minor Leagues on three separate seasons.
Once a player has exhausted all of their options, a team cannot send them to the Minor Leagues without being designated for assignment first. Other teams can claim that player and sign him at that point.
How does this play out in real life?
You better think like a warehouse manager, because there’s an important term that is most important during Spring Training: inventory.
Teams usually prioritize keeping as many players as they value within the organization for as long as possible because baseball is a war of attrition that lasts half the year and 162 games at minimum. And since teams cannot send a player to the Minor Leagues every year without risking exposing said player to waivers and potentially losing him to another team entirely, they are liable to keep those players on the big league roster over players who can be sent to the minor leagues and recalled later.
Why on earth would teams do this if it makes their on-field product worse? It’s simple: the Opening Day roster isn’t everything. Last year, 16 different Royals hitters accrued 100 or more plate appearances, and 18 different pitchers tossed 15 or more innings. During the course of a year, most of a 40-man roster plays at least a few games for the MLB squad.
Which Royals could be affected?
Two notable Royals players are out of Minor League options entirely: Nelson Velazquez and Nick Pratto.
This works in their favor. Neither Velazquez or Pratto have particularly moving arguments for being included on the 26-man roster in a vacuum. Both are limited defensively, are slow runners, and have been mediocre hitters at the big league level. However, both have shown flashes of skill, and if neither makes the 26-man roster the team will likely lose both of them.
On the other side of the coin are a quartet of players with options remaining, a fact which is working against their inclusion on the active roster: Tyler Gentry, Drew Waters, Joey Wiemer, and Nick Loftin. All four players have flaws, but they will have to turn in an incredible Spring Training run to force their way onto a roster when all could be sent to Triple-A Omaha without any long-term consequences.
Additionally, the concept of “Minor League options” does not apply to players signed on Minor League deals like Cavan Biggio. Such players often have clauses in their contracts that allows them to become free agents if not added to an Opening Day roster, and many others will simply decide to become free agents if they make it through the waiver process.
Who is going to be on the bench?
The Royals have a strong pitching staff where the best players are going to end up on the team, options be damned. But it’s entirely possible, even likely, that the bench is going to look funky.
No matter how good guys like Loftin or Waters play, I think that one of the Velazquez/Pratto pair makes the team, and all indications are that Biggio does as well. That leaves one other player, which is likely to be Dairon Blanco if he’s healthy.