Change League Rookie Rules?
While we're at it, Steve and I were talking about how hard it's been this offseason to try to figure out if a player qualifies as a rookie or not. And yes, baseball reference has now updated players for 2026 and will tell you if a player is a rookie or not. But towards the end of last season and end of last year, there's nowhere for us to track service time. It's complicated and annoying.
So I propose what we did in hockey league by making cut and dry rookie rules that are simple.
130 AB's or less is a rookie. 50 innings pitched or less is a rookie. That's it.
Several other teams have texted me that they will vote yes on this so it has the support to put it up for a vote.
But before we vote, for those that would not be in favor of doing this, let's give them a chance, if they want, to post on why we shouldn't vote to approve this.
I have never had an issue with tracking it or using baseball reference.
Having a different standard that is different from MLB is confusing. I think not following NHL rules in hockey is confusing because nothing you look up is accurate.
If you are worried about rookie status at the end of the season, is that just because you make a billion trades like Chris does, lol.
This is just fixing something that is not broken. We've been fine for more than a decade using MLB rules and looking at the roster.
Why fix what is not broken and worked for years? Keep it the same.
i don't have issue with the current MLB rule
I will give an example where the MLB Rookie rule kind of screws you because it isn't consistent.
Robert Gasser has thrown 33.2 IP in his career.
28 IP in 2024
5.2 IP in 2025
But because of days spent on the roster in 25' he lost Rookie eligibility despite being under 50IP.
The weird part of the MLB rule is the ABs & the IP are straight forward but as an owner of a prospect its impossible to track "Service Time" Days to plan. ( If someone has a resource for this let me know by the way.)
Basically, this change is just getting rid of the dumb invisible part of what MLB does.
Of all the things that MLB does dumb this is not the dumbest on the list. But it would be a small tweak to make prospect management simpler.
baseball reference lists rookie status. I had a similar guy one time and double checked his active days to be sure they were correct. I have not found them to have an error, but it's possible they could be wrong on a service time. at some point
Ted: Baseball Reference does list the rookie status but the issue is they update it usually in January. So the issue is towards the end of the season and in offseason towards end of the year, the rookie status doesn't say anything about 2026.
And they list the service time but it's still complicated if not impossible to figure out whether prospects will keep rookie eligibility going forward. For example, this is what Baseball Reference lists for Robert Gasser's service time.
Service Time (01/2026): 1.136 • Arb Eligible: 2028 • Free Agent: 2031
For me, I just have no clue what to make of the 1.136 part.
So the rule change is mainly to cut out the service time part. The # of AB's and innings pitched match the MLB rookie rules.
at the current moment it clearly says Gasser has exceeded rookie status. Not sure what it said in the fall.
Yes, what Baseball Reference says right now isn't the issue. It's the lack of information we have in the fall that's been the problem