Inspecting how the service clock could impact imminent changes to the Rockies’ roster

DENVER – With the Colorado Rockies feeling the loss of the production of Charlie Blackmon, who has missed four of the last five games with back and right quad tightness, questions have been raised about what the club can, or should, do if they need help in the outfield.

The struggles thus far from Mike Tauchman, who is still searching for his first hit, and Gerardo Parra, who is batting .211 in a small sample size, has added fuel to the conversation, especially with some exciting talent just a phone call away at Triple-A.

Both Raimel Tapia and David Dahl have shown promise at the MLB level and while Dahl’s recent trip to the 7-day DL (stomach virus) likely takes him out of the current calculations, the call might have to be Tapia either way.

The Rockies are now in a position where not only do they need to make sure Dahl can stay healthy and on the field but also where giving him a bit more time in the minors just makes too much sense from a business standpoint to be ignored.

That’s right. We’re talking about service clocks.

Our man in Albuquerque, Patrick Lyons, reports:

A player earns one-year of service with 172 days on an MLB roster. There are 187 days in the regular season. Dahl has 1.007 years days of service time, so he needs 165 days to end the season with 2.000 years of service.

If the Rockies want him to end with 1.171 years of service, thus, earning them an extra year of control, then they should only allow him 164 days of service time this year.

This means it’s just a matter of out counting down the first 22 days of the season to find the date the Rockies would call him up. That would be April 20th. 

Service time begins on Opening Day and runs through the final game of the season. If there is a tie-breaker, then this will count towards a player’s service time. If the Rockies don’t want to be in the unfortunate situation of losing a year of Dahl because of a Game 163, they may push back his call-up an extra day to April 21st.

We discovered a few other interesting wrinkles to the service-time game related to non-Dahl players as well.

Particularly, Colorado is in an interesting situation with rookie Ryan McMahon. While his start on Wednesday afternoon might suggest that he is finally adapting to his role in MLB, if his struggles continue, there might be multiple reasons to send him back to Triple-A for some additional seasoning.

Again, Lyons explains:

The Rockies may be jeopardizing control over McMahon’s age 29 season by having him sit the bench. He has 0.039 years.days of service time (so 39 days) and if they wanted to get an extra year of control, they would have needed to wait to call him up in late May after 55 days (or 56, to be safe). It could have been difficult to wait that long, but considering that he’s not being used in a starting role, it’s an interesting decision.

While not likely to be especially impactful, the Rockies do have another cutoff date coming up very soon:

Tom Murphy has 1.004 service time and if the Rockies want an extra year of control over his age 33 season, they’d have to wait until April 18th, the day game after a night game in Pittsburgh, to call him up. This seems inconsequential as we’re talking about a catcher’s age 33 season.

And, in the category of highly interesting but remarkably improbable, Lyons provides us with this final note:

The only other interesting angle from this would be the potential to demote Valaika and/or Marquez to gain an extra year of control. Valaika probably wouldn’t be worth such manipulation, but it would be for Marquez. One idea is if Marquez has a few consecutive bad starts and Jeff Hoffman emerges healthy from his rehab starts, they could send down German to gain control over his age 28 season. However, this would mean 48 days in the minors in order to accomplish this.

At this point, Marquez looks like he is just fine on the mound as long as he isn’t pitching in the snow or getting ejected from the game.

I don’t see him struggling enough for a move like this to be justifiable from a Major League competitive standpoint but locking in a guy with his talent through his age 28 season at a position that can get really expensive all while trying to sign Nolan Arenado to a long-term deal without torpedoing the roster around him… is worth considering.