Quote:
Originally Posted by Cod
The way I understand the rule is a player can only be DFA'd and outrighted w/o their consent once in their career, regardless of service time. For example, if a rookie gets outrighted in his first year, then if he's outrighted again in year 3, he can refuse the assignment. Keep in mind, being optioned to the minors and DFA'd are two completely different discussions.
I'll have to do some more research.
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You're correct that players can only be outrighted once. I'll try to clarify: my post was referencing players who have a long term contract but whose teams no longer want them on the 40 man roster.
If a player gets a chance to refuse an assignment, and has 5+ years of service time, the player can refuse the assignment and still receive his contract in full. If a player gets a chance to refuse an assignment, but has less than 5 years of service time, the player must accept the assignment to still be eligible to receive his contract in full. If he were to refuse the assignment he would forfeit his remaining contract.
Keep in mind that this is not something that comes up often. Not many players receive long term contracts and turn bad enough to want to release before their fifth year of service. Off the top of my head Rusney, Craig and Jon Singleton are the only ones I can think of that this has come up with (although I'm sure there are more).