Quote:
Originally Posted by brian_msbc
When to call up top prospects
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1) when they are ready
2) when it makes sense for your team to do it
The reason it's beneficial to wait to bring up a prospect is that:
-If you bring a player up on opening day 2020, they will be a free agent after the 2025 season
-If you wait, they will be a free agent after the 2026 season.
Another benefit to waiting is that, if the player still has room do develop, they'll be more developed when you do bring them up. Just to make a very oversimplified example. Say you call this player up now, and they are good enough to hit 100 home runs over the next six seasons until they become a free agent. If you wait a year, and they develop more, they will be able to hit 120 home runs over the six years. You get more production over the same time.
A disadvantage is that by taking away a year of MLB time, they'll have a shorter career and less time to compile career numbers. Imagine this player misses the career home run record by 1 home run and you waited a season to bring them up.
Also, these are just digital representations of players, but with real life human players, teams are taking money away from the players by bringing them up later in the season. And by delaying their time to free agency, they are risking tens of hundreds of millions of dollars of potential earnings.