Atlanta Braves Morning Chop: T-Rex, Roster Rules, and Ruminations

The Atlanta Braves can’t even get routine roster transactions correctly

MIKE AXISA / CBSSPORTS.COM

Thanks to one of Major League Baseball’s many weird roster rules, the Braves will be forced to play with a 24-man roster Sunday afternoon.

According to MLB.com’s Mark Bowman, Atlanta planned to call up utility man Emilio Bonifacio to add some speed to the bench, but MLB informed them he is not eligible to be called up until Saturday. Bowman explains:

"“It’s sort of a convoluted rule from MLB,” Braves assistant general manager Billy Ryan said. “Because we signed [Bonifacio] to a Major League contract and then he was released at the end of Spring Training and he subsequently signed with us and not another club, we can’t select him to the big leagues until 30 days after his release date.” Bonifacio was designated for assignment on April 2 (the final day of Spring Training) and then released by the Braves on April 6. He then signed a Minor League deal with the Braves on April 10 and spent the past few weeks playing for Gwinnett. He will not be eligible to be placed on Atlanta’s roster before Saturday."

The rule may be silly, but it is pretty straight forward. The problem? The Braves had already sent down reliever Chris Withrow, who left the team. By time they learned they could not activate Bonifacio right away, it was too late to call someone else from Triple-A.

…

Ed. note:  the headline is a bit harsh (yet wasn’t the only one), but yes, this is a rule that almost nobody knows about (including me).  Certainly it escaped the attention of John Coppolella on Sunday morning.  The most bizarre part is that this rule actually hurts the player in this case.  It was designed to prevent teams from jerking around a player by punishing the club (the idea being that you can’t just release a guy and his contract and then re-sign him cheaper to save some money).  However, that wasn’t the case here:  Bonifacio got his money back in early April, as almost all major league veteran deals are now ‘guaranteed’, so there’s nothing lost here.  The difference now is that he’s on a minor league deal, so he misses out on a week or so of major league money from this non-callup.

But at the same time, the Braves were also without the services of Bonifacio or any other 25th man on Sunday… and almost needed him as the game went into extra innings.  16 players were used, 11 of them being position players.  The only one left was A.J. Pierzynski – who had to be held in reserve in case of injury to Tyler Flowers.

So:  we’ll see what they end up doing for tonight as Mike Foltynewicz is called up to start against the Mets.  I bet they get it right this time.

Next: More Calls for Fredi's Head