How many days can a player be on the 15 day disabled list?

digicat

When a player is put on the 15 day disabled list, he can't come back BEFORE 15 days are up. Also, according to the baseball rules, once a player begins his rehab assignment, position players must be activated within 20 days, and pitchers must be activated within 30 days.

However, I didn't see anything that specified if there was a limit on how long a player could float around between the end of the initial 15 days and the start of his rehab assignment.


The Giants just announced that Barry Zito will begin his rehab assignment in the minors on Monday, which would be the 50th day he's been on the "15 day disabled list." And, if the Giants decide to make him rehab for the full 30 days, Zito could have been on the "15 day disabled list" for 80 days!

rbdjr1

<< <i>When a player is put on the 15 day disabled list, he can't come back BEFORE 15 days are up. Also, according to the baseball rules, once a player begins his rehab assignment, position players must be activated within 20 days, and pitchers must be activated within 30 days.

However, I didn't see anything that specified if there was a limit on how long a player could float around between the end of the initial 15 days and the start of his rehab assignment.


The Giants just announced that Barry Zito will begin his rehab assignment in the minors on Monday, which would be the 50th day he's been on the "15 day disabled list." And, if the Giants decide to make him rehab for the full 30 days, Zito could have been on the "15 day disabled list" for 80 days! >>


Guess he must be considered "on the roster" of that minor league team?

lanemyer85

there are players that have gone down for the year in April and spent the entire year on the 15 day DL largely due to the lack of a salary cap. Most GMs will at least do the proper 'administrative thing' and place those guys on the 60 day DL, but since this isn't fantasy baseball with a limited number of DL slots, and the lack of a cap, it really doesn't matter. As you indicated, that player just can't return to the 25 man roster ahead of his given DL stint. If it were say the NHL where there is a hard cap, that injured player's cap hit wouldn't count against the active roster's cap so that team could bring up someone from the minors, or acquire someone in trade with the freed up salary cap space of a given injured player.

lanemyer85

I should add, players placed on the 15-day disabled list may be moved to the 60-day list at any time, but not vice versa.

Ecit to add; Also, the 15/60 Day DL stints can also be based the result of a team's active 40 man roster. So if a club needed to add a player to the 40 man roster, that's when the 60 Day DL stint usually comes into play for a longterm injured player. Obviously clubs don't have to worry so much about losing someone who is not on the 40 man roster during the season when the Rule 5 Draft is in early December.

digicat

I know that the 15 day DL can be used as a short-term fix for over-crowded rosters. I've seen the Giants do that plenty of times.


What's an example of a guy who stayed on the 15 day DL for a whole season? The only reason to do that, it seems to me, would be to store a player you don't want to release, but can't demote to the minors. However, I would think that the DL'ed player wouldn't like that, and would complain to the Players Association. A few years ago, the Giants DL'ed a vet to make room for another guy coming off the DL. The guy going on the DL got ticked off and said something like "I feel fine, but they told me that my leg hurts, so that's that. My leg hurts."

lanemyer85

Cubs P Angel Guzman (great arm, no health) went down in April and spent the year on the 15 Day DL. It was more of a case of the Cubs brass thinking he was only going to be out until June. He wasn't ready to come back so then that became the A/S Break and so on. He never threw one pitch again that year but they kept mis-diagnosing his shoulder weakness or he wasn't healing as quickly as they thought he would. As you said, one reason would be so a club could stash a player they didn't want to lose through waivers if that player was out of minor league options....or a club could just claim some phantom "Shoulder Inflammation" injury so they could send a pitcher who is out of options to Extended Spring Training to work through command yiffs or whatever a given player might need to work through that the club didn't want him to go through on a minor league assignment. For example, say when D.Willis was first starting to go through his control yiffs, you don't want to just demote him to AAA or lower and then have him lose all confidence by getting rolled by a bunch of scrub minor leaguers so you claim an injury and send him to camp to work with the guys who are rehabilitating or the recent 18 year old draftees that are in short season ball. As long as that player is on the 40 Man Roster, he accrues MLB service time towards FA whether he's on the 15 or 60 Day DL. So outside of playing time, there really isn't any reason for a player or Player's Asso. to get too bent out of shape over being placed on the DL even for a phantom injury. Most of the time the GM will try to work a trade to get rid of that guy, like the O's are currently doing with Jake Fox.