The Reserve List Submission, with Seconds to Spare

The submission of a Major League teams reserve list always receives some off-season press, most notably which players got added to the 40 man roster (or perhaps, which players didn't get added to the 40 man roster, leaving them exposed to selection in the ML phase of the Rule 5 draft).

Internally, for ML Front Offices, it is a long process that involves a lot of discussions, arguments and decisions that tend to get made at the last possible minute.

The 40 man additions are generally made by the heads of the Baseball Ops Department (President of Baseball Ops/GM/Asst. GM...etc), with input from the Player Development Staff and Analytics department. There are a lot of details to account for when adding a player. How far away from the ML's is he? Will he exhaust his minor league options before he is ML ready? If required, which player is being taken off the 40 man roster to make room for the new player? Where does the new addition rank on our 40 (if you sign future MLB free agents, is this new addition going to be one of the first players taken off the 40 man)? All of those considerations (plus many more) have to be discussed and weighed before a player is added to the 40 man roster.

Additionally, tough decisions have to be made for which players belong on the AAA roster and which players belong on the AA roster. The distinction is huge. Players on the AAA roster must be selected in the ML phase of the rule 5 draft. Players on the AA roster can be selected in the AAA phase of the draft (essentially meaning an organization loses that player for a small fee). Baseball America has a good primer here - https://www.baseballamerica.com/stories/explaining-the-rule-5-draft/

Although players taken off the AA roster rarely make an impact in the ML, it is never fun to lose a player that a PD staff has worked with for 4+ years. I can promise you, regardless of how poor the player has performed, there is a PD staff member somewhere who believes that player can be a ML player.

My personal experience with the reserve list submission has certainly caused some grey hairs, most notably our 2021 submission. As is common, final decisions on the 40 man additions plus the AAA/AA decisions were made about 30 minutes before the deadline. The administration requirement from MLB for a clubs reserve list submission is all moves must be entered in the MLB internal transaction system (which is called EBIS). Those moves are then approved by a MLB front office official. Once they are approved, you print off all of your minor league rosters, sign and date them and email them as a PDF to a designated email address. That email must be delivered before the deadline or it will not be recognized as official.

In 2021, with 30 minutes to go before the 1pm deadline, I received the final rosters. I quickly went into EBIS, entered all of the moves and waited for MLB to approve them. Usually MLB approves these transactions quickly, especially when it is near a deadline. However, for whatever reason, these transactions were not getting approved quickly. Five minutes passed, then ten and then 15. We were now about 12 minutes away from the deadline and I started to get nervous. I sent a group text that included a few MLB officials and a Giants employee asking "can our moves be approved?" The reply from MLB? "System isn't responding correctly, you will need to enter each move by hand on your roster."

Now it was time to panic. We did not have a printer set-up at this time in our home office so I had to print all rosters to a PDF, use a PDF editing software and manually cross out players that were on the wrong roster and add them to the correct roster. There were about a dozen moves that had to be handled this way (including the official addition of Ramos and Rodriguez to the 40 man roster). The process was time consuming and the clock was ticking. I got all of the moves entered, signed and dated and emailed them off. The time on the clock? 12:59 and 42 seconds. The rosters were submitted 18 seconds before the deadline. What would have happened if they were late? I have no idea and I am glad we didn't find out. I would assume the moves would not have been recognized as official by MLB. In hindsight, with the rule 5 draft being cancelled this year, it would have caused a lot of restless nights for no reason.

Deadlines tend to spur action. In this case, the action came down to the last second.