Well I guess...
Under the old system a team could hold a player down for 2 weeks and then control them for like 6.9 seasons. That's pretty perverse. The small amount of time you had to hold a player down meant even GOOD teams often held down ELITE prospects. Kind of gross!
Or they could hold them down for like 6-8 weeks to avoid them being a Super 2 player, then control them for like 6.6 seasons. Cheaper teams would do this.
Under the new system you should no longer see the GOOD teams hold down ELITE prospects because:
- there is a positive incentive for rostering your elite prospects from day 1, being the draft pick if they win awards
- there is a negative incentive for calling up your prospects a month or two into the year because if they win awards they get a full year of service time. Meaning you get the player for only ~5.8 seasons!
Now, to your point... when I first read these rules before 2022 my thought was also that it would chill early to mid season callups for elite prospects. My thought was that teams would want to avoid that "worst case scenario" at all costs so the elite prospects would either make the opening day roster or be held down until mid-summer when they no longer had any chance of winning awards. I thought this would create a scenario where elite prospects are controlled for 6 full seasons or maybe 6.5 seasons at the most. And a good chunk would be controlled for like 6.2 seasons, because if they have less than 60 days of service time in year 1 so they maintain rookie status they are eligible for that bonus pick in year 2 if they are on the opening day roster and win awards.
One of the weird things is that to be eligible for the award pick, the prospects need to be top 100 ranked. That's kind of f***ing stupid that ESPN, BA, and MLB Pipeline rankings all of a sudden matter for real baseball stuff. I hate that.
I think I need to change my opinion a bit. I think with so many moving parts to the scheme, teams will just handle this differently and uniquely.
1. teams like the Rays will try to min/max and you will see them call up their top prospects at efficient and ideal times
2. most teams will probably just focus on development while avoiding the big negative outcomes
Like the Pirates calling up Oneil Cruz in June this year. That gave him 110 service time days. He could not have realistically won any awards in 87 games so they were almost certain to not get screwed over. So they chose to control him for 6.5 years and just give him 87 big league games in 2022 in order to help him develop.