Postseason Eligibility Rules (AKA "Yes, Moncada is eligible")

[SumnerH]

The official rules on postseason eligibility are posted over at the .com site.

Everyone on the team's 40-man roster (and DL/bereavement/etc) is eligible for the postseason, whether or not they were on the Major League roster on Aug 31.

Any other player who is in the organization before Aug 31 may replace an injured player for playoff eligibility. Since almost every team has several players on the DL, this effectively means that every player in the club's organization can be put on the postseason roster if desired.

So someone like Henry Owens or Joe Kelly who is already on the 40-man is playoff eligible without any other actions.

Someone like Yoan Moncada requires replacing someone on the DL, but that's not a real restriction in practic--in the case of the Sox, we have Josh Rutledge, Brandon Workman, Pablo Sandoval, Carson Smith, and Blake Swihart on the 60-day DL, so we could easily shift 5 players who weren't on the 40-man into the postseason roster if we wanted to (which we don't), and more if we used 15-day DL folks.


Also:
Each team may use 25 players in each postseason series. The series roster is set at the beginning of the series and may not be changed mid-series, unless there's an injury that happens after the series starts and the Commissioner approves a replacement be allowed.

 

[ookami7m]

Of note is that should an injury replacement be made the replaced player is ineligible for the next series.

 

[cannonball 1729]

Of note is that should an injury replacement be made the replaced player is ineligible for the next series.

And a pitcher must be replaced by a pitcher, a non-pitcher replaced by a non-pitcher.

 

[ookami7m]

I'm wrong

 

[cannonball 1729]

Pretty sure that restriction actually no longer exists but unable to look it up at work

I thought they dropped it from the K-Rod loophole but not the mid-series injury replacement. I found this article from last year that seems to confirm it still being part of the rule:

http://www.espn.com/blog/new-york/mets/post/_/id/109921/full-primer-on-playoff-roster-eligibility

 

[SumnerH]

I thought they dropped it from the K-Rod loophole but not the mid-series injury replacement. I found this article from last year that seems to confirm it still being part of the rule:

http://www.espn.com/blog/new-york/mets/post/_/id/109921/full-primer-on-playoff-roster-eligibility

That's right (and that's the article I linked in the OP).

EDIT: Until I changed it to the .com site. http://sonsofsamhorn.com/baseball/baseball-101/glossary/sosh-glossary-mlb-playoff-roster-eligibility

 

[Hank Scorpio]

Do postseason games count towards a player's service time, and if the Red Sox had waited until the postseason to add Moncada (or any other player) to the roster for the first time, would it count as using an option?

 

[Red(s)HawksFan]

Do postseason games count towards a player's service time, and if the Red Sox had waited until the postseason to add Moncada (or any other player) to the roster for the first time, would it count as using an option?

No, postseason games do not count toward service time. For an example, look at Kansas City's Raul Mondesi. He did not spend a day on the big league roster in 2015 but was added to the post-season roster and got an AB in the World Series. His service time was at 0.000 at the start of this season.

Also, it does not use an option to add a player to the roster. An option is "used" when a player who is on the 40-man roster is not on the 25-man big league roster or the DL (i.e. in the minors). So no, adding a player to the roster for the post-season only would not use an option, but it would force the team to spend options to have that player return to the minor leagues in subsequent seasons.