Service Time Implications For Trout, Richards

After the Angels spent $331.5 million on one day (December 8 signing of Albert Pujols and C.J. Wilson for you stoners here waiting for the next Halo tournament to start), you might not think the deep-pocketed Angels would care that much about service time issues for their top prospects. And they might not. But considering how Mike Trout and Garrett Richards are kind-of-sort-of blocked at the moment, it gives us an idea of when the Angels might wait to call the kids up. Of course, an injury to Torii Hunter or Vernon Wells could throw any of this out the window for Trout. If Jerome Williams is awful in Spring Training, the same can be said for Richards.

Thanks to the fine people at MLBTradeRumors, we have the following chart with key dates (or roundabouts) for some of the game’s top prospects. I’ll be referring to it a lot. It’s pretty self explanatory. Real quick though, the first date is the one that would give the team an extra year of control over the player and the second date keeps the player from getting a fourth trip of arbitration.

By these estimations, the Angels would be better financially served to call Trout up in early July and Richards in early June. I doubt the Super Two status will come into play and I can’t imagine Trout playing in Salt Lake until September anyway. I also don’t think either date matters for Richards. If Williams falters, the Angels don’t have many other options for their fifth starter.

Anything can happen as Spring Training is just underway. Well, anything but Jeff Mathis becoming a good hitter. Just because you’re in Canada now doesn’t put you out of my reach, Jeff. *flexes keyboard* From all of the general manager speak coming out of Jerry Dipoto, I wouldn’t be surprised to see the Angels wait until July to call up Trout. Bummer. My MLB.TV subscription auto-renewed and I can’t figure out how to add MiLB.TV. Probably for the best, I still need time to go to bars and tell women I’m a race car driver.