Arizona, Florida Complex League Schedules Changing For 2024

The change was described by one farm director as a further effect of the new 165-player roster limits for the domestic affiliated leagues. Some teams expressed concern about having enough pitchers to fill the 600 innings needed if the leagues’ seasons were largely played after the draft. Teams are often very cautious about using their draftee pitchers for more than the very lightest of workloads, and some pitchers don’t ever get on a mound after the draft.

Teams that fielded one complex league team in addition to their four full-season clubs could cover those innings, even if they had a number of pitchers who were not pitching, by utilizing the extra roster spots within the previous 180-player roster limits. With tighter rosters, having a group of pitchers who count to the 165-player roster limits who weren’t getting into games would potentially cause problems.

The change to an earlier schedule may provide one additional benefit, especially for players in Arizona. The ACL earned the nickname “Fire League” because it is played in one of the hottest locales in the U.S. during the hottest time of the year. The new schedule will replace games in August, where the average high in Phoenix is 104 degrees Fahrenheit with games in May, where the average high is 95 degrees.

While the league will predominantly feature international signees making the jump from the Dominican Summer League, it could also serve as an intermediate step for later-round high school picks who are not ready to transition directly to full-season baseball in their first full pro season.

The 2024 MLB draftees who don’t head out to Class A will now instead spend their first season in the complex working out or playing in unofficial games. Multiple farm directors said that the exact plans are not finalized, but they expect that some teams will set up unofficial games against other teams in their area. Some described the model as a U.S. version of the “Tricky League” that used to exist in the Dominican Summer League.

Until the coronavirus pandemic prompted a change in the signing deadline from July 2 to Jan. 15, teams used to have their international signees play in an unofficial league in the Dominican Republic against similar players from other teams, widely known as the “Tricky League.”

Teams will be able to play opponents each week in these unofficial games, but since the games are unofficial, they can roll innings if a pitcher gets in trouble, and if a team runs out of arms, it can simply call the game early. Those options are not available in an official league game.

Setting up these unofficial leagues among interested teams will likely be quite easy in Arizona, where all 15 teams are within easy driving distance of each other. In Florida, where there are a small group of teams on the East Coast and a larger number on the West Coast, that may be more difficult.

Similar to the alternate sites during the pandemic, there will also be questions about resolving data sharing and scout access.

A potential factor in the schedule change is a shift in how teams pay players. Until recently, numerous teams didn’t pay players when they were in extended spring training, which meant that teams saved money by keeping players in extended spring.

But now, players are paid whether they are playing in official games or working in spring training or extended spring training—a $185 million settlement of a minimum wage lawsuit in 2022 assured that. So there is no financial advantage for teams to hold extended spring training instead of actual games.

The switch to an earlier season came out of discussions held among farm directors and other team officials last year. There were proposals to turn the Complex Leagues into split-season leagues with longer schedules. That would have enabled players who had spent the spring at MLB team’s spring training complexes playing in non-official extended spring training games to start their seasons much earlier. Then the draftees would arrive to play in official games after the draft wrapped up. Both sides of the split season would have likely been shorter than full-season leagues, helping to allay concerns about filling the innings with draftee pitchers.

A relatively arcane rule derailed that proposal. Teams can get a fourth option for a major league player who has used all three options, provided the player has fewer than five seasons in the major and minor leagues at the point where the player runs out of options. A season in the complex leagues does not currently meet the “90 days requirement” in Rule 7(c) of the Major League Rules to count as a season. However, if the Complex League season were extended further, it would fulfill that requirement, and some players who may now receive a fourth option might not meet the requirements.

Now instead, there’s another arcane rule that could be affected by this change. Under MLB Major League Rules 5 (c), if a player signs a contract and is assigned to a team whose championship season is already complete, that season does not count toward Rule 5 draft status. This year’s MLB Draft signing date is slated to be Aug. 1.

Technically, any player who signed after July 25 who was assigned directly to the Complex Leagues (and didn’t get promoted to Class A during the season) would not accrue an official year for Rule 5 purposes until 2025. That would mean that a college signee would not have to be added to the 40-man roster to be protected from the Rule 5 draft until after the 2028 season was complete instead of after the 2027 season. Similarly, a high school draftee who signs before his 19th birthday would become eligible in 2029 instead of 2028.

But MLB plans to close that loophole by requiring players who sign after July 25 to be assigned initially to a full-season club and not allowing them to be assigned to a team whose season is over.