New 165-Player Minor League Roster Limit Creates Consternation For Farm Directors

MLB this year reduced the number of active minor league players an organization can have under contract from 180 to 165. The 15-player reduction applies to organizations’ domestic minor league rosters and does not include Dominican Summer League players. 

Even the old limit of 180 players, which was enacted in 2021, was a dramatic change from the previous model. Before the pandemic, an organization could effectively roster as many minor league players as it wanted by adding affiliates—and thus roster spots—to its farm system. 

The Yankees in 2019, for example, had four minor league clubs below the full-season level: two Rookie-level Gulf Coast League affiliates, one in the Rookie-advanced Appalachian League and a fourth in the short-season Class A New York-Penn League. Today, the Yankees are permitted only one such domestic short-season club, their Florida Complex League affiliate. 

Before MLB took over the minor leagues following the 2020 season, organizations with more minor league clubs could roster and develop more players than those with fewer affiliates. A lot more. 

Today, the scope of the minor leagues has been reduced overall. A 40-round draft has been cut to 20 rounds. Short-season and Rookie-advanced leagues are eliminated. The total roster limit has been scaled back, twice.

The new 165-player roster limit was an initiative driven by Major League Baseball and MLB owners. MLB has agreed in recent years to significantly raise the salaries it pays minor league players. Minor league players also receive guaranteed in-season housing and are paid during spring training and at other times where they work at team facilities outside of the regular season.

But as part of the first-ever minor league players’ Collective Bargaining Agreement, MLB held to a very firm line. If it was going to pay players more, it wanted to make sure it had the right to pay fewer players.

That minor league CBA agreed to last spring allows MLB to have the option to cut the active roster limit to 165 after one year. MLB has exercised that option. 

Even with the reduced player limit, each MLB organization has enough roster spots to ensure that it can field four full-season clubs and one domestic Rookie complex team. The Giants and D-backs even managed to field two complex league teams with the 180-player limits last year, so it’s disingenuous to say that this will keep teams from fielding full rosters.

But what keeps farm directors and pitching coordinators on edge are worries about how they will handle the unexpected moments that crop up. The previous system had enough roster spots to ensure every organization had some “slack in the system” as multiple people described it. There were always a few hitters and pitchers available to plug in when unexpected circumstances arose.

So if a team had a run of bad injury luck with sprained ankles, jammed fingers, broken hamates and tight hamstrings, there were always a few players who could be sent to fill in until everyone returned to health.

A pitcher who blows out his elbow or a shortstop who tears an ACL can be put on the 60-day injured list and won’t count toward the 165-player limit. Each team can place up to 15 players on the 60-day injured list and sign a new player as a replacement to an active roster spot for each long-term injury.

But players on the seven-day IL still count against the limit of 165. So do players on the temporarily inactive list. Farm directors say a run of minor injuries will be a lot tougher to handle. How can they ensure that their Double-A team has a starter ready to fill in if they don’t have reinforcements ready to go?

“You’re stressing me out right now just talking about it,” a farm director said.

The biggest impact will come on the mound, where teams face a math problem. 

Every team has to figure out how to fill roughly 4,800 innings in full-season leagues—1,300 at Triple-A, 1,200 at Double-A and 1,150 at each Class A level. And then they need another 600 in the Arizona or Florida Complex League.

Organizations have to spread an estimated 5,400 innings among 80 to 90 pitchers. If a team rosters 90 pitchers, it needs to average 60 innings per pitcher. If it uses 80, it needs each to average 67.5 innings.

That seems like a reasonable expectation. After all, if one pitcher throws 100 innings and another throws 50, the organization is covered with an average of 75 innings between those two pitchers.

But the math quickly becomes more difficult. Drafted pitchers count toward the 165-player limit once they sign, whether they pitch or not, and nowadays, they don’t often pitch in their first pro summers.

In 2023, teams drafted and signed 318 pitchers in the 20-round draft. Of those 318 draftees, 123 (39%) never got into a game. Of the ones who did pitch, just 50 (16%) threw 10 or more innings. And just six (2%) threw 20 or more innings. No drafted pitcher threw 30 innings.

So the average organization will add 10 pitchers in late July, and all 10 will count toward their 165-player limit yet will barely pitch at all.

And the young pitchers who throw in the complex leagues likely won’t come close to logging 70 innings either. Just 118 pitchers in the Arizona or Florida Complex Leagues threw 30 or more innings, and just nine hit the 50-inning mark.

With MLB moving the Rookie complex league schedules up a month—they now run from May through July—some of those ACL and FCL pitchers may add additional innings in Low-A in the second half of the season. But for the majority of the 20 to 25 pitchers ticketed for the complex leagues, they will be expected to throw 25 to 40 innings.

If 20 or more pitchers are required to cover the 600 innings in the complex leagues, and then an additional 10 draftees will join the roster midseason but won’t pitch, teams will need the rest of their pitcher roster slots to average 70 or more innings to fill all the full-season innings.

Anyone who has taken note of the ever-decreasing workloads of minor league pitchers in recent years will understand why teams are a little concerned about this change. 

Just 103 minor league pitchers threw 120 or more innings last season, and just 660 logged 70 or more innings in the full-season minors. That’s 22 pitchers per organization who handled the workload that will have to become the norm in 2024.

Last year there were 322 relievers in Class A and Double-A—roughly 10 per organization—with 30 or more appearances and an average of four or fewer outs per appearance. With the new roster rules, the one-inning reliever may become an endangered species at all levels but Triple-A, where relievers are often stashed to be ready to jump to the majors. 

“I don’t think one-inning guys will exist any more (in the minors),” one team executive said. “You will have to lengthen out guys. Everyone is going to have to be capable of pitching multiple innings.”

A pitching coordinator with another organization agreed.

“We’re going to have more multi-inning relievers. You can’t afford to have a one-inning specialist,” he said.

Every source consulted also agreed that teams are unlikely to significantly alter how they limit the workloads for their younger pitchers. Teams will still likely hold those pitchers to strict innings and pitch limits with skipped starts and other methods to keep their workloads low. The rest of the roster will have to make up the difference.

“We still need to be smart with the guys they need to be smart with,” one pitching coordinator said. “We’re going to ask more out of certain types of pitchers. They’ll be shuffled (between affiliates). A part of the roster will be a revolving door. It will probably resemble the haves being treated differently than the have-nots.”

That likely means that some organizational soldiers will be jumping from team to team all season.

“Someone will go back and forth between High-A and Double-A 10 times this year. Those are the things you hate to do,” one farm director said.

This could end up being an opportunity for some pitchers, because they will get more innings and multiple times through the lineup to better develop. It also could lead to an emphasis on being more pitch-efficient.

“This game is about adapting,” the pitching coordinator said. “Players will adapt. Organizations will adapt. But when you change a system, getting to the point of positive adaptation will be messy.”