As a professional baseball player, you deal with a lack of autonomy throughout your career.  At the onset you don’t choose who you work for, they choose you.  You can’t request a transfer, but instead are subject to being traded.  If you don’t like your current situation, well, you can’t just up and leave and join another team that might present a better opportunity.  These situations are entirely unique to your chosen profession, but you deal with them nonetheless.  It’s simply part of the territory.  You’re forced to play the cards you’re dealt, but at the same time, you’re happy to have cards to play.  The one way to gain some limited freedom in our game is to reach free agency.  For the select few, that chance is just around the corner.

Reaching free agency is not a reality for the average player, unfortunately.  A player’s service time determines when they reach free agency.  Service time is literally how many days you have been on the big league roster.  Every day that service time clock ticks.  One.  Day.  At.  A.  Time.  It takes six full years of that clock ticking to be granted free agency.  Six years is a long time.  I made my debut in 2008 along with 238 other players that year.  Of those 238, only 58 of us earned enough service time to reach free agency, roughly 24%.

If you do happen to be one of the guys to make it, though, it’s rare to earn six years of service time over six consecutive seasons.  Players tend to shuffle from the big leagues to the minor leagues at the start of their careers, resulting in partial service time that counts toward your overall time.  It might take seven or eight seasons for a player to earn six years of service.  Throw in the two or three (and that’s on the short end) years in the minor leagues before reaching the bigs, and you’re looking at about ten years from the time a player is drafted until he can make any kind of decision that relates to his career.  And the same rules apply to everyone.  Perennial All-Stars have to wait just as long as tossed-around right handed middle relievers like myself.

Most players who reach free agency aren’t bombarded by all thirty teams, either.  Having ten teams courting you is actually a lot.  I was pumped that four or so teams were heavily involved once I reached free agency.  The teams calling also might not be the most personally desirable or ideal situations.  You could have family in a certain area that you’d like to be near, but have no teams interested for thousands of miles.  Maybe you’ve only been offered platoon roles when you’ve always been a regular starter.  Regardless of the options presented, it’s the presence of options at all that excites a player.

Now, the rules governing free agency aren’t unfair.  They are what they are. While baseball is a business, it’s an extremely unique business, especially as it relates to the players.  And know that when a player leaves your team as a free agent this off season, it’s nothing personal.  It’s just a decision he has probably been waiting ten years to make.

Burke Badenhop made his Major League debut on April 9, 2008 when he tossed a scoreless inning of relief for the Marlins. In the eight years that followed, he pitched 512 1/3 innings of 3.74 ERA ball with the Marlins, Rays, Brewers, Red Sox and Reds. He’s been a part of four trades (most notably the Miguel Cabrera/Dontrelle Willis blockbuster), tested Major League free agency and been in more than a dozen Major League and minor league clubhouses. We are thrilled to have Burke bring some of that unique perspective to MLB Trade Rumors. This is his third offering; he has recently written about the importance of September roster expansion and the experience of playing the spoiler.

From kindergarten through eighth grade I grew up in Greenville, North Carolina. Greenville is tucked away in the eastern part of the state, situated between Raleigh and the Atlantic Ocean. It’s home to lots of barbecue spots, tobacco fields, and East Carolina University. Despite North Carolina’s love affair with college basketball, baseball is big in Greenville. I grew up loving Little League Baseball and the Atlanta Braves.

My parents are both from Ohio and neither had too much of a rooting interest in one particular big league team. Even though the closest big league city to Greenville at the time was Baltimore, I didn’t consider cheering for a team from up north. Folks from Greenville definitely fancied themselves Southerners and Atlanta, not Baltimore, was a better fit. Throw in the convenience of watching every game on TBS and a Braves fan was born.

As it turns out, I picked a very opportunistic time to enter the fandom of my new team. In 1991, when I was eight years old, the Braves were in the midst of their ‘worst to first’ season. There was a lot to love as a kid about that Braves team. They had exciting young starting pitchers Steve Avery, Tom Glavine and John Smoltz. Their outfield had the speed of Otis Nixon, the power of Ron Gant and the all around amazing-ness of reigning NL Rookie of the Year David Justice. The middle infield featured scrappy fan favorites Rafael Belliard and Mark Lemke. They even had a guy, Deion Sanders, who played in the NFL! What more could a kid want?

Despite finishing in last place the year before, the Braves battled for supremacy in their division that summer with the Dodgers. My Dad and I would check the paper every morning hoping for a Dodger loss that would tighten the standings. We watched every game down the stretch as the Braves crept closer and closer to LA, finally overtaking them and clinching the division on the next to last day of the regular season.

If the drama of the regular season wasn’t enough for my eight-year-old nerves, the postseason surely put them to the test. The Braves would win the NLCS in seven games and faced the Minnesota Twins in what most people would argue was the greatest World Series of all time. Since I was only eight, I wasn’t allowed to stay up late and see the finish of each game. I’d typically watch until the fourth or fifth inning before heading to bed. To add to the intrigue, before he left for work the next morning, my dad would write the score to the game on my bathroom mirror with a bar of soap. Just like the NLCS, that World Series went seven games. I raced to my bathroom the morning after Game 7 and couldn’t believe what I saw. Braves-0 Twins-1 10 innings. A World Series was obviously what I had hoped for, but I think that loss truly made me love the Braves even more. From then on, I called the Braves mine. That commitment lasted, ironically, until other teams began calling me.

During my junior year of college major league organizations began to scout me. Even though I was never a potential top round pick, everything relating to baseball just kind of changed for me. The dynamic between the big leagues and myself now shifted from lifelong fan to potential player, something I didn’t count on happening. In college, ‘baseball’ meant a scholarship to help pay for school, but it was now a potential post collegiate career opportunity. Did I hope that the Braves would show a lot of interest and draft me? Of course I did. My head would have literally exploded. Unfortunately, they never showed that much interest and I would instead get excited if a new team would call or send a letter to my coach. I was no longer focused on the one team I grew up rooting for since I hoped to attract the interest of all thirty teams. As other teams’ interest grew, the Braves’ interest never materialized and I was okay with that.

I was eventually drafted by the Tigers after my senior year of college and was traded to the Marlins three years later. I broke into the big leagues in 2008 with the Marlins, a team that just so happens to play in the same division as my once-beloved Braves. My third career start in the big leagues was in Atlanta, against the Braves. It wasn’t pretty. I managed to last 5 innings, but gave up eight hits and six runs. I walked a batter, didn’t strike anyone out and gave up a two-run homer in the first inning to Chipper Jones on his birthday. It was a surreal feeling to lose a game to the team I grew up hoping would always win. The ‘tomahawk chop’ was no longer something I wanted any part of. Once I passed that initial encounter, though, the Braves were just another opponent and business continued as usual. My favorite team became the one that I was lucky enough to wear the uniform of and my favorite players were the ones I called teammates.

So do big leaguers have favorite teams? The answer is yes, just not the current version of that team. I’m not a Braves fan now and I definitely wasn’t a fan of them as they pummeled me around Turner Field that April evening in 2008, but I love the Braves I grew up with. It’s that love for my favorite team that inspired me to become a big leaguer in the first place.

Burke Badenhop made his Major League debut on April 9, 2008 when he tossed a scoreless inning of relief for the Marlins. In the eight years that followed, he pitched 512 1/3 innings of 3.74 ERA ball with the Marlins, Rays, Brewers, Red Sox and Reds. He’s been a part of four trades (most notably the Miguel Cabrera/Dontrelle Willis blockbuster), tested Major League free agency and been in more than a dozen Major League and minor league clubhouses. We were thrilled to have Burke bring some of that unique perspective to MLB Trade Rumors when he discussed the importance of September roster expansion and are happy to welcome him back for another piece.

You haven’t heard it yet, but pretty soon someone on an MLB broadcast is going to mention a team’s “magic number” — that oh-so-important combined number of wins and rivals’ losses necessary for said team to clinch a spot in the postseason.  Magic number talk means that the playoff race is here and that players will soon start to scour the Internet for the best ski goggles to wear for playoff-clinching celebrations.  So much is written about those teams, and rightfully so, but the season doesn’t end for the rest of the league, even if their only use for ski goggles will be if they plan on snowboarding this winter.  Regardless of how much has gone wrong for a team in a given season, September offers a chance to play the role of spoiler, and teams in position to do so aren’t always as easy to topple as they might have been a couple months ago.

Throughout my big league career I played on a couple of teams in the hunt as September neared.  Unfortunately, I played on far more teams that were at the bottom of the standings when playoff baseball was on the horizon.  There are, however, certain advantages a losing team gains when it’s time to play spoiler.  First off, you have nothing to lose.  Playing with that kind of freedom can bring out the best in some teams.  What’s one more loss when you’ve been losing all year?  Playing with nothing to lose is also compounded by the fact that the teams in the hunt have everything to lose.  They are expected to beat you.  If they lose now, they could ruin all the success they’ve had all year.  With those added expectations, they’ll play tight, while you can play loose.  It’s practically a recipe for spoiler success.

Playing the role of spoiler is also fun.  It may sound terrible to say, but ruining another team’s season is kind of exciting.  You can’t tell me the Orioles weren’t having fun when they dashed the Red Sox’ playoff hopes on that famous last day of the season in 2011.  For a losing team, it may have been months since you played baseball and legitimately had fun.  Losing all season is not fun.  Playing spoiler, to borrow the slogan from Bryce Harper, can “make baseball fun again.”  A team with a renewed sense of fun will certainly play better and is far more dangerous to face this time of year.

Teams also gain a greater sense of pride and meaning toward the end of the year.  There’s an inherent pride that comes along with playing our national pastime.  Despite your spot in the standings, it’s your responsibility to the game to continually try your best and not roll over just because you won’t make the playoffs.  It’s practically your unwritten duty to try and play spoiler.  Doing so can add a lot of meaning to an otherwise meaningless season.

As a teammate, you take pride in giving your best for your team, your coaches and yourself.  Jobs can be won and lost based on how you play at the end of the season.  It’s your final opportunity to give coaches, scouts and executives a lasting impression of the type of player you are as you head into the offseason.  That type of personal pride will often bring out the best in a player.

In 2014, I was playing for a Red Sox team that wasn’t going to make the playoffs.  I had pitched well all season and was going to be a free agent at the end of the year.  The stats that I finished with would be very important in determining what type of jobs I’d be looking at in the winter.  Fall apart and teams might write you off.  Stay the course and teams might continue to be impressed.  Develop a sudden bout of wildness on the mound and red flags will rise.  As any reliever would know, it doesn’t take much to lose control of an inning and see a team put up a five spot on you.  I wanted nothing to do with any of that.  My focus never wavered until I knew I got the last out of my last appearance.  Having the finish line in sight gave me something to focus on this time of year, and it’s a prime reason for the fact that teams won’t roll over when you’d expect them to.

There’s one last little advantage a spoiler type team will also have this time of year that is probably easily over looked by fans: the element of surprise.  Teams out of the playoff race are comprised of far more guys that you’ve never heard of.  As an opposing team, this can make preparation difficult.  I remember a pre-series pitchers’ meeting where a rookie hitter was about to be discussed.  We had no video on him.  One of our pitchers had faced him one time two years ago in the minors, and that was about it.  About our only info on him was that he was 6’2” and hit right-handed.  Sometimes you might get lucky and have some minor league video on a guy to get a sense of his approach in the box.  Unfortunately, that video usually isn’t an HD Sunday Night Baseball broadcast.  It’s probably video from a center-field camera at some Double-A park that has the quality of elevator security footage.  Without the ability to prepare for a team, they can easily sneak up on you.

So when you’re watching a last place team beat up on a playoff contender in a few weeks, don’t be so surprised. Know that there are a few extra factors at play now that it’s magic number time.

Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.

Burke Badenhop made his Major League debut on April 9, 2008 when he tossed a scoreless inning of relief for the Marlins. In the eight years that followed, he tossed 512 1/3 innings of 3.74 ERA ball with the Marlins, Rays, Brewers, Red Sox and Reds. He’s been a part of four trades (most notably the Miguel Cabrera/Dontrelle Willis blockbuster), tested Major League free agency and been in more than a dozen Major League and minor league clubhouses. We’re thrilled to have Burke bring some of that unique perspective to a guest post on MLB Trade Rumors.

What does August mean to a bullpen?

August means two things to me.  August is time to start prepping for my next amazing fantasy football team (shameless plug, check out profootballrumors.com!) and it’s time to really grind on the mound.  Now, it’s important to grind every day of every season, but I found it easier to grind in August.  August starts the home stretch.  August starts the promise of expanded rosters in September.  August is juuuuuust when you can start to see the light at the end of the 162-game tunnel.

To the casual fan, expanded rosters are a time to see that top prospect they’ve heard so much about.  For a team, it’s a chance to see how a player’s skills translate to the big leagues.  For a bullpen, September call-ups pump new blood at a time you need it the most.

Having extra men out in the ‘pen means there’s much more of a safety net every night.  No more having to worry about covering seven innings if your starter gets knocked out in the second frame.  Young guys with options can rest easier knowing they won’t be sent to the minors simply because you just played 16 innings that night and need fresh arms for tomorrow.  Other relievers with tired arms might be able to grab an extra day of rest.  Without these worries, it’s easier to focus on the task at hand.  It’s easier to grind.

Now I’m not saying that you should work your hardest in August just to coast in September.  That should never be an option.  September isn’t a breeze.  Your team counts on you to perform regardless of the month of the year or your place in the standings.   If you coast, you’re liable to lose your job to one of those guys that was just called up.

A Major League season is impossibly long, though.  August is usually a time when a team will play 17 or 20 straight games before having an off day.  Seeing September on the horizon just gives you a feeling that you’re going to make it.  That everything is going to be ok.  That your arm isn’t going to fall off, despite its persistent efforts to do just that.  August means that the dog days of summer will soon end.  That it won’t be long ‘til you have to find your long sleeves in the back of your locker.  August is a time to grind.

Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.