Yankees Magazine: Thank You For Your Service Time
Standing in front of his locker, with a cinder-block wall to his left offering some added privacy and making it a prime location in the Yankees’ clubhouse, Josh Donaldson detours around a question and travels back to 2007, when he was playing instructional league ball in Arizona. It was just a few months after the Cubs had selected the then-catcher out of Auburn, and with the postseason about to begin, Chicago ace Carlos Zambrano headed out to the desert a day early to get some work in before starting Game 1 of the National League Division Series at Chase Field against the Diamondbacks. So, Donaldson explains, the pitcher joined the youngest Cubs prospects for a workout.
“And I don’t know if you have had the pleasure of watching Carlos Zambrano taking batting practice,” Donaldson says, “but it was rather impressive.” The Yankees’ third baseman laughs as he recalls that Zambrano -- who was what passed for Shohei Ohtani in the first decade of the new millennium, with 24 career homers and a .238 average to go along with his 132 wins and 3.66 ERA -- stepped into the left-handed batter’s box and started pulling one homer after another. The next round, he went in right-handed and did the same. The switch-hitting pitcher kept flipping back and forth, spraying the ball over the fences to his pull side, oppo, dead center, whatever. “These weren’t wall-scrapers,” Donaldson says, comparing the show to what he sees today from Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton. “These were massive.”
In three seasons at Auburn, Donaldson had posted a .900 OPS and earned his way to a first-round selection (48th overall) in the 2007 MLB Draft. And like the rest of the newly minted pros that summer, he began what felt like a journey with an inevitable conclusion. “Your eyes are set on making the Major Leagues, and there’s nothing that can get in your way,” Donaldson says. “You just are gung-ho. If you’re coming from high school, you’ve been the best kid in your area for a long time. If you’re in college, maybe you’re the best guy in your conference, one of the top guys in the country.” Even at the Minors’ lowest levels, it was easy to feel invincible, at least until you watched a Major League pitcher crack one BP homer after another way beyond the wall.
“And I just remember saying to myself, I have no chance! If the pitchers are hitting like this, I’ve got no shot!”
Over the next 15 years, Donaldson would prove that he could hold his own at the plate, whether alongside or against the league’s best pitchers. He entered this year’s All-Star break with 260 career homers and a 133 career OPS+, while stuffing his trophy case with an American League MVP Award and two Silver Sluggers. This year, he has been a key contributor to the team with the best record in the game, a veteran in a room teeming with baseball wisdom. And as he chases October glory, he does so as one of the newest members of a distinguished group of MLB stars, albeit with some company in his new clubhouse.
In April, Donaldson reached 10 years of MLB service time, a milestone that has both practical and reputational implications. It’s an odd measure by sports standards, with fans so used to statistical feats of accomplishment. The 10-year mark -- which just 5-10% of players reach -- doesn’t tell you how many home runs someone hit or how many strikeout victims he claimed. It can’t be measured in diamonds on a World Series ring. It’s just about showing up. Indeed, it’s a celebration of that most baseball of metrics, grit. It tells anyone paying attention that you were good enough for long enough to keep getting invited back.
“Since I made my debut, the guys I started with, there’s probably less than 10% right now in the league,” says Marwin Gonzalez. “I think that’s what makes it special. I’m here.”
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Gonzalez is one of five Yankees who crossed the momentous threshold in 2022, a list that also includes Donaldson, Zack Britton, DJ LeMahieu and Anthony Rizzo. The ranks also include Matt Carpenter, Aroldis Chapman and Giancarlo Stanton, who reached the mark previously, and should see Gerrit Cole and Aaron Hicks join in 2023.
The Yankees, like teams throughout the league, made a point to recognize the players who stepped across the 10-year line this year, with intimate and emotional clubhouse ceremonies, a marking of time that resonates with veterans and newcomers, alike.
“Ten years in this game at the Major League level is something to be proud of,” says manager Aaron Boone, himself a member of the club. “It’s something that teammates -- and younger teammates, especially -- aspire to.” As someone who grew up around the game, with a brother (Bret), father (Bob) and grandfather (Ray) who also crossed the threshold, Boone knows as well as anyone what the honor says about a player’s complete package. “You’ve got to be a good enough player to rack up those kinds of years and career. But I think it also says something about your perseverance, the ability to adjust and survive and thrive. Because this game, it’s moving at light speed. And you’ve got to be able to constantly make adjustments to remain relevant, even when you’re a good player.”
Service time in baseball doesn’t come up too much during the season; you hear about it mostly as teams get constructed during the winter. But it’s a constant consideration of someone’s life in the game. Players accrue one day of service time for every day they’re on a Major League roster or the injured list, for a max of 172 per year (if you look at Cole’s Baseball-Reference page, his 8.111 service time calculation means that he entered the 2022 season 61 days short of his ninth year and will likely reach 10 years on the 62nd day of the 2023 season). In most cases, players are eligible for salary arbitration after completing three years of service time, and for free agency after completing six. Additionally, each team’s manager, trainer and assistant trainer, as well as four coaches the club selects, accrue service time; for former players who didn’t reach the 10-year threshold, the service time earned as a coach gets added to the tally.
As players grow into their careers, the perks start coming. Some are purely aesthetic: veterans often get better lockers and sometimes the first choice of seats on planes and buses. Joey Gallo (5.103) says that he usually knows how much service time his teammates have based on when they show up to the ballpark on photo day every spring training. “If you have more service time,” Gallo says, “you get to sleep in later.” But there are also contractual markers that stretch from pleasant perks to potentially life-changing. One example of the former: At eight years, a player receives what’s known as the “Gold Card,” which entitles him to free tickets to any MLB game for the rest of his life.
At 10 years, players qualify for 10-and-five rights -- meaning that a player with 10 years of service time and the last five for one team can veto any trade. A 10-year career is also the threshold for eventual inclusion on the Hall of Fame ballot. But the biggest benefit is that on the day a player (or a manager, coach or trainer) reaches the 10-year mark, his pension becomes fully vested. Today, a full MLB pension -- assuming it doesn’t get drawn on before age 62 -- is worth up to $245,000 a year.
With today’s baseball salaries, that might seem quaint. As Lucas Luetge -- whose five years away from the Majors from 2016 to 2020 means that he entered 2022 with just 3.015 years of service time at age 35 -- says, “If you made it 10 years, you’ve done pretty well for yourself.” But it’s also a far cry from before the collective bargaining agreement of 1980, when a pension took 20 years to vest, meaning that nearly no one maxed his out at a time when players’ career earnings were far lower. Back then, the Gold Card was more than a fun perk; it was basically a retirement package.
For today’s players, the 10-year mark endures more as a badge of honor. “It’s a statistic that kind of puts its arms around everything that drives the identity of baseball players,” says Steve Rogers, a 13-year MLB veteran who retired in 1985 and now serves as special assistant of player benefits and career development for the MLB Players Association. And among today’s Yankees, it’s a mark that is never overlooked.
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Baseball players are nothing if not routine oriented, which might be one explanation for why so many members of this year’s Yankees team offered nearly the exact same quote when discussing the 10-year milestone.
“I think the old saying is it’s easy to make it, even harder to stay,” says LeMahieu, who celebrated 10 years of service time on May 21 with a grand slam. “Getting here is a piece of cake,” adds Gallo. “I got called up from Double-A, I was like, ‘Well, I’m 21 and in the big leagues. That was easy!’ And then I got to the big leagues and was like, ‘This is a totally different game!’ It’s a tough league to stay in because you have to make constant adjustments. You have to constantly improve. You can’t just be one-dimensional because the league makes the adjustment in a week.”
Part of the charm of the 10-year journey is that it’s hard. But the nature of that challenge can be difficult for fans to understand. Most people grow up watching baseball and assuming that players routinely play for a decade or more; naturally, the guys that earn the most consistent attention are those with staying power.
But between injuries and the ways that the league adjusts, to say nothing of the ebbs and flows of any individual player’s production, the large majority of careers peter out long before the pension vests. Most guys are happy to reach free agency. “I think you’re lucky to play five years,” says Nestor Cortes (2.094). “Five to seven years is an extremely good career at this level.”
That gap between the public’s understanding and the esteem with which the milestone is held in the clubhouse is part of what makes those small celebrations so meaningful. In a sense, it’s the rare unmined bit of baseball minutiae, a secret-handshake-style distinction that’s for the players rather than for the fans. It fosters instant and unmitigated respect among teammates and even opponents, all of whom understand the work that goes into every Major League season, along with all the summers of missed birthday parties and weddings and the mile markers of parenthood.
“There’s no other sport in the world, there’s no other level of baseball, that does it,” Carpenter says of the season’s punishing grind. “College, high school, you’re not going to experience it until you get to the professional level. When you finally put in one of those long seasons, what you feel like at the end of one, that’s when it hit me, the immediate respect. After that first year, I said, ‘I’m going to have to do this for a minimum of two to three before I get a chance to even do it at the big-league level.’ And then you have to add it to that, and we’re talking 13, 14 years of this. It’s really kind of mind-blowing to think about. And then, you look at guys like Derek Jeter, who played for 20-something years, it’s just hard to imagine.”
It’s no wonder, then, that the players who make it earn such admiration. Nor is it a surprise that they celebrate the milestone. Chapman (11.009) says that he not infrequently sits and thinks about the totality of his career, how it began when he was fresh out of Cuba, barely understanding the Minor League system, let alone any kind of pension or collective bargaining agreement. Now, though, he sees the guys whose careers end around seven, eight or nine years, and it makes his journey feel even more special.
Rizzo’s wife bought a nice gift and threw him a party the weekend of Opening Day this year, and Donaldson’s fiancee was ready with a card and some snacks that he particularly enjoys. Agents regularly send their players gifts to note the occasion. (This year’s Yankees roster accumulated so many magnums of celebratory Champagne for reaching the decade mark that any postseason celebration might include some extra firepower.) The day is filled with text messages from friends, social media posts from teams and agencies, and an overwhelming sense of accomplishment.
Gonzalez, though, is the rare player who tried to hide from the moment. Among so many peers who metaphorically circle a calendar date years in advance, the Yankees’ veteran utilityman didn’t tell any of his new teammates as he approached the mark. In fact, it was Donaldson — with whom Gonzalez shares an agent — who pointed it out to the group a few days after the fact, having been clued in by an Instagram post from their agency.
“It wasn’t a goal for me, mentally,” Gonzalez says. “I think the way that you think about, ‘Oh, I want to reach 10 years,’ you’re kind of setting a limit.”
Don’t think for a second, though, that Gonzalez fails to understand the weight of the accomplishment. He’s well aware of just how impressive it is to hang on that long in today’s game. “Every year, it gets more crazy,” Gonzalez says of the game’s statistical revolution. “It’s even harder than back in the day. Because there wasn’t Statcast telling things like, He doesn’t have the same range. He doesn’t have the same bat speed. He doesn’t have the same foot speed. And now we have everything. Every single thing. They know right away.”
As Cole pursues his own 10th year, he sees both sides. There’s more data that can be used against you, but there’s also more opportunity to study your own game and adjust. “Yeah, that’s the atmosphere now, that you can pick apart every little thing,” the ace says. “But that’s also the advantage: You can pick apart every little thing.”
There’s also the reality that workloads are different on both sides of the ledger. On the one hand, players’ training regimens run year-round in 2022; nobody is working winter jobs and showing up to spring training planning to get in shape. And yet, as Rogers points, out, “From a physical standpoint, I threw 2,850 innings in 113⁄4 years. Today, that would be a 15- to 16-year career.”
Whatever the difference, no one denies the value of putting together a roster that has its share of 10-year vets. (Within reason, Donaldson points out: “Obviously, you don’t want to just have a bunch of old dudes in the clubhouse.”) Even before he started hitting homers for the Yankees at a downright laughable rate, Carpenter was greeted warmly by teammates such as Judge (5.051), who noticed right away the knowledge and experience that would make him feel right at home with his new team. “He walked into the clubhouse the first day in Tampa, and he just fit right in, you know?” Judge says. “He didn’t seem scared, didn’t seem overwhelmed. He seemed like, ‘Hey, I’m just going to try to do my part with this team and do what I need to do.’”
Is that why Carpenter hit 13 homers in his first 30 games with the Yankees? Not by itself. Is it why he was so essential in filling holes all over the field, in contributing off the bench, in offering wisdom and good cheer? Probably. Donaldson’s game-winning RBI on Opening Day and Rizzo’s remarkable start certainly weren’t due entirely to their service time. But a healthy bit of seasoning doesn’t hurt. “They know what it takes,” Boone says, and the manager has reaped the benefits of a roster that matches talent with experience in almost equal proportion. There are so many ways that today’s game is built around youth, and there are few things more exciting than a fresh new star emerging on the scene. But as the 2022 Yankees are proving, there’s still room in the game — and at the top of the standings — for experience.
“People say you come to the yard and you never know what you’re going to see that day,” Donaldson says. “But we’ve seen most of it.”