An Important Retraction - Please Read

A few days ago I wrote that Brad Halsey could NEVER be a Player To Be Named Later in a trade, because he had played in the majors in both the NL and AL.  In the same piece, I wrote that a PTBNL cannot be a player who has played in the same league as the player he's being traded for.

To my embarrassment, neither statement is entirely true.

I based my diary on information from this Rob Neyer column:
http://espn.go.com/mlb/s/1999/0908/4...

It’s a useful article, but in the interest of simplifying several very complicated MLB rules, the column glosses over a few things.  This is a direct quote from Neyer’s piece, and the basis for my statement about Halsey:

"The player named later can't have played in the same league as the team he's being traded to. That's why the player named later is almost always a minor leaguer."

I interpreted "can’t" as never before having played in the league, but Rob obviously didn’t mean it that way – because that’s completely wrong.  

Here is the salient portion of the actual PTBNL rule, courtesy of Cot’s Baseball Contracts:

"The player may not be an active Major Leaguer (sic) during the interval between the trade and the date the player is named.  As a result, most players to be named later are minor leaguers."

That’s a little different than what Neyer wrote, and it accounts for the mistake in my article.  Clearly, Halsey actually CAN be a PTBNL – as long as he remains in the minor leagues until he is tabbed as a PTBNL, thereby completing the trade. The fact that Halsey, or Colby Lewis, have prior major league service time is irrelevant as long as they are in the minor leagues at the time of a trade, and remain there until the trade is completed.  Therefore, Halsey still could, legally and hypothetically, be the PTBNL in either the Denorfia trade or the Snelling trade, so long as he doesn’t get brought up to Oakland first.  

(Of course it’s unlikely that Halsey would ever be involved in either the Denorfia or Snelling deals, because he has value and his inclusion would make those deals much more valuable to the other team.  I’m just using both deals as examples).

Here’s an example of this rule in practice:

Just last year, there was a deal that involved a PTBNL with prior big league experience.  
On August 4, 2006, the Red Sox acquired Javy Lopez from the Orioles for a PTBNL to fill their catcher void after Varitek’s injury.  According to the Boston Globe (see how I’m citing my sources now?), the Orioles were to receive either Adam Stern, Alejandro Machado, or, less likely, lefthander Abe Alvarez as the PTBNL. This is common – the PTBNL often comes from a list of players that the teams haven’t quite agreed upon yet.  Within 24 hours, it was announced that the Orioles were getting Stern in return.

Stern had played 10 games at the major league level for Boston back in April of ’06, and he also played 36 games back in ’05.  But since he was once again a minor leaguer at the time the Lopez deal was made, he was eligible to be the PTBNL in the deal.  

Clearly this example, and the correct interpretation of the rule thanks to Cot’s, shows that I made a mistake.  I regret the error.