I’ve run through a number of baseball buzzwords in this series. Among the last is the “option season”. When trying to come up with an introduction, I remembered the Phil Hartmann/Roseanne Barr sketch from Saturday Night Live. Among the lines included is “She gave me several options.”
Prospects, in their first years through a MLB pipeline, don’t need options. Even as the Cubs have given their pipeline prospects a wisely-offered raise, players through a pipeline have very little say in where they are assigned. For instance, if South Bend suddenly needs a pitcher, the organization is entirely within their range of legitimate choices to send a reliever from the Midwest League (paid) to the Mesa facility for Extended Spring Training (unpaid), it happens without much of a request.