Major league service time is the currency of a baseball career. It decides when a player can negotiate his salary, when he can choose his employer, and what he is owed after he stops playing — and almost none of it depends on how well he plays.
A player earns a day of service for each day he spends on a major league active roster or injured list. He does not have to appear in the game. A reliever who never warms up and the starter who throws a shutout earn exactly the same day.
Days on the injured list count, which surprises people — the reasoning is that an injured major leaguer is still a major leaguer. Days on the bereavement, family medical emergency and paternity lists count too. Days spent optioned to the minor leagues do not.
A season runs about 187 days, but the Basic Agreement sets a credited year at 172. A player on a roster from Opening Day to the end of the season is credited 1.000 and no more, so those spare days leave a little room for a short trip to the minors without costing him the year.
That is also why figures here look like 6.031 rather than 6.18. It is years and days, not a decimal: 6.031 means six credited years and 31 more days, or 1,063 days in total. The part after the point never reaches 172.
Service time is a ratchet: it only goes up, and each of these is permanent once reached.
| Service time | Days | What it unlocks |
|---|---|---|
| 0.001 | 1 | Access to the players' benefit plan. One day on a major league roster is the entry point. |
| 0.043 | 43 | One quarter of a year, and the first step toward a pension. Each further 43 days adds to what a player will eventually draw. |
| 2.137 | 481 | Super Two. A player between two and three years who ranks in the top 22% of that class, with 86+ days in the preceding season, reaches salary arbitration a year early — four trips through it instead of three. The cutoff is not fixed: it falls wherever the class falls that year. After the 2025 season the line fell at 2.137, which is what this site currently projects against. |
| 3.000 | 516 | Salary arbitration. Until now the club has set his salary near the league minimum. From here he can argue for a raise before an arbitration panel, and his pay starts to track his performance. |
| 6.000 | 1,032 | Free agency. The big one. He can sign with any club that wants him, for the first time in his career. |
| 8.000 | 1,376 | The gold card. A lifetime pass admitting the holder and a guest to any regular-season major league game, at any ballpark. Postseason games are excluded. |
| 10.000 | 1,720 | The maximum pension. Ten years reaches the top of the scale. Fewer than one player in ten ever gets there. |
| 10.000 + 5 straight with one club | 1,720 | 10-and-5 rights. Ten years of service with the last five consecutive at his current club, and he can veto any trade. It arrives automatically — it does not have to be negotiated into a contract. Leave the club and come back, and the five-year clock restarts. |
Pension and benefit amounts are renegotiated between the league and the players' association and are reported differently by different sources, so no dollar figures are quoted here — the thresholds above are the durable part.
This site publishes its own reconstruction of service time, so it owes you the provenance of the rules it reconstructs against. The first four thresholds are the ones the pipeline itself computes; the rest are not, and are sourced here.
Where sources disagreed, this page states the weaker claim. One day of service is described as buying access to the benefit plan because accounts differ on whether it confers coverage or the right to buy in.
Because 172 days make a year and a season is longer, a club that keeps a player in the minors for the first couple of weeks of his rookie season leaves him at 0.171 rather than 1.000 — and pushes his free agency back by a full year. The practice is called service-time manipulation, it is legal, it is contested, and it is the reason a prospect's call-up date is news.
MLB and the players' association keep the official ledger and do not publish it. Every figure on this site is reconstructed from public roster transactions and is an estimate, not an official MLB/MLBPA figure. Where the record cannot see the start of a career, the player's page says so and the number is a floor rather than an estimate.
Updated 2026-09-01. Not affiliated with or endorsed by Major League Baseball or the MLBPA.