Park Byung-ho in crisis; Off the Minnesota’s 40 Roaster

Park Byung-ho in crisis; Off the Minnesota’s 40 Roaster. February. 06, 2017 07:00. by Kyu-In Hwang kini@donga.com. Twins first baseman Park Byung-ho (photo) faced his biggest crisis since he made inroads into the Major League.

On Saturday, Minnesota Twins announced that it has excluded Park from the 40-man roster. In a nutshell, Park was Designated For Assignment (DFA).

Each Major League teams run a farm system, which allows them to sign contracts with Minor League teams to train and develop players and dispatch them. Here, 40 Major Leaguers can sign this contract, including an additional 15 besides the currently active 25 Major Leaguers. The excluded players fall under the Minor League contract. This is when DFA kicks in as an administrative measure to opt out players from the 40 players who will sign and play for the Major League. In its recent decision, Minnesota Twins opted in its seasoned pitcher Matt Belisle and opted out Park.

When a player is ruled out by the DFA, he has to decide whether to stay or leave in 10 days. Normally, players place their luck on trades for the first week, and another four days later by waiver. If no team chooses the player, the club can transfer the player to signing a contract with a Minor League team.　

However, the team still owes 9.25 million (or 10.6 billion won) to Park for three more years. If a team wishes to buy Park through trade or waiver, the cost is up to them. Therefore, Park is highly likely to become a Minor Leaguer. 　

CBS Sports forecasted that Park will come to spring training as a non-roster invitee, then begin the season in Triple-A, but added that if he has success in Triple-A, the Twins will re-add him to the 40-man roster and call him up.