DETROIT -- The Chicago Cubs are anxiously awaiting the results of a grievance filed by star third baseman Kris Bryant.

If he wins, he’ll be a free agent after the 2020 season. If the Cubs win, he’s under team control through 2021.

At issue is whether the Cubs manipulated his Major League service time by keeping him in the minor leagues longer than necessary. One day longer, to be exact.

The details are a bit complex, but service time quandaries are nothing new in MLB. Teams have every incentive to keep their best prospects in the minors as long as possible to delay them from reaching two service-time-based milestones -- arbitration and, later, free agency.

UPDATE: Bryant has lost his grievance.

What does this have to do with the Detroit Tigers?

General manager Al Avila was asked last week if he was worried about starting the service clocks of top prospects like Casey Mize, Matt Manning and Tarik Skubal.

When he heard that question, an alarm bell probably went off in Avila’s head.

On the record, in front of a crowd of reporters, there is only correct response to that question and Avila gave it: “As far as holding a guy back because of service time, I’ve never been taught that way, from my predecessor, and I don’t work that way. At the end of the day, when we’re ready to bring a guy up it’s because we feel he can do it and and we feel it’s the right time for the organization. When all that timing is correct, that’s when we will do it.”

Avila wasn’t being disingenuous: He has no track record of playing games with service time. Nor does his predecessor, Dave Dombrowski.

But the issue is an incredibly delicate one right now due to the pending Bryant grievance. No GM wants to say the wrong thing.

In 2019, when the Tigers were bringing up players who had no business being on big-league rosters, it would have looked really bad if a prospect like Mize or Manning were in Triple-A, blowing away hitters with ease. Avila would have found it impossible to justify why the Tigers were bringing up Zac Reininger or Ryan Carpenter for the fifth time instead of giving one of their young pitchers a chance without mentioning the words “service time.”

It didn’t come to that because many of the arms in Toledo were struggling last year while many of the top prospects were still in Double-A Erie.

That might not be the case in 2020. The Tigers have stocked enough pitching depth to avoid any difficult questions in spring training. Mize, Manning and Skubal won’t be serious contenders for jobs out of the gate.

But late in the summer, it might be a different story.

And Avila is OK with that. In fact, that might be the best-case scenario: One or more of the prospects pitches well in Toledo, gets acclimated to the big leagues with a late-season call-up and then enters 2021 with a chance to compete for an Opening Day job.

And all of that can be done without any service-time shenanigans.

“Our whole thing right now is trying to make sure that we’re guiding these minor league guys step-by-step in the right direction so they can be ready when they get to the big leagues,” Avila said. “It would be our preference for (the young pitchers) to start in Toledo, have a great year and at some point during the season we can bring them up and they can get some experience. And then we go to the following spring training (in 2021) and, at that point, it’s a whole different ball game.”

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