Thanks to one of Major League Baseball's many weird roster rules, the Braves will be forced to play with a 24-man roster Sunday afternoon.
According to MLB.com's Mark Bowman, Atlanta planned to call up utility man Emilio Bonifacio to add some speed to the bench, but MLB informed them he is not eligible to be called up until Saturday. Bowman explains:
"It's sort of a convoluted rule from MLB," Braves assistant general manager Billy Ryan said. "Because we signed [Bonifacio] to a Major League contract and then he was released at the end of Spring Training and he subsequently signed with us and not another club, we can't select him to the big leagues until 30 days after his release date."
Bonifacio was designated for assignment on April 2 (the final day of Spring Training) and then released by the Braves on April 6. He then signed a Minor League deal with the Braves on April 10 and spent the past few weeks playing for Gwinnett. He will not be eligible to be placed on Atlanta's roster before Saturday.
The rule may be silly, but it is pretty straight forward. The problem? The Braves had already sent down reliever Chris Withrow, who left the team. By time they learned they could not activate Bonifacio right away, it was too late to call someone else from Triple-A.
Bonifacio is already with the Braves, so he's going to have to sit tight for a week before he can be activated. I imagine he'll go back to Triple-A to get some at-bats to stay sharp. Bowman says Atlanta will call up another player Monday to hold them over.
I'm not quite sure why this rule exists -- I guess because they want teams to think twice before releasing a player? -- but you'd think the MLBPA would want players to get back to the big leagues as quickly as possible. Whatever the reason, it came back to bite the Braves on Sunday.