I don't fully understand it, but calling him up now would essentially cost us a year of club control and push him into arbitration sooner. We wait a couple of weeks, and we will have that extra year of control over him. When you aren't a contender, its generally a bad financial decision to bring them up to early in the season.
This is a fairly old post but it explains it somewhat well. http://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2009/05/super-twos.html
I thought we would have to wait longer then a few more weeks, like over half of the season? Either way I'm looking forward to having Lyles in the starting rotation, and JD Martineze replacing Lee.
An example I read the other day when looking it up for myself was Tim Lincecum, who was called up in the first week of May, and was a Super II, while Mark Reynolds and Ryan Braun were called up in the third week of May and were not Super Twos and those teams saved millions of dollars by waiting those 2 additional weeks. Edit: I have no real firm grasp on how this all works.
The "deadline" is usually sometime in early June. It doesn't really cost you a year of control. The Astros still have him for his first 6 years, but he gets 4 years of arbitration instead of 3. It is certainly more expensive. I would agree that if you won't be contending, its better to save him until after the "deadline". Like the Nats did with Strasburg, the Orioles with Wieters.
Here is another article that uses real life examples. http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20100506&content_id=9840460&vkey=news_mlb&fext=.jsp&c_id=mlb I was initially confused by the 86 days, but that doesn't matter for this season it is the season before the arbitration. The number that really matters is 17%. That means the top 17% of players with between 2 and 3 years of service time qualify for super two status. Because it is a percentage of players, the call up date fluctuates based on how many people start their Major League service time in a given year. In the past it has generally been some time in mid May or about 130 days of service time for the year. Although it can be more or less than that depending on the number of call ups rookies starting the season. Oddly enough Quintero was a super two because he started his rookie year on the major league club in April.
No there was a discussion carrying on in the game thread that I split out because I felt it was a valid discussion and did not belong in there. I also deleted out a set of back and forth posts that stupidly discussed the merits of google.
I think June 1st is the date all these prospects (Lyles, Hosmer, Ackley) will start getting called up, to avoid super 2.
I certainly misunderstood that part when I initially read about it. The cut-off is generally middle of May, since nobody has had less than 2 years, 130 days of service time and been a Super Two. I think Lyles gets at least 2 more starts, if not 3 before the Astros consider calling him up.