Minor League Free Agency

[fhomess]

I'm trying to figure out how the game determines who is eligible for minor league free agency.

Per the manual, a player becomes a minor league free agent if the following is true:
1. He's not on the secondary roster when the playoffs end.
2. The difference between his professional service time and his time on the secondary roster is greater than 6 years (configurable).

The players listed below are the first 3 batters and first 3 pitchers taken from my test league's Upcoming FA Report that are listed as minor league FA's.

The following data is taken from the data dump:

Player             2Days  PDays  2Yrs  PYrs
MR Rafael Aguirre   1280    959     7     9 (is on the secondary roster)
CL Augusto Aguilar  1130    959     6    10
MR Les Ashe          709    791     4    10
1B Alfredo Aguilar   415    892     2     8
2B Chris Adams         0    860     0     6
SS Mike Alderdice      0    886     0     6

The current league date is 5/19/2014. All 6 of these players have minor league contracts.

My league settings are as follows:
Years before arbitration: 3
Years before MLB FA: 6
Years before Minor League FA: 6
Minimum Service Days for 1 year: 172

The first thing that concerns me is that the 959 pro service days for the first two players is the maximum number of pro service days any player in the league has. This is already a problem as 6 years * 172 days = 1032 days. Clearly by that measure, no player has 6 years pro service. Numerous players have fewer pro service days than days on the secondary roster or MLB service days, which makes no sense. I presume, then, that the pro service days field is simply wrong and unreliable. Ok, fine, let's look at the number of years. Looking at that, only 4 of the 6 above players have a difference of at least 6 years between their pro service time and secondary roster time.

So this leaves me with serveral questions:
1. Do the upcoming minor league FAs get determined at the end of the previous year's playoffs? This still wouldn't explain these issues away.
2. Is the data in the data dump simply incorrect in so many ways as to be unreliable?
3. Is minor league FA broken?
4. Am I just completely misunderstanding this whole deal?

[Le Grande Orange]

I'm not sure what OOTP is doing or why, but I can speak a bit about how it works in the real world, which is what OOTP is usually trying to emulate.

When a player signs his first minor league professional contract, it is for one year, with the organization having the right to unilaterally renew that contract six times. In other words, the organization retains rights to that player for seven years. Note that there are no service days involved here; contract time is calculated strictly by seasons. If a player signs his first minor league contract for the 2010 season, he won't become a minor league free agent until after the 2016 season. (The 2010 season is his first, and the 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2016 seasons represent the organization's six contract renewals to which it is entitled.)

These unilateral renewal rights persist even if the player is subsequently added to the 40-man roster. If the player is later removed from the 40-man roster and outrighted to the minor leagues, the organization still has however many renewals are remaining on the original minor league contract.

However, if a player is released by an organzation, the renewal rights on that first professional contract terminate. If the player is signed by another organization, this new contract can be of whatever length the two parties agree to (though it's nearly always for one year), and there are no unilateral renewal rights. Once that contract expires, the player is again a minor league free agent.