Baseball lingo: Know your transaction terms

As spring training nears -- pitchers and catchers are due to report Sunday -- here's a list of transaction terms that casual fans will want to know to get the most enjoyment out of the upcoming roster wrangling.

-- 25-man roster: The players eligible to participate in each game. The roster must be set before Opening Day, but it can be modified before each game. A player can be replaced on the 25-man roster if he is placed on the 15- or 60-day disabled list; if he is assigned to the minor leagues, as long as he has options remaining; if he is designated for assignment; or if he is traded.

-- 40-man roster: The players under organizational control from whom the 25-man roster is drawn. Once a player is on the 40-man roster, he can be removed only if he is placed on the 60-day disabled list or passes through waivers, during which time any team may claim the player and put him on their 40-man roster. A minor league player with a certain amount of service time must be added to the 40-man roster or be exposed to December's Rule 5 draft in December. The Red Sox added Drake Britton, Che-Hsuan Lin and Will Middlebrooks to their 40-man roster last November, though none of the three figures to be with the major league team on Opening Day.

-- Andino, Robert: You never thought you could hate a player with a career on-base plus slugging percentage of .634, and yet here we are. The little-known Baltimore Oriole had three game-winning hits against the Red Sox in the final two weeks of the 2011 season, including the hit that ended Boston's season on the final night.

-- Arbitration: A means of assigning salaries for two groups of players:

a) Players with more than three and fewer than six years of service time in the majors -- such as Daniel Bard and Jacoby Ellsbury -- as well as players who have gained "Super Two" status by being among the top 22 percent in service time among players with more than two but fewer than three years.

b) Players who have reached free agency but who accept the offer of a guaranteed one-year contract. If the two sides cannot agree to a salary, they go to a hearing in front of an arbitrator.

(Contact Brian MacPherson at bmacpherson(at)providencejournal.com and Tim Britton at tbritton(at)providencejournal.com.)

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)

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