Because Kopech got hurt while on the ML roster the whole time he's out will count as ML service time. So if he's out all of 2019 that's 1 yr of ML service time the Sox lose on him.

Thanks Bill, but that wasn't quite my question, I knew 2019 would count as service time. My question was that if he was still healthy now, and we kept him down next year (2019) and brought him up in May of 2019 would he have had 6 years starting with 2020?

If so, now that he isn't healthy and we lost a year of service time, can we basically get it back by not bringing him back in 2020 until May of 2020, so the year 2020 won't count as a full year? If so then we could still have 5 years after 2020 and onluy lose April of 2020.