When Major League Baseball expanded from 20 to 24 teams prior to the 1969 season, the Yankees allegedly protected Murcer and Jerry Kenney from the 1968 MLB expansion draft by making a last minute appeal to other owners to allow players that were fulfilling their military obligation to be exempt from the expansion draft, which allowed the Yankees to protect 17 players instead of 15. The Yankees devised this strategy specifically to protect Murcer, who spent 1967 and 1968 in the Army.