Folks, Thundercat32 reached out to me today about co-owing, as did exitonly.I responded to Thunder and I think we are going to split a team, pending his acceptance.

-Team ThunderCoff

9 Paid:
nutshot2/iamawesomer
another_rack
thay3r
sergz
primetime
karak
exitonly
fifield
Jokes
GeoffRas

Levarkin, Pecota, ThunderCoff, makes 12. manupod sounds like he's in for 13.

Sir S A Lot said he wanted in initially but didn't answer my PM. tercet said he thought he was backing out.

so if neither of them wants it we'll need to find an owner, or two if manupod wants a coowner.

Shipped via Paypal.

http://www.couchmanagers.com/

that site looks like exactly what we want for out auction. it's free, customizable and would go way way smoother than just making a massive auction thread full of 3 word posts.

what we do in my league is use proboards.com and make our own board for the draft, it works pretty well and is another possibility

Anyone think we should go a little deeper than 25-man rosters if we end up with 12 or 14, and not 16, owners? The salary structure really rewards unearthing diamond-in-the-rough types, but there may not be enough room for those if we just do 25-man rosters plus minor leaguers.

Alright, gonna have to drop out, sorry if hassle, gl hf

Have only done minimal proofing, but here is my rough draft. Before I spend time formatting it to make it pretty and making a condensed rule set, check to see if I made any mistakes, missed anything or if there is still anything we want to change.

Basic Administrative Issues

1. Commissioner has the final decision on all major league rule changes. He can be overruled by an absolute majority of the league.
2. All major league rule changes must be initially approved by a vote of a simple majority of the league and then signed off by the commissioner.
3. Anyone can propose a rule change for a league vote.
4. Commissioner retains the ability to unilaterally make minor rule changes, although he will, obviously, discuss them with the league first and they can be overruled by a simple majority of the league.

Rosters
• 40 man total roster
o 25 man active roster
o 15 man minor league roster

Positions:

1B
2B
3B
SS
C
Util
CI
MI
OF
OF
OF
OF

3 SP
2 RP
4 P

A minor league player is a player who is not on a major league roster at the start of the season. These players must be placed on the minor league roster to start the season. Acquiring a player through a trade does not reset his “minor league player check.”

Once you option the player up, you may not option him down for the rest of the season. He can only be placed back on the minor league roster if he breaks camp at the beginning of the next season in the minor leagues or as a free agent IRL.

If a player is optioned up in real life, a team in the league with him on its minor league roster may opt to keep him there for the remainder of the season. If he is traded to another team during the season, however, he must be placed on the new team’s major league roster. If the player is optioned down in real life 10 days or fewer after the trade is finalized, the new team may exercise a one-time option to send him down. This team may recall him if he is ever called back up for the rest of the season.

Player Auction and Salary Cap

There will be two initial drafts, a free agent draft and a rookie draft. Any player who meets the eligibility requirements for a rookie (defined infra) will be in the rookie draft. Any other player will be in the free agent draft.

• Each team must acquire 25 players at a total cost not to exceed $100,000,000. A team need not spend the maximum.
• Every owner will present a player to be bid on starting at 12:00pm EST on [Starting Date].
• Each owner may start the bidding with any amount of $400,000 or greater. Every other day owners will present another player to be bid on. Bid increments are a minimum of 10 % of the prior bid. So if the current bid is 10 million, the next bid must be 11 million. If the current bid is 50 million, then the next bid must be 55 million.
• There will be numerous players in the bidding process at all times until every team is filled with players.
• The bidding on a player ends when 24 hours have passed since the last bid on him.
• No team may make a bid for a player it cannot afford.
• Any non-rookie player is eligible to be drafted.

Each bid price is a one-year contract for the player. At the end of the season, each player may be retained for a 20% increase in salary. So if you pay A-Rod 10 million for year one, you can keep him for 12 million for year two. After year two, you can keep him for 14.4 million and so on.

You can keep a player DRAFTED IN THE INITIAL FREE AGENT DRAFT for a maximum of 5 years. After 5 years, he re-enters the FA draft.

Acquiring a player from waivers starts the five year clock as well. Acquiring a player in a trade does NOT restart the clock.

Rookie Draft

The rookie draft will take place every off-season and will include recently MLB drafted players as well as international signings. If any of the international signees or drafted players are called up to the majors AFTER the year’s rookie draft, they will still be ineligible to be added onto a roster until the next year’s rookie draft. The rookie draft will go in reverse order of the previous year’s standings, with the order of the spots finishing out of the money determined by a lottery like the NBA. For the first year, it will be random. It will operate as a snake draft.

A rookie is defined by the official MLB rules:

"A player shall be considered a rookie unless, during a previous season or seasons, he has (a) exceeded 130 at-bats or 50 innings pitched in the Major Leagues; or (b) accumulated more than 45 days on the active roster of a Major League club or clubs during the period of 25-player limit (excluding time in the military service and time on the disabled list)."

The minimum salary of a rookie is 0.400 for the first year and every year thereafter until he loses his rookie eligibility (see requirements above) or after 4 years have passed, whichever is sooner. After that time, the usual 20 % contract increases take effect. After 5 years, he is a free agent.


Cap Hits, Waivers and Free Agents

The 15% cap hit for cutting a player is pro-rated throughout the season (amount of games left for that player divided by 162). So if I cut someone who I am paying 10 mil after game 81, I only take a cap hit of 15% of 10 mil. If I cut this player after the season and before the "tender date" (which we can arbitrarily set or just use MLB's), I take no cap hit as I have essentially just chosen not to retain him.

If you are over the cap, your entire team roster is locked out until you get back under the cap. You can cut players, trade, etc. You should keep in mind that trades take time, so if you want to execute a 3-way deal to shed salary to one team while taking on increased salary for another, make sure it's all a go before you execute it. There will be a one-time 3 day grace period each year to adjust cap space. This exemption expires after the trade deadline.

After the initial draft, all remaining players will be placed on waivers for 2 days. Waiver process works just like the FA draft. You place a bid of 400k and the bidding continues until 24 hours after the last bid. This also goes for any players cut during the year. There will be no player adds until Sunday. On Sunday the 2 day waiver process begins, and you can put in a claim… pretty much just a minimum bid. How do we feel about this?

All players on your 40-man roster count against your cap. This includes minor league players. Rookie players are, of course, subject to their own special rule set (defined supra).

Trades

All trades must be posted PUBLICLY for 48 hours before they are official. During this 48 hour period, ANY team may make an offer to either team involved in the trade, and either team can feel free to take it. This counter-offer must be posted for a subsequent 48 hour period if it is accepted. If neither team accepts a counter-offer, after 48 hours the trade becomes official, pending commissioner and/or league approval.

If you acquire a player via trade, you acquire that player’s remaining salary and must pay it. The same rules apply to renewing the contracts as they did to the original team. It is acceptable for teams to “take on” salary when trading a player, just like real life, with no one taking an extra cap hit.

Rookie draft picks may be traded for players.

All trades must be approved by the commissioner. There are two reasons a trade will be vetoed:

1. High suspicion of collusion.
2. An owner clearly doesn’t care and while he may not be colluding, he’s clearly dumping his team off.

Any trades involving the commissioner are subject to approval by the assistant commissioner. Any commissioner veto or non-veto can be overruled by a majority vote from the league. The reason the commissioner retains the power is that most people either a) forget to vote or b) vote for stupid reasons because it’s anonymous. The voting will not be anonymous should you choose to override, and you must post publicly your reason for vetoing any trade. I will publicly ask for opinions on any trade before I approve or veto it, so this really should never be a problem.

Scoring

5x5 Roto scoring:

OBP, SLG, HR, SB, R x W, SV, K, WHIP, ERA

12 (14?) teams… 1200 dollar total prize pool.

Proposed payout:
1st – 600
2nd – 300
3rd – 150
4th – 100
5th – 50

A 50 dollar LAST PLACE penalty will be paid by the loser. This 50 dollars will go towards paying any league fees for the next year (if we use CBS), thus reducing the cost for everyone. If we do not have any league fees, then it will be split between first and second place: 35 to first, 15 to second. If the loser does not pay this fee, he forfeits his buy-in for next year and is out of the league.

Other basic rules:

-You must have 40 people on your roster at all time, so during the FA bidding process, you must have enough $$ available to fill out your roster with minimum salary players. IE: if you have 10 spots left to fill, you need 4 mil left.

-You must have 25 active major league players on your roster at all times. Thus, you cannot hide a rookie or minor leaguer on your 25-man roster unless they are called up IRL. If they are called up IRL (even briefly) and you add them to your active roster during this time, they must stay there for the rest of the season, but if they are starting the next season in the minors, they have to revert back to your minor league roster.

-DL. Each team will have 4 DL spots. You may keep a player on the DL as long as he is on the IRL DL. As soon as he comes off the IRL DL, he must be either cut or placed on your active roster. You must continue to pay his salary while on the DL. If you cut him while on the DL, you still take the cap hit. DL players may be traded. There is a 3 day grace period after a player is pulled off the DL IRL to add him to your active roster.

This is not clear. The first sentence makes it seem like your cap hit would only be 7.5% of 10 mil - or am I missing something? Also, does your cap hit get wiped clean at the end of the season (I am assuming that this is the case, just wanted to double-check).

An idea I've seen for free agent/waiver wires is to have a separate budget for that. So in our league we'd have 100M to draft with, but then have say a 110M afterwards. Basically force teams to allot some space for adding contracts later. This would allow a little more wiggle room with trades (which i think we should be encouraging, trades are fun) and we could just take the complicated prorating issue out completely - make all contracts guaranteed. 10M is plenty of room to add 400k players and you could always allot extra yourself.

Do you want the minor leaguers to start on the 6 year rookie schedule immediately when drafted or only once they hit the majors? I thought it was the latter. Also does this mean that when we do the auction we have 94M to draft with since 4M is saved for the 15 minor leaguers?

And I know I was complaining about too many bench players before but i'm flipping now. that starting lineup leaves only 4 bench spots to be split batters/pitchers. i say we make it just 2 general P spots, I think 6 should be enough.

That's all I got for now

Couple questions. Sorry if I missed the answer somewhere.

Will minor league players be able to be added/dropped during the year? For example if an AA guy goes undrafted but starts to put up big numbers/gets promoted to AAA can we add him and drop another minor league player that we drafted? If so will we use a simple waiver system? If not, must we wait until next years rookie draft to try and grab him?

What if an undrafted minor leaguer makes the leap to the bigs? Will we use a normal auction system to attain his services? Waivers?

You noted that once a player is optioned up IRL you can option him up to your team, but cannot option him back down. Does this apply to players I decide to option up because of injury. It would kind of stink to have to cut a player because of someone coming back from injury. Ex. Pujols get injured, I option up a 1b from the minors who just got called up IRL, Pujols comes off the DL, I now have to cut someone.

An idea that could cover 15 and 25 man add/drops: Lock players all week, have bids processed at say Sunday Midnight. So every week is pretty much a silent auction for any players not on a roster. I'm not positive that CBS's software can do this, but i'm pretty sure it can, ESPN has an option like this. If not it could be easily jury rigged with an email bidding system.

Mentioning CBS's software reminds me we should get that settled away too. Who was it that had the coupon so that it's $50? Primetime?

Edit:

-------------
I think we have two solid options to implement our draft, proboards method: http://2p2dynasty.proboards.com/index.cgi
and here is an example of a slow auction taking place on that couchmanager site: http://www.couchmanagers.com/auctions/?auction_id=242

No problem with any of the rules, except my objection to the size of the active rosters/lineups. Unless we have 16 teams I think (like serg) we should go deeper. At Catcher for example, there are 30 ML teams and even if we have 16 teams, it will be impossible for someone to have bad starting catcher. Even if you let teams take backup catchers before you get your first catcher you will end up with solid starting catcher.

Same is true in the OF. Most OFers are decent hitters, but if we only have to start 4 (presuming 14 teams) that means only the top 56 OFers are starting while 34 or so OFers are on the bench or possibly filling a UT spot (although that will generally be occupied by some players that only qualify at DH).

Yeah it was me. Just let me know and I will email whoever is in charge the "coupon."

I know CBS has an auction system as well. Never used it so not sure if they have what we need.

I want to control the league on the CBS settings. Shoot me a PM and we'll work it out tmw.

I know this was yanked out of the MLB Rules, but I think we only need to go with option (a) for practical purposes. Option (b) is nice, but not sure how we can track that easily. Its easy to see if a player had X amount of ABs or IP, but not so easy to determine if a player was on the ML roster for 45 days.

How about we add 5 of the Minor League spots to the Active Roster, so 30 man and 10 man rosters, and then add a second C, 5th OF, and 3 Bench?

also i checked out CBS's settings earlier today, they have an auction but it's a fast paced one where everyone needs to be present, we were looking for a slower paced one. Though i guess if everyone can get together at the same time and wants that that's cool too.

*Are we cool having the four general bench spots? Good number?

*Define "minor league player check." Would a better term be ml clock or something? This term would confuse me if I were to re-read it in a couple months.

*Does the bolded refer to a FA player signed to a minor league contract, regardless of their prior experience? For example, what Livan Hernandez has done for the past five seasons.

*I would like to have the option of sending a player back down if he is optioned IRL (assuming there is space on the minors roster). If you want to set limits for this type of transaction, maybe it could be a grace period like the 10 day period mentioned with trades (or a certain threshold of AB/IP). ML teams do screwy stuff with their prospects too often to not have some flexibility here, it goes beyond what we would realistically be able to know/predict ahead of time, imo.

*What's the procedure for signing a UFA off the scrap heap mid-season? Do we pay league minimum for their services? Do others get to bid if we express an intent to sign? I only saw the period immediately following the draft discussed.

*I don't understand the point of this rule. Please explain your reasoning and expand on this a bit. It may be that I'm fuzzy on the rookie draft as a whole.

*I think implementing the 20% pay increase over a true rookie's first three seasons is too much. No rookie is going to see their pay increase that drastically. First three years, at or near $400k; next three are arbitration eligible, so the 20% would be more realistic the given the low starting salary. Then they hit FA and have their salary set by the market (other owners bidding). Just my take on it.

*Not sure how I feel about minor leaguers counting towards the cap, especially if you know they'll be down there for a couple seasons. Not a major sticking point though.

What's the league rule wrt position eligibility?

CBS's default is 20 games played at the position the previous year or 10 games played in the current year gets you eligibility. Any reason to use something different?

thinking about it more, i dont like 2 C. i'd think that it would make sense for a couple of teams to only start 1 if we do that and that doesn't seem cool. I'm for a 5th OF and couple more bench spots though.

C 1b 2b 3b SS CIF MIF UTIL 5xOF 3xSP 2xRP 4xP for 22 starters maybe?

I don't think we need to stay w/ 25 and 15 man split, that's 210 minor leaguers we'd be drafting, 140 of them is plenty still, and then we can have 22 starters / 8 bench which i think is better than what we have now.

so to summarize the bunch of things i've posted about so far:
- Weekly processing of add/draps after silent auction (for active/minors)
- Forced cap space for free agent/trade maneuverability
- I like not being able to move back to minors after promotion. They have to clear waivers/free agency if you want to get them back on your minors. Don't promote if you dont mean it. I'm cool with an exemption/grace period for acquiring them by trade.
- Deeper starting lineups and bench. 30/10 split.
- more i look at it the more i like that couchmanagers setup. also i post a lot.

Possibly, but that is where strategy comes in. Do you go for the HRs, Rs and possibly a couple of SBs you get from your number 2 catcher or do you start a backup and not risk the hit in the pct cats.

Im pretty sure using the referrals on Sporstline the league cost would only be $90, I actually just referred myself in a league I run...

Exit, our teams league fees will be in this weekend I just heard back from Thundercat I'll PM you when they are sent.

Im am just starting to read over the rules...

10 recieved, 2 promised.

So might have 12 instead of 14. I PM'd Sir S a Lot to see if he still wants a team. Unless some new people show interest or you guys know someone that would want to join we need both of them to have teams to get to 14.

I say we take entries and talk about and tweak the rules until Sunday night, and then start the nominations for the auction on Monday at noon. Here's another league auctioning with similar rules to ours on that site that i appear to be shilling for but i swear i'm not cause its free: http://www.couchmanagers.com/auctions/?auction_id=193

Are people opposed to that site being used? It looks pretty incredible to me...