K gotta go. Back tonight or tomorrow morning at the latest. Sorry again.

WAIT. Levarkin, please register for the draft before you leave again. Instructions can be found in the pm's Exitonly sent out.

Well if he actually left and you guys want to get started now we can just make an account for him and give him the login info when he gets back tonight.

And we need Karak to confirm that we're using (or not using) guaranteed contracts for year 1.

And to make sure people see the other confirmed rule change for year one: Players get 5% salary increases if they're kept, not 20%. Will be brought up again in the off season.

I've been mulling over the guaranteed contracts thing this morning. I'm going to lunch now, and I'll try to come to a decision there. I'm leaning towards partially to fully guaranteeing them at the moment. If we don't guarantee them, then people can take far too many gambles at the auction and just cut the player if it isn't working out for only a modest cap hit which would use up room they might leave open anyways.

Also, nice avatar.

If you all feel only having the cap hit wouldn't be an effective enough enforcement tool for certain loopholes/behaviors, that's fine. I have no issue with making contracts guaranteed to an extent (pro-rated, I assume?) if that's the reason behind it.

As far as the work associated with transactions that could result from it, I wouldn't worry about that between the three (nine? seventy two?) commissioners keeping tabs on things like that.

well, i mean..ray sleeps all the time (allegedly?), you're an indians fan, and karak ****ing sucks... so meh. pretty horrid hierarchy of the league if you ask me

Levarkin the Prodigal Son has come home!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Lets get this Mother going!!!

I feel obligated to remind the Yankee fans that you have to stay under the salary cap. That is all.

AH HAHAHAHAAHA!!!! Genius Sir, pure and utter Genius!

or maybe....

Jokes, I ain't no Yankees fan I thought that was classic. Keep up the good work sir!

Here's my conclusion:

All contracts will be fully guaranteed. Any $$ bid on them in the waiver process (at ANY point in the season until the player signs with another team) will be pro-rated and that pro-rated portion will be taken off of whatever is left on the contract. The league will keep in mind that halfway through the season we can vote on increasing the cap (temporarily or permanently) if clearing cap room for personnel moves is clearly an issue. However, this increase will have to be small to be fair to those who exercised their right to keep themselves under the cap after the auction. We could even offer it as optional and those who take the option would need to pay real $$ to take it. Just an idea.

Hypothetical situation to explain the rule:

I sign Jon Lester for 20 million a year. Halfway through the year he's sucking a lot, so I cut him. No one wants to take him in a trade, even though I offer to take on half of his remaining salary. Since 81 games have gone by, I owe 10 mil on Letser for the rest of the year. I cut him to waivers. Through the waiver bidding process, Pecota signs him for 5 mil. This means that Lester's annual salary is now 5 MILLION. Pecota only needs to be 2.5 mil under the cap to do this, as he simply needs to pay him 1/2 of his annual salary. I, accordingly, get to shave 2.5 mil off of my cap for the rest of the year and only owe lester 7.5 mil.

Say Lester passes through waivers unsigned. If he is signed through the waiver process at any point in the year, the same rules apply.

To sum it up:

Before cutting Lester, I'm at 100 mil. After cutting Lester, I'm at 100 mil. Pecota is at 50 mil. Once Pecota signs lester, I'm at 97.5 mil and Pecota is at 52.5 mil. After the season ends, I'm at 80 mil. If, after the season, Pecota decides to retain Lester, he's at 55.25 (5% increase) mil. Does this all make sense?

And yes, please make Levarkin an account, sign him into the account and PM him a username and temp password.

Sounds good to me. Making the account now, should be started by 5.

Karak - are you sure that you will have enough time to administer this process? It sounds like a great system in theory, but very difficult to administer.

Also - can the trading parties negotiate over how to split up the player's salary for the year? Sounds like it from the post, but I don't remember reading about this before. Sounds like a cool wrinkle.

I am really against having a midseason vote regarding the salary cap. If 3 people planned adequeately and 10 people overspent, obviously the 10 overspenders will outvote the 3 good planners, and it's extremely unfair. I think any changes to the cap should be made only during the offseason.

Do we have a final draft of the rules somewhere?

And it's running.

Make sure to have Make your max bid your real bid checked if you're bidding >$10 ($1m) on a player. And bid in 10% increments, rounding up.

Start off players at $4 when you nominate them.

Thats about it.

The last rules post I made didn't include a few of the most recent changes. I'll let Karak post the final draft as he has a better idea of the most recent changes.

im in

I'll work on another final draft tonight.

And the midseason vote would have to be approved by me (would have to be quite reasonable) and approved by an absolute majority of the league. It would also have to be very carefully crafted to not disenfranchise those who kept room. I honestly doubt it will happen, and it's only an option if the cap problems are seriously interfering with the league running effectively. I wouldn't worry about it.

As for the time issue, Pecota has volunteered to undertake a lot of the administrative technical responsibilities along with me. Anyone else who wants to help can too. It's important that every personnel move by a team must be met with them reporting their move, how it affects their cap and how their cap is affected going forward. If a free agent waiver move shaves $$ off your cap, you need to report this plainly to the league so we can review it. If you don't report it, then your cap stays as is. I don't expect issues like this will happen very often, so I'm not very concerned about it.

No you're not, sorry. The league is now closed.

nutshot i hope you've been paying attention to this cause i don't know what's going on
all i know is karak's going down

My final rules draft (or close to it) will get up before bidding on any player is closed. I hope to make everything clear. IF you don't understand anything, don't hesitate to ask. I know some of the rules are confusing, but there's simply no other way to go about it.

Edit - I see what you did there.

Just so everyone understands what they are bidding:

$1 in on the auction site = 100k.

So $4 minimum = 400k

$10 = 1 mil

$100 = 10 mil

$1000 = 100 mil

Just approach it like you have a 1000 dollar salary cap (960 in the FA auction), and you'll be fine.