Since it has been harder and harder to recruit quality owners and we had the misfortune of having several quality, long term, owners leave HBD entirely, we're considering some form of competitive balance draft. Specifically as a means to speed up the march towards parity and as an enticement for owners who may not have considered us (for a multitude of reasons) prior to this. A 55/115/180 MWR has been in place for the past 5 seasons, and the overall quality of the world has (IMO) been steadily increasing since that point. I'm hoping that asking a wider audience about  some form of competitive balance redistribution will help determine the best way to address that lack of parity and pique enough interest to help fill what looks daunting, given the past few recruiting cycles.

The Initial Idea:
All existing owners are only allowed to keep a set number of players on their 40-man roster (say 33) prior to the Rule V draft for this season.

I'm not sure if this is drastic enough, so I'm hoping for constructive ideas and past experience so we can choose the best steps moving forward.

Thanks.

It depends on how bad/good the teams are.   If you tell me that I can keep 33 players on any of my 3 active teams, you don't make a dent in my roster.   I'll keep about 18-20 BL players(and I may not even have that many at rollover) and 13-15 prospects.   Truth is, if I have 13 impact players in the minors, I've done something wrong.  For the most part, you can get 1 big IFA and 1-2 BL players in a draft.   3x4=12.   That would mean I've been a bad team for 4 seasons and all of the players I've acquired are still in the minors.

If you want something "meaningful" in an effort to create competitive balance, it's 20 or less.   Probably 15-18.   And even that won't hurt teams if they have nothing in the minors.

Does that seem to be the consensus as to how drastic something would have to be (cut to 20) to generate interest?

I'm not sure if you have to go down as far as Mike said, but you certainly have to go substantially below 33 for the reasons Mike stated.  It definitely has to be below 25 to force owners to cut some BL players.

It would have to be for all teams then, right? Within the available franchises are ones that would be stacked if they didn't have to cut down; seemingly trading one imbalance for another. 

Sure it would apply to all teams.   The simplest way to do it is with the R5.    All teams could protect 20(I still think less but whatever).    Each team would draft 10, if they wanted, and then you'd have to set a rule that no one could accept a R5 player back or claim one off the WW during ST.   That gives everyone a chance to get their roster in order and it's simple to do.    Otherwise, you've got 32 owners on at different times during the day while you try to do one for one deals for chosen players.

I appreciate the back and forth.

I'll add that by doing it via the R5, teams will still be able to keep their 1-3 year prospects.   All you're really doing is taking fringe BL players(the guys who can be replaced in any FA class or by BL-ready minor leaguers), overpaid BL players and 4th year players who could/should be on a BL roster.     That's why I say 15-18.   If it's 15, teams could protect 8 position players(a starting line-up) and 7 pitchers(pretty much the guys you want pitching in the playoffs).    By allowing the bottomfeeders access to your "2nd line" BL players and minor leaguers, they can become competitive relatively quickly.

Looking at your chat, this seems to be a dead subject. 

Posted by MikeT23 on 8/19/2014 9:20:00 AM (view original):
I'll add that by doing it via the R5, teams will still be able to keep their 1-3 year prospects.   All you're really doing is taking fringe BL players(the guys who can be replaced in any FA class or by BL-ready minor leaguers), overpaid BL players and 4th year players who could/should be on a BL roster.     That's why I say 15-18.   If it's 15, teams could protect 8 position players(a starting line-up) and 7 pitchers(pretty much the guys you want pitching in the playoffs).    By allowing the bottomfeeders access to your "2nd line" BL players and minor leaguers, they can become competitive relatively quickly.

Can you expose signed ML players to the R5 draft without having to make roster moves with them that might cause rating hits?

Interesting.

For comparison sake in terms of what kind of talent moves around based on how much teams can protect, teams could only protect 15 players from their whole organization (draft picks from the last 2 years, or who were 18 or younger when drafted 3 years prior being the only exceptions) for the last expansion draft in the first round.  Now, each team could only lose one player per round, and they got 3 additional protects after each round - but the first round still wasn't exactly a who's who of talent.

I think this would be a good concept for a theme world. Any commish out there want to give up your world to me so I can try it out?

Yes, it would be too costly with the current owners to institute it. I do think it's a better idea for recruiting than pretty much anything else, though.

That's an interesting idea. I don't think you'd need a new world to do it. A dying world, yes.