We are playing the 2012 season in a progressive league that started in the 1980 season.  Now we want to go back and restart in 1962.  This league starts with the original teams, and then each team morphs over the following years as the result of drafts and trades.  If we had 16 teams, we would have four extra teams to draft from, and teams like the Mets (if that team is not one of the four dropped teams) could begin to improve immediately with draftable players from the unclaimed four teams.  It looks like we will have 20 teams, so my question is, how can we set up drafts so that within a couple of years the bad teams can be competitive?

The most obvious option is the following, but are there other choices?

1) Everyone can only retain X number of their team's actual players from that year.  This is the easiest way to add okay players to the pool.  The Mets have only 6 position players who come back in 1963, and four of those are for partial seasons only, so they need to have some filler players that they can draft in 1962 for 1963 and beyond.  Have no minimum win requirement for the first three years.  Add a second 1st round pick at the end of the 1st round for those teams that fail to make the minimum win limit fhose first three years.

2) Other options?

I appreciate any thoughts!

Those are good starts. I would incorporate a 3-5 round Rule V draft for the first couple of years. You let each of the other teams not in the "bad team" category start with protecting a certain number of players (7 seems like it would be a good number to not cripple a team, but could go as low as 5 or as high as 10). Then the bad teams can select any player not protected in round 1. The other teams then keep another player and the bad teams select again. The process repeats itself for the designated number of rounds.

This instantly spreads some of the wealth around regarding players and would really help the "bad teams" fill holes. Just a thought.