I know quite a few leagues have a minimum win requirement at the ML level, and one league I am in is discussing a way to keep minor leagues at least somewhat competitive.  More on rumors from other leagues than anything happening in ours.

One proposal we are kicking around is requiring all minor league teams to have 25 players and at least 10 pitchers. Failure to comply within 2 weeks of being notified could lead to expulsion.

Any thoughts on this proposed rule?  Are there other rules in place that work?  Are we missing something?  Would you join a league that had this rule if everything else looked good about the league?

Minor league rules don't work.   First, they're difficult to enforce because no one wants to check that many teams at that many levels.   So you have an owner with an ax to grind reporting another owner who's in violation while 10 others are also in violation.  Second, most minor league rules are dumb.  "No 0(0) pitching" is dumb because the TC pitchers are horrible at 100% or 0%.   "Must have 10 pitchers" is dumb.  I have 10 43/14 DUR/STM combos.   They'll be wasted in a week.   "No playing guys out of position" is dumb.   There are no legit SS/CF in LoA.   Fact.  Finally, I doubt WifS backs up any MiL violations if the owners have 20 per level.

The league I commish has a simple 25% min win rule for minors. Easy enough to check. It's worked well. It was mainly because we had a few guys abusing their minors to the tune of a AAA team going like 6-138 one season. It was getting rediculous.


Mike is right though about the specific positional rules, etc. I know I wouldn't want to spend a bunch of time looking through everyone's minor league teams. It'd be very time consuming.

We actually did have CS enforce a league expulsion for a minor league rules violations once. Granted it was an extreme case like the one noted above.

I tried the MWR for minors.   I think it was something simple like 35 wins.  However, I realized I wouldn't have the desire to boot someone who went 34-110 in LoA and had won 75-95 in their bigs for the last 22 seasons.    I beat people up for sucking at the BL level and offer no leniency for failure at that level.