This will be a progressive that advances 1 season at a time starting in 1920.

16 teams 2 leagues 2 4 team divisions per league.

No Salary Cap.

Trades will be allowed including trading of draft picks up to 1 season in advance.

No AAA

Initially there will be a 1 round draft to pick your base team from the real 16 teams from 1920. Draft order will be determined randomly.

The divisions will be as taken from the base teams this way.

NL East
Brooklyn Robins
NY Giants
Philadelphia Phillies
Boston Braves

NL West
Cincinnati
Pittsburgh
Chicago Cubs
St. Louis Cardinals

AL East
New York Yankees
Boston Red Sox
Washington Senators
Philadelphia Athletics

AL West
Cleveland
Chicago White Sox
St Louis Browns
Detroit Tigers

Once you pick your base team you will get to reserve 2 players from that team. (Only players in the WIS database are used.)

Each of your division rivals will then get to choose 1 player from your team to put into the initial draft pool. (You will also choose 1 player from each of their team to put into the initial draft.)

You will then get to reserve 3 more players from your original team.

Each of your division rivals then get to chose 1 more player from your team to put into the initial draft pool.

You will then get to reserve 5 more players and all remaining players from your original team will be put into the initial draft pool.

If it becomes obvious at any time that 2 or more teams have entered into an agreement to only choose bad players into the draft pool the comish will make the choices instead.

Your stadium is the one your original base team used.

Once this is done the initial draft will take place and will be 10 rounds based on random order and it will be serpentine ( 1-16 in even rounds and 16-1 odd rounds)

Each team will now have 20 players. Any undrafted players as well as a list of scrubs will be available to all teams to fill out their rosters on a season to season basis. (You cut your scrubs each season)

Subsequent drafts are worst to first with a sliding scale wins floor for each pick. Round 1 will be 3 hour time slots, round 2 will be 2 hour time slots all other rounds will be 1 hour time slots. Your number of picks will be equal to the number of players you cut. This is important to remember. Any undrafted players become scrubs and you may stop drafting at any time to fill your roster with scrubs.

Sliding wins floor
1st pick 50 wins
2nd pick 45 wins
3rd pick 40 wins
4th pick 35 wins

For the first 4 picks in round 1 each team that is eligible will be ranked for that pick and the team with the lowest amount of wins that qualifies for the pick gets it. If 2 teams miss the wins floor with 48 wins and 46 wins the team with 46 wins gets the 2nd pick If 3 teams miss the wins floor and have 48 wins 46 wins and 43 wins the team with 46 wins would get the second pick and the team with 43 wins would get the 3rd pick. The 48 win team would get the 4th pick. This system has worked very well in the Before the Beer League.

Since you may trade draft picks up to 1 season in advance if you trade a pick you MUST cut at least 1 player. There will be no exceptions to this rule. Scrub players dropped do count as cuts so this should not be an issue for quite a while.

There is no minimum IP but failure to reach the wins floor with less than 1000 IP will result in an additional penalty of 5 draft spots from your original position so the highest you can pick will be 7th. This allows you some flexibility but keeps you from throwing away a season for a high pick.

Players must be rated at a position to start there. Since there is minimal control over subs in the sim there is no penalty for subs coming in out of position. This is largely done on the honor system. If a violation is noticed your will be notified by site mail and be given a 1 week grace period to correct it. Continued violations will result in a drop of 1 draft spot per game in violation. This means it is very important to notify the comish if you will be away on vacation.


Since each member of the league will be site mailed all rules claiming you did not know about a rule or misunderstood it will not get an exception granted.

What are the expected challenges of this league.

Expect in some years to have to juggle your starting staff or use tandem starters

Expect to have to have platoons and juggle your starting lineup.

There will be no rule changes once the league starts without a vote of at least 2/3rds of the owners approval.


Scrub players that will be available in addition to undrafted players. These players are meant to be below average players that will be usefull but not really good. The position players are meant to be platoon players. The 2 utility players qualify at all positions.

C Chief Zimmer 1902
1B Charlie Carr 1905
2B Joe Quinn 1901
3B Charlie Irwin 1901
SS George McBride 1905
OF George Van Haltren 1903
Utility Mike Grady 1900
Utility Bill Friel 1902

The scrub pitchers available will be.
Bill Hogg 1907
Art Fromme 1907
Jack Katoll 1902
Rip Haggerman 1915 

BTW Joe Riggins was the manager in Bull Durham.

How are you going to get around Babe Ruth and his $14.000,000 salary.i would allow the yankees or ruth's team only to protect 1 player.Many people believe that in the 1920-1930 progressive leagues having Ruth is an overwhelming advantage.i would be more inclined to join if this league had a salary cap

An overwhelming advantage?  Not quite.  Having Ruth on the roster brought the Yanks only four WS titles in 15 seasons, that's less than a third, hardly overwhelming.

If the league started in 1910 would whoever picked Ruth in 1915 loose their second round pick? I understand your point a bit but since there is a draft of teams evryone has the same shot at getting Ruth.

Put another, and perhaps a better way, if all players were dumped into a draft pool for 1920 whoever picked 1st would draft Ruth and not loose their round 2 pick.

Ruth has the highest salary in 4 of the 1st 10 seasons. Some of those years are pretty outrageous but Hornsby has the highest salary in 5 of the 1st 10 and Gehrig in 1.

and given the position played, you could argue that Hornsby is a better PROGRESSIVE player to own.  

put me down crikett13 - i've always wanted to play a single season progressive starting in the 20's

I'll join.

Thanks guys.

This sounds fun, Ill join.