This thread is for the May 2026 franchise draft format started by nebhusker - it is different from the 16 team franchise draft that schwarze is doing.
I'm reserving the front page for draft organization including the chewy comprehensive update.
Here is a spreadsheet view of the draft: https://bit.ly/FD5-pick
People signed up for this draft at this link: https://www.whatifsports.com/forums/Posts.aspx?topicID=548930 (
if this draft looks cool, which it is, head over there and sign up for the waitlist. At worst I will make sure you know when we do Franchise Draft #6, but also it gives me an alternate if someone drops out).
After the trade deadline (and after owners have opened a sitemail making them aware we are starting), I will post the daily draft schedule with names and teams for each round. We are drafting 2 rounds per day for the first few days, then moving to 4/day toward the end of the draft.
You can only draft ahead if EVERYONE in front of you has drafted from that franchise, but you can go at your appointed time even if someone is lagging. They could lose a draft position once every 12 hours if they run behind. That will become every 6 hours later in the draft.
The daily draft window rolls over at
4pm eastern time, so the windows are technically
4am-4pm (odd numbered round) and then
4pm-4am the next morning (even numbered round). In every USA time zone, that means you can just pick once in the morning and once in the evening (with a 12 hour window to balance with life). When we move to 4/day, the slots will roll at 4am, 10am, 4pm, 10pm eastern time, so you will need to do one mid-day pick to avoid getting leaped. You can send me (or someone else) a
proxy if you cannot hit the window, including if you are early to bed in the east or late to rise in the west. I hope we can avoid needing to pause!
Here was the initial, randomized draft order before any trades: TBA
It is really, really important that you understand you can
ONLY use FULL/PARTIAL seasons and
MUST NOT use COMBINED seasons. The WIS normal search lets you pick "season type", so I would save a search for 1969-2025 using season type "full/partial" to avoid headaches later.
Please backchannel me or ask questions in the forum until you are confident you understand this important rule.
Players are exclusive to each franchise. Once someone picks Pedro from the Expos, everyone else must draft a different name when they draft their Expo pick. But they could still draft the Red Sox version of Pedro. The reason we avoid combined seasons is that we would risk duplicate seasons. You do
NOT need to specify which season when you draft a player - you can experiment with various seasons of that player to perfect your roster later. Please note you could have a whole outfield full of Beltrans, so long as each was drafted from a different franchise.
No mulligans in rounds 1-23. Once you pick a player, that limits the options for everyone else. It is wise to select several players who had both great/expensive seasons for the franchise and also some cheap seasons. That gives you flexibility as you build your team. Round 24 mulliigan is ok, since it doesn't deny any options to others. If it is mathematically
impossible to field a team after pick 23, I will sort something out - but you may not like my solution.
Standard 24 team league
$120M salary cap.
YES to clones, but
only from different franchises. Each named player can only be selected once
per franchise.
YES to DH.
No WW.
No AAA.
No trades of players - but you can trade entire draft positions (ONLY before both players do their 1st pick - exception if I approve a new owner)
Full/Partial seasons only (no Combined) -
please ask questions ASAP if you do not understand this rule
Alignment – See below (Astros & Brewers go back to 1969 roots)
Ballpark – any park used by your franchise (1969-2024 only)
Yes to injuries
League number shared after the draft is complete.
In the 3rd version of this league, nbl17 made a google sheet to make it easy to see which players were taken for each franchise. Since nbl17 isn't playing in franchise draft #5,
I invite someone to make one. Here is the old one, as a template:
https://bit.ly/FD3byteam I'm willing to do it myself, but having another set of eyes on things is a helpful double check against errors.
5/2/2026 3:15 PM (edited)