Other possible options:
- We could blacklist the most-used players from this season and/or the entire roster from the worst team. This would encourage some more diversity.
- We could lower the max salary per player to $10M, though I'm hesitant to remove the albatross strategy, as I think it still has merit.
- We could add maximum PA or IP roster restrictions to eliminate the 3000 IP teams.
- We could tighten the positional requirements saying all 8 positions have to have someone at their natural position. Only 2 players since 1950 have 500 PA and D-/D- at their primary position.

Whatever we do, we should definitely give things a little more time to shake out. 30-something games is still a pretty small sample size. We're starting to see some of the 500 PA guys running into fatigue. Do they play fatigued? How well do they do? Or, do the owners opt for an out-of-position backup? How does that affect things?

Some good ideas here. Other things to consider:

-- No trading.
-- Rather than do traditional standings, give each a owner a score = (wins for the team you are managing) + (losses for the team you made). 8 highest totals make the playoffs. As things stand now, there is really no penalty if you make a team that's a little too good...once the season starts, you don't really care, unless you are fighting that particular team for a playoff spot. I'd like to see more skin in the game based on the quality (or lack thereof) of the roster you make. Note that this ONLY works if you prohibit trading.
-- Cap the number of pure DHs allowed on any roster. A lot of us went this route (and I expect if we do a 1950-2020 league, pretty much every team will have a ton of DHs.) Boring.
-- Cap the max number of PA and IP (in addition to minimums). In my opinion, one of the worst team building strategies was to give someone thousands of extra IP, basically guaranteeing he will never have to deal with fatigue.

I like the idea of max IP/PA... though feel if we go more modern, it’ll be harder to go that route again as there’s less poor quality with 200+ IP or 500+ PA.

I like a limit on DHs... though what about no players that don’t have a fielding rating?

As someone who built a team with 3,000+ IP, I would’ve totally given someone fatigue to have to manage, but with the IP min where it was, even in Coors, I didn’t feel fatigue would ever come into play for pitchers. The team I received has 2,800+ IP and I’ve effectively set 1650 IP up with the hope they never appear in a game, and so far that collective has only seen 4 IP. So I’m effectively only using 1,200 IP in Coors. With the hitter quality and the extra pitches assigned to bad pitchers, we’d have to go down to 1,000 IP or maybe lower to see any fatigue issues for pitching. So, if we want that to be a strategy (and I think it’s strong), I think we’d have to lower the IP minimum to around 900-1,000 total (salary restrictions still in place, so if one went that route, quality would likely be better).

I also like the idea of factoring in wins for team assigned and losses for team built. Trading is one of the more enjoyable aspects and I shared some thoughts there in the league, but as contrarian notes, these two things only work without the other... I think both create exciting variants, but they definitely are different variants of this idea. I’d play in either.

Albatross strategies are solid, especially if done well, I’d hate to see that strategy limited by caps on players even as much as I’d loved to have received 1 myself. If we went more modern, I’d probably draft an albatross.

Sweaty Balls
Well I started with the rules on IP, AB, Max$$, and positions. I went with what I find annoying – pitchers who walk a lot of guys. So I went with ol standard Tommy Byrne… who randomly threw about 1400 innings over a 12y career (time off for WW2). All said he had 7BB/9 for a few teams. (as of today – working in that arena – Sweaty Balls is #2 is walks allowed, about X2 league average). Maybe being a lefty helps the team, a whole bunch of sub 150inn seasons… he did OK record wise…lets see.

Hitting – I just came out of the “try to lose” league (also very fun). I went with at first terrible position players who hit the minimums with D/D fielding… then everyone else is a single position eligible bad catcher… you can of course play some out of position (Lance Parrish) but hopefully pick up errors (not as much as hope so far). I gave him one good catcher who sucked up $$ and wouldn’t come out then force all the backups to be out of position catchers.

Didn’t consider DHs as the backups… maybe should have.

C 1997 Piazza
1B 1908 Freeman
2B 1885 Myers
SS 1891 McKean
3B 1890 Kuehne
OF 1904 Barkley, 1907 Keeler, 1886 Lille