Fall 2013 Franchise Tournament – For Owners Who Love Research, History, and Team-Building Puzzles
I have wanted to run a tournament like this for years, and I am hoping it will generate a lot of interest. It should make for some fascinating team-building strategies.
Concept:
This will be a 16 team, 5-season tournament, based on a franchise theme, with all 5 leagues running simultaneously. The leagues will be different caps: 60M, 70M, 80M, 90M, and 100M.
Upon signup, each owner will select an exclusive franchise – more details on this below. You will enter 5 separate teams from that franchise, one in each league. But here’s the catch, you may not use any player more than once across your five teams. So each franchise will effectively be using 125 different players from its history. If you pick the Yankees, you can use one of the Babe’s Yankee seasons exactly once in your five teams. Up to you where you put him, but you only get him once. Of course, whoever picks the Red Sox can also use one version of Ruth (drawn from the 1915-19 seasons) and theoretically the Braves franchise could also use Ruth once, the 1935 version.
So this tournament will be a test not just of historical franchise quality, but of depth. It will reward owners who can do their research and manage effectively at five different caps. You’ll need to put together 5 different starting rotations, one for each league, using completely different players each time. We should see some very interesting strategies here. If you’re using the Braves, do you burn Greg Maddux with his dominant 1994 or 1995 season at a higher cap, or use a lesser version of Maddux at 60M or 70M, where he might actually be more dominant? Choose wisely, because you only get to use him once. And of course the same thing goes for your position players.
The leagues will start shortly after the 2013 players are released by WIS (the new release usually happens within a couple of days of the end of the MLB regular season), to allow plenty of time for team-building, and 2013 players will be eligible for this tournament.
Other details:
DH: No
Park: You may use any park that your franchise used at any time in their history. You can use the same park for all 5 leagues, or 5 different parks, or any combination.
Trades: No
Waiver Wire: No
Injuries: On
AAA: No
Clones: No (duh)
Live: No
Realignment: Random. Each league will randomly realigned exactly once, letting the cards fall where they may.
League Format: 4/4/4/4, with no interleague play.
There will be no 200K exemptions. All 25 of your players on each roster must come from your franchise. Because there will be no AAA players, no trades, no waiver wire, and injuries will be on, please be sure to draft enough PA and IP to get through the season.