CS has said, in a ticket, that they will be closing the 40-man roster loophole and that ALL 40-man roster removals will now require waivers.

The days of hiding players by optioning and removing players with multi-year deals (and options remaining) will be addressed in the next update.

More good news for fair play.

I don't even use it quite that way, but that's gonna make for some hard decisions.

In other words, fun! Great news for fair play.

About time. Now if I could just fill up my 40-man roster so I had hard decisions to make...

I wonder if they plan to close the out of options loop. Right now, you can keep a player with no options in the minors until they retire.

I keep pushing it, but last I heard from them, they didn't have a solution they liked (and didn't like my idea of including them in the rule 5, though they seemed to at first).

They should just auto-waive any players on the 40-man that are out of options and not on the 25-man after opening day. Very simple, easy to administer, and anyone that clears waivers ends up being OK.

They could start the arb clock on anyone out of options. That would put them making the minimum the following year. Keeping a guy at 61k is one thing. Paying him 327/343/360 and then arb is another story.

Quote: Originally Posted By goosegoslin on 1/12/2010They should just auto-waive any players on the 40-man that are out of options and not on the 25-man after opening day. Very simple, easy to administer, and anyone that clears waivers ends up being OK

I like this idea. Easy and very realistic. Although maybe they should auto-waive on the "Prepare for Regular Season" day so the players have a chance to clear waivers before the minor leagues start.

Placing them on waivers doesn't solve the problem. You'll just see guys continually claimed and re-placed on waivers hoping to get them pushed through to the minors.

The point is to find a place for guys in the majors that are indefinitely stuck in the minors on a team that doesn't need them.

Simply force them off the 40-man roster if they're out of options and in the minor leagues. Then the only way you can add them back on the 40-man roster is when you put them in the majors.

It's a minor complexity that solves a larger issue.

"Placing them on waivers doesn't solve the problem. You'll just see guys continually claimed and re-placed on waivers hoping to get them pushed through to the minors."

Right but that's what happens in real life too. You can only claim a guy if you are willing to put him on your 25-man, or else he has to clear waivers again. I forget the pitcher, but a few years ago a guy bounced around 4x before he either cleared or stuck.

The point is to force the player into the open market to keep teams from hoarding talent.

"Simply force them off the 40-man roster if they're out of options and in the minor leagues. Then the only way you can add them back on the 40-man roster is when you put them in the majors."

That's insane. It's killing a mosquito with an a-bomb. If the player isn't even good enough to make a 40-man roster, 6th year free agency will make him available. You don't need to force players that aren't even on the 40 and out of options into the market, there's already a mechanism for that.

In real life, the rule is only meant to target guys that are on the 40, but out of options (again, 6-year free agency takes care of making the others available). Forcing those players to waivers gets them on a 25-man roster if someone thinks they are worthy.

However, 6-year free agents should be exposed to the whole league when they aren't protected on the 40-man, you shouldn't get to 'auto-resign' them in the resign free agent period after rollover, as that kind of defeats the point of the rule. You should also have flexibility in offering them more money on a minor league deal, instead of the standard minor league deal. That would spread those guys around too.

Two simple rules would eliminate hoarding.

1. Autowaive of 40-man, not-25-man (DL excluded, but once they are eligible to come off, they must be added to the 25 within one real life day, or they too are waived) players that are out of options on opening day (gives owners the 5 period prep-time to add them). Claiming team must place the player on the 25-man or he has to clear waivers before he can be put in the minors. This is exactly what happens in real life.

2. 6-year free agents (players with 6 years of service that aren't on the 40-man at rollover) get exposed to everyone and market takes care of distribution. Owner has flexibility to offer more than standard AAA salary (which would still be the minimum), so if you think a guy will help, you can offer him (for example) $82K on a minor league deal, and he'll go to the highest bidder, instead using some unknown algorithm that figures (often incorrectly) where he'll have the best chance to play. This is what happens in real life, which is a nice bonus too.

Do those to things, and player hoarding as we know it is over, and we are also in line with MLB in terms of realism.

Just to be clear, WIS has shot down suggestions which are at all time-consuming for users to stock their minor leagues. This leaves us with making simple suggestions that don't exactly work like they do in real life.

The best and easiest solution I've come up with is to disallow someone who's out of options from the 40 unless they're in the majors.

I sent over a similar suggestion before (on the 40 and out of options = available in Rule 5) and was told it added too much complexity. Which is kinda true. But if you simply kick them off the 40 and when they try to add them to the 40, you notify the user that the only way that player can be on the 40 is if they're on the big league team.

That's simple, transparent and accomplishes the main point of getting ML talent into the ML instead of sitting in AAA.

How is what I proposed time consuming? It doesn't even happen until after the minors are stocked and we're at opening day.

We already release 6-year free agents, all I'm saying is don't give teams an option to resign them without exposing them to everyone else first.

Here's the thread with CS:

I'd like to know how this guy:

http://www.whatifsports.com/HBD/Pages/Popups/PlayerProfile.aspx?pid=887129

Can stay in AAA so long when plenty of teams could use him on their big league roster and what is WIS doing to prevent people from stashing guys in AAA when they're out of options and past the 6-year free agency mark?

There's a ton of talent in my leagues that I can't touch in Rule 5 or Free Agency because they're locked up on a 40-man roster and re-signed as a minor league free agent apparently.


Response:

There is a MLB rule that we do not have in place in HBD because we feel it would lead to too much confusion and time commitment. When a player is out of options and the regular season begins, that player must clear waivers before he can accept his assignment to the minor leagues. We do not have that rule in place, which explains how an owner can have a player out of options in the minors.

This is what allows this situation to happen and currently there isn't anything that can prevent it. However, once the player is promoted to the ML roster they cannot be demoted back without passing through waivers once they have no options . Also, if the owner leaves them in the minors too long they risk the player retiring.

and another response:

We'd like to make the players pass through waivers but we know it would be bad for the game, especially first timer users. There would just be far too many players needing assignment and forced to go through waivers at the start of the season.

We've looked into this topic before and it's really just a handful of owners that go with this approach aggressively. Every franchise may have one or two lesser quality players in this boat.