Be patient with me here...….
I'll try and formulate my idea into typed words.....

These ideas are liquid and not solid... maybe you can help me shape something.

I love me a progressive league. I enjoy spending the effort with other owners doing something we enjoy. Heck … I might have even made friends here over the course of 15 years.

NEWSFLASH!!!
Progressive leagues are stale. No one loves a tanker, but we understand it is part of the game. Some will do it, some won't.
So we as leagues create win floors and 5 teams lotteries. Bring on modified tanking. Incentivizes losing. Some folks have discussed 16 teams lottery for all non playoff teams, but that hampers rebuilds greatly and you fear having poor franchises that are too difficult rebuilds and also hard sells to new owners.

Lets say someone is lucky enough to land a Maddux, or a Clemens , or a Tom Seaver. No player movement, tank the right seasons and throw it on cruise control.

Also, prog guys all know the good draft classes and the bad draft classes. A little roster study and you can pretty well hypothesize the value of a teams #1s and #2 draft selection. During drafts we all seem to be working off the same lists.

So.... am I crazy or would these ideas interest anyone.....

16 teams that miss playoffs.... lottery for draft position. no reward for losing.
Now lets get real crazy, hopefully not radical... lets assume the players union is strong and guys are not just owned by franchises for life. Whatif randomly 4,5 or 6 guys a season just do not want to play for you anymore and just decide to walk. You don't know why... family decision, hate YOU the owner, bad teammates, poor culture... who cares... they walk and become Free Agents. Increase player movement.

Lets just for craps and giggles say 5 guys walk from each franchise. That gives approximately 150 Free Agents. Lets say each owner could negotiate or tag 6 of these players that they would have interest in obtaining. Each off season after the WS and before the next season player draft each owner contact the commish privately with his personal list of 6 guys hed'd like to negotiate with.
now.... if Joe Hesketh is a FA and only 1 teams tags him, guess what.... he joins with that squad. Seems fair.
now... if Brook Jacoby is a FA and 3 teams need a competent 3B and tag him... it is settled by random # generator. Not only that , what if was weighted based on wins.

example, 3 teams Tag/Negotiate with Brook Jacoby
team A won 60 games
team B won 80 games
team C won 100 games
add all wins = 240, random # generator pick # between 1-240
1-60 team A signs Brook Jacoby (25% chance)
61-140 team B signs Brook Jacoby (33% chance)
140-240 team C signs Brook Jacoby (42% chance)

winning matters.

Now imagine Greg Maddux walks and 20 owners all tag him to negotiate with him. Same thing , 20 team random lottery weighted based on wins. OR>>>> do all owners shy away from star players not wanting the lesser chance of signing sought after stars. Maybe only one brave soul tries to negotiate with Maddux and walks away with him … a theft. Maybe Maddux walks 3 years in a row? Who Knows.

No one tags/negotiates a guy and he joins the upcoming new player draft. freshens the carbon copy drafts we see each and every year. All the power is no longer in the hand of the draft... player movement will occur, you'll have to reinvent your strategy.

There would be a larger workload for a commish, but in my mind only 40 or 50 guys would move towards weighted Free Agency.

I hope this makes sense... Just loose thoughts.... If you made it this far... Thanks for reading...
feedback? thoughts? insults?

Sounds like fun to me.

A few things I would consider adding to the idea:

1. Make the next season you draft from random. Will it be a strong year or a weak year? No one knows! Kind of makes tanking less worthy as well since the tanker doesn't know who he'd be tanking for!

2.I like the idea of Free Agency but feel you would have to add some sort of cost and compensation based on the Free Agent. Maybe a player like a Maddux would return and cost a first round pick in the player draft, especially if it was when he was in his prime (1992,93,94,95..). If it was later in his career and his value was less then the compensation/cost would be less as well, a 2nd, 3rd, or 4th rounder then. This would require some sort of guide, possibly using total salary left in the players career divided by the number of seasons to get an average value of that player left. You would use that to establish a benchmark to follow for all players. Example, if Team A loses Maddux to Free Agency to Team B, Team B has to give up their 1st round pick in the draft to Team A. Now with a cost tied to acquiring a Free Agent, it will make the teams acquiring Free Agents decide between that Free Agent or a pick in the draft. I really think you would need to establish a cost to the acquiring teams and a compensation to the losing teams. I doubt you'd get many owners to join a league knowing that if they are in the middle of a rebuild and they lose their star players they just drafted the last 2 or 3 seasons for nothing in return that they'll stick around very long.

3.You say each owner would contact the commish with his personal list. Does that give the Commish an advantage knowing who is going after who? You would probably have to have someone outside the league to handle it to be fair.

You put much time and though on this issue but geez it seems like its far to complicated and time consuming,plus educating new owners to this concept when other owners leave wll be a significant challenge.

I agree progressives are stale far too many tied games that the home team scores a run in the bottom of the 8th to win.Etc.Too many excellent palyers start the season 1 for 25 or so.WIS needs to change the algoritm in some way.Secondly,with 21st century pitchers throwing so few innings and staying in the big leagues so few seasons you need 12 to 13 man pitching staffs EVERY year.Many big league teams use over 20 pitchers a season now ,meaning there pitchers average about 75-80 IP per season.We can not do that here.Some owners are dead set against AAA.Therefore we get many 50-55 win teams anf their owners get discouraged and quit.

The commish would need to send his list to another individual before receiving tag/negotiation lists from the other owners.

Maybe the FA concept could just be simplified to ….
All FAs enter the upcoming draft. If any FA goes in the top 12 picks, his former teams lands the next season #1 of that team which selected him with a top 12 pick. Any FA chosen 13-24 results in a next season compensation #2 rewarded to team losing player, from that team which selected the FA in the draft.

I dont know.Not all drafts are equal>i have seen drafts where after 5 or 6 picks there is little value other drafts like 65,67 you get a good player into round2.I also do not understand how a team woulf allow maddux,Griffey Jr,mantle,mays,Koufax to become free agents?That does not seem like great player evaluations.Also,technically,if you cut a player who is NOt retired he is a free agent.What do you do about the guy with 1 season left and he has 275PA an OBP of ,323 hits ,247?How is the team that cut him compensated.

Just a suggestion. What if instead of having a limited number of free agents to bid on and the outcome of multiple bids being random you have a pool of money to bid with that you use silent auction style. For example you could have $1000 to bid however you want, if you really only care about getting Maddux you could put your entire pool towards Maddux. If you had multiple roster holes you could split your cash to bid on multiple players. Highest bid wins and ties are decided by the random generater.

The free agent idea definitely has merit and would add some needed energy to a progressive.
I think either the bidding or adding them to the draft with compensation ideas both would be workable. Adding them to the draft with compensation probably is a little simpler to manage.
Either way I think this would draw interest and fill. I know I would give it a shot.