The What If Baseball Hadn't Expanded League (WIBHEL) is entering it's 6th season and needs two owners. The WIBHEL has the following charateritics:

Single season (will draft for 1967)
16 team league
6/2 below average AAA
Only two divisions so no playoffs, the pennant winners go right to the World Series
The First round draft order is determined by W-L, the non-playoff team with the MOST Regular season wins gets the 1st pick....subsequent rounds are done in a traditional worst to first order

Here is a copy of the original Rules (bolded lines are new):

What if Baseball Hadn’t Expanded!



The purpose of this league is to replay modern history as if MLB never expanded. There will be 2 leagues of 8 teams (no divisions). The NL winner will play the AL winner in the World Series, old school style.

The league's 1st year will be 1962 (we will be drafting for 1966).



Standard Rules:

· 6/4 Below Average AAA

· NO DH (at least until 1973, then we can vote)

· Stadiums must be unique and have been used in 1962. You can keep the stadium as long as you like.

· Initial draft will be snake style, 26 rounds (25 players + stadium).

Non Standard Rules:

· Future drafts 1st round order will be set first to worst for the non playoff teams. The team with the best record who DOES not make the playoffs will get the #1 pick in the next year’s draft. The WS winner will draft 16, the loser will draft 15. The 2nd round and on will be worst to first at the conclusion of the season (WS winner still 16th).

The purpose of this is to prevent tanking. The rule would also be in effect to reward the teams that normally "would" be in the playoffs. My hope is that the draft order would really encourage trading. It'll give real incentive for the last place teams to trade players to the 2nd and third place teams. (Trading is not any more frequent than a regular progressive....oh well, it's still cool)

· If an owner drops out, the new owner will get a bonus pick at the end of the 1st round. This will only go into effect if the new owner picks worse than 6th. The purpose of this is to make it easier to recruit new owners.

· Starting in 1963, owners will be allowed to keep 27 players. In 1969, this will expand to 29. In 1977, this will expand to 31. The purpose of this is to allow people to keep players who have futures but aren’t good right now.

I will post the rosters this afternoon.  

One team has the 2nd pick (BENCH, JACKSON or CAREW)
The other team has 2 first round picks (13 and 17 I think)

taken
This team plays in Wrigley and has the 13th and 17th pick in the first round.   They have the 2nd pick in subsequent rounds.   Although it is light on pitching, you'll have 3 of the first 18 picks to help.

Yastrzemski, Carl 1966 OF 158 310 15 5 2 .985 2.27 0 0 0 .000 Williams, Billy 1966 OF 162 319 9 8 3 .976 2.20 0 0 0 .000 Nicholson, Dave 1966 OF 90 139 11 5 0 .968 1.87 0 0 0 .000 Green, Lenny 1966 OF 27 41 3 1 0 .978 1.82 0 0 0 .000 Ferrara, Al 1966 OF 32 43 0 2 0 .956 1.54 0 0 0 .000 McMillan, Roy 1966 SS 71 113 204 8 35 .975 4.66 0 0 0 .000 Oyler, Ray 1966 SS 69 107 194 11 42 .965 4.81 0 0 0 .000 Mathews, Eddie 1966 3B 127 114 237 20 31 .946 2.90 0 0 0 .000 Lumpe, Jerry 1966 2B 95 202 223 4 51 .991 4.77 0 0 0 .000 Jones, Dalton 1966 2B 70 129 121 10 26 .962 3.86 0 0 0 .000 White, Bill 1966 1B 158 1422 109 9 118 .994 9.77 0 0 0 .000 Crandall, Del 1966 C 49 304 15 3 2 .991 6.51 0 0 0 .260 Haller, Tom 1966 C 137 802 57 8 5 .991 6.28 17 25 87 .291 John, Tommy 1966 P 34 8 47 5 0 .917 2.35 0 0 0 .000 Pizarro, Juan 1966 P 34 5 18 0 1 1.000 2.50 0 0 0 .000 Jackson, Al 1966 P 36 16 63 5 4 .940 3.33 0 0 0 .000 Sheldon, Rollie 1966 P 37 9 28 0 2 1.000 3.41 0 0 0 .000 Brandon, Bucky 1966 P 40 13 26 1 0 .975 2.44 0 0 0 .000 Hands, Bill 1966 P 41 12 33 4 1 .918 2.85 0 0 0 .000 Ramos, Pedro 1966 P 53 7 13 1 0 .952 1.98 0 0 0 .000 Herbel, Ron 1966 P 32 4 22 3 2 .897 2.30 0 0 0 .000 Merritt, Jim 1966 P 31 7 20 0 0 1.000 1.82 0 0 0 .000 Fischer, Hank 1966 P 31 2 15 2 0 .895 3.49 0 0 0 .000 Howard, Bruce 1966 P 27 10 27 3 1 .925 2.64 0 0 0 .000 Miller, John 1966 P 23 8 16 0 2 1.000 2.23 0 0 0 .000