Idea (1)

A draft league using 2011 players - No DH, no injuries, no AAA or trades.

To bring the cap up a bit, only 23 players will be drafted.  The 24th and 25th player will come in a separate draft going in reverse order from the main draft.  The pool of players will be Hall of Famers, but limited to 8 million dollar seasons.  Hall of Fame players will be exclusive on each team.

I would not put a cap on it, but would suspect most teams would be 90-100m

Idea (2)

A draft league using only 2011 players and twisting them to a season of your choice.

100m cap, no DH, injuries, trades or AAA

OK, I'll throw out this idea I just thought up:

Best of the Rest:

Draft any player that appeared only on an owner's round #1 team that did not make it to round #2.  Don't know how easy it would be to set up a blacklist as it might be tedious to check rosters (if we did it as a normal player selection and not as a draft).

Could do it as a player draft or just normal selection at either cap.

Alternatively you could limit selections to 8 per each group of owner in order of round #1 standings (i.e. Group 1 = owners #25 thru 48, G2 = 49-72, G3 = 73-96)

Variation: 3 round draft (1-24,24-1,1-24) where you can select an owner who didn't make round #2 and then pick exactly 4 players from your selected 3 owners round #1 teams low caps (70, 80, 90) and 4 from their high cap teams.  Last player can be anyone from your own round #1 teams (No clones allowed).

110m cap

25 players and none can cost more than five million.

Best of the Best:

Draft any player from any round #1 team from the owner in reverse order of standings (i.e. owner in first place can pick any player from any round #1 team roster from the owner in 24th place, etc.)

I was trying to think of a league where to goal wasn't to build to your advantages, but instead to build a team to limit your disadvantages.

$90M         Lose to the Long Ball or the Stolen Base

You are going to have to pick one of the two to be weak against.  You are either going to give up a ton of HR's or SB's.  

Give up the HR                                                                 Give up the SB

Pitchers have to have a HR#/9 > 0.7                            Pitchers have to have an OAV# of 0.250 or greater
                                                                                             No Arms over D+

Stadium Yankee Stadium III                                          Stadium Palace of the Fans
+1 -1 -3 +3 +4                                                                   +2 +4 +3 -3 -3

Your Hitters                                                                       Your Hitters

Less then 5 HR's                                                            More then 30 HR's
More then 30 SB's                                                           Less then 5 SB
(Need Sb% perhaps?)

Numbers might have to be tweaked, but a quick starting idea.

Have you thought about having an auction league, so run more like fantasy baseball than fantasy football? Maybe all players from 2008 onwards, $90M cap, with bids for the first 5 players, and then draft in order of how many $$$ you have remaining for rounds 6-25. (Even perhaps draft 2 players at a time to speed things up, if the draft order is determined by strategy not chance.)

The mechanics of doing an auction using WIS would have to be sorted out, but there are a few options I've seen work, using either sitemail or forums. If you have a trusted commissioner it isn't too hard to do a sealed bid auction, for example.

I'd like to see a low low cap league - 40-50 million -how about 50 million with the salary of one player has to be 10+

The 2012 players will be out by the time round 2 starts, right?  I'd like to see a theme involving them.

Possibilities:
-- Straight up 25-man draft of 2012 players
-- Draft players from 2003-2012
-- Draft 5 players (or 10, or 15, etc) from 2012, fill out the rest of the roster with players from 2003-2011, perhaps with restrictions (no more than 1-2 players from each season, etc)
-- Draft TEAMS from 2012, and add free agents from your franchises history (poorer 2012 regular season records get more FAs)


Other ideas not related to 2012:
1.) 5x5: Pick a 5-year run of a franchise (1961-2012), must use exactly 5 players from each season (example: 2001-05 Cardinals).
2.) Pick a winning percentage: We draft a winning percentage; team must be made up of players whose real-life teams finished with exactly that winning percentage...so .556 would get you access to the 2011 Cardinals and Red Sox, the 2010 Rangers, etc.  Maybe confine it to a range, so we can only pick seasons .450-.550, etc.
3.) Pick an exclusive Hall of Famer; team must be made up of players who were teammates of that HOFer (no twisting).  So the Gehrig team would have to be made up of Yankees from 1923-39.  110M cap would work well for this.
4.) Use your whole roster: no players with > 400 PA/162, no pitchers with > 150 IP/162.
5.) Luck of the draw park (could work well at 90M)....draft any 90M team you want, but you will be assigned at random one of the 24 most extreme parks in WIS (ranked by PF...12 most extreme offense and 12 most extreme pitching).  Kicker is, you don't get your park assigned until AFTER your team is built, and then you have to live with it. 
6.) This would be a lot of work, but I like it...72 "bundles" of 8 players each.  We have a 3 round draft of the bundles, then can fill out our roster with 1 FA.  Bundles should be similar in terms of total value, but would vary in composition.  Each bundle should total 34-35M in salary and then use your FA to go up to 110M total. 

I was playing with some ideas to make the end of the draft more interesting. How about this? Each hitter you draft has to have more hits than the previously drafted hitter, and each pitcher has to have more Ks than the previously drafted pitcher. That would make for some really hard choices as to when one wanted to swoop in to grab a cookie. Even if we were using the whole player pool, you couldn't seriously draft Addie Joss (say) until you had all of your bullpen in order.

Along the same lines as brianjw above, I've been working on a progressive league with my brother and this is kind of based on what we're working on there for the drafts.

Have the players be drafted on either an increasing (or decreasing) salary. So, each player drafted would have to have a higher (or lower) salary than the previous player taken. And, of course, players would be exclusive, so you'd have to be keeping an eye on other teams as well so they don't take the cookies your targeting. For our league we're looking at decreasing salaries, but I think it would make for a really interesting twist on strategy if we had to draft on an increasing salary scale. Forces you to decide when to stop drafting scrubs and when to go for your bullpen and platoon hitters (if necessary) and your hitters vs. your starters... etc...

From Contrarian's ideas, I like this alot:

"4.) Use your whole roster: no players with > 400 PA/162, no pitchers with > 150 IP/162." which is sort of close to spotsell's idea of $110m with no player above $5m.

I also like my brother's thoughts on a real low cap league. Nothing is more fun than a $40m league, but a $50m albatross league is pretty close.

brianjw's ideas are killer!!! Love the auction idea!   I have a few ideas of my own.  hope you guys like em whether we use them or not,

1.) a draft league where every 5th player is selected by a different manager.  the player would have to fit some specs however. example...... between 400-600 PA at least a .250 ave and cost between 7-9 mil or pitcher 200-250 innings.  whip no higher then 1.20 and must strikeout 6 per game with same salary limit.  You could use any type of limitations there

2.)  the opposite of silver king league where everyone must draft the 1921 Babe Ruth and the 2004 Barry Bonds and be in a ball park with a factor 1.00 or higher. combined they come out to $33 mil which is close to the $29 for Silver.

3.)Alphabet bet draft.    The last name of each player on your roster must start with a different letter then any other player on your team.  26 letters......25 players.  Strategy will be key whether you want to draft a Z first or try to wait it out.   The same player may be used by multiple teams but not the same year. 

that's all i have for now I will post more if they come to me.