this is copied from my first post in the SimLeague Baseball -> Theme Leagues -> Franchise Prog w/ Farm System - Rules Discussion" thread, dated 9/3/2015, with subsequent edits in red:
Concept: Start with 24 20 of the real franchises and their 1977 rosters. In subsequent seasons, each franchise gets the rookies who really came up with that team. For example, Oakland gets Dwayne Murphy and others in 1978, Rickey Henderson and others in 1979, etc, eventually getting McGwire and Canseco... The rookies are assigned based on their first team during their first WIS-eligible season. This is a WIS version of mimicking the real-life farm systems for each franchise.
Contraction Draft and Rookie Drafts: For the
two six franchises that are not claimed in 1977, their players are all eligible for an initial draft - sort of a "contraction draft" compared to the real-life 1977. In subsequent seasons, their rookies are draft eligible. So for example if no one selects the Detroit Tigers franchise, then Lou Whitaker, Alan Trammell, and Lance Parrish will all be draft-eligible in 1978. The contraction draft will go in reverse order of the franchises' real-life
1977 winning percentages, or maybe a composite 1977-1981 winning percentage -that can be discussed after we get enough owners signed up. Edit: Reverse order (worst to first) of a franchise's total wins, 1977-1981, with 1977 double counted.
Obviously the rookie draft will never be very deep, since the rookies will only come from
two six franchises until the expansions of 1993 and beyond. Rookie draft order will be set by your franchise's sim winning percentage compared to its real-life winning percentage. If your team over-performs compared to real-life, it gets rewarded with better draft position. This should discourage tanking.
Edit: The draft order is serpentine for 1-16, then the playoff teams have picks 17-20 in each round. So whoever has the #1 overall pick has #16 in round 2, #1 in round 3, #16 in round 4. After round 4, each round becomes first-come, first-served at set times with no draft order.
Keepers / Waivers: I'm thinking let everyone keep up to
35 25 players, using real players for AAA. The catch is that any player who is not on injured reserve (missing from the WIS database for that season) has to appear in at least 5 of your games, or he will be waived and put into the draft pool. So if a good prospect has a lousy season, you can't just park him in AAA the entire season… he has to at least make a few appearances. But it is up to individual owners to police this - if it is your turn to draft and you see that Cincinnati didn't let that crappy young 1970's Mario Soto into 5 or more games, go ahead and draft him! You get rewarded for doing your homework and finding a steal. Edit: The 25 keeper limit includes rookies for the following season. If you are too late posting keepers, they will be assigned based on your player usage in the previous season, so we can get on with the draft. In that case, your keepers will be all your franchise's new rookies, and your returning players with the most (PA+IP) in the current (or recently concluded) sim season.
Edit: If an owner forgets the 5-game-minimum for keepers, that team can use its 1st-round pick to draft multiple players it had listed as keepers, but who failed the 5-game test. Even then, the team in question would have to wait its turn in the draft and hope the players remain available.
Since there are not many quality players to choose from in each year's draft, the off-season should move very quickly… if you miss your time slot for the draft, we'll move on to the next owner, and you probably won't be missing out on a player who is worth complaining about anyway. The idea for this league came partly from frustration waiting for a normal progressive to move from season to season, and partly from realizing that sometimes life just gets in the way of doing these drafts.
Extra Pitching: {rule has been removed}
Hall of Fame: If enough owners are interested, we'll cast Hall of Fame ballots for players whose WIS careers have recently ended. I'll try to post career stats for candidates, merging pre-1977 real-life with the progressive's stats. But anyone can nominate a player. {22 players have been voted into our Hall Of Fame so far}
Miscellaneous (mostly from questions posted below, or settings in theme league wizard; most of these details can be voted down if enough owners object):
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Standard WIS format (three 4-team divisions per league, with wildcard and interleague play) Four 5-team divisions, aligned similar to real life as much as possible.
- No salary cap
- No moving teams / ballparks until after 5 seasons (1981). After that, you can use your 1st round rookie draft pick to move to an available ballpark. But that only changes your ballpark, not your franchise name and available rookies. For example, if no one takes the NY Yankees when the league gets started, then someone can eventually move their franchise to Yankee Stadium. The Boston Red Sox could become the New York Red Sox (imagine that!), with Boggs, Clemens, etc coming up in the farm system. A team that has moved cannot move again for at least 5 seasons.
- DH in AL only
- Trades are mostly unrestricted, but subject to veto by 6 owners. Limit on trading draft picks or rookies too far out in the future (see my posts below).
- Transaction Deadline / Deadline for Keepers at 120 game mark. {Edit: end of season}
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No injuries (I'm open to suggestions on that - I've never seen them used in WIS) Edit: I incorrectly thought WIS had finally implemented multi-game injuries. I'm fine with using in-game injuries.
- For players who missed 1977 in WIS, but were not rookies when they returned later, they go into the rookie draft pool when they return. They do not belong to a team first.
questions and answers about trades, copied from the original classified for this league:
Posted by crazyjoe02 on 8/12/2015 5:44:00 PM (view original):
Are there any restrictions on trades?
1979 draft picks and rookies can't be traded until after the 1977 season's transaction deadline, and so on for later years.
Three Six owners can veto a trade for any reason they want. Any other suggestions on trade restrictions? This kind of thing can be voted on when we have a critical mass of owners.
Let's say you've got the Oakland A's, to use an example. That gives you the rights to Rickey Henderson (rookie season in 1979), Mark McGwire, etc. You could eventually use them as trade bait, offering Rickey for someone who would help your team in 1978. But you couldn't include McGwire in a deal until closer to his 1986 rookie season.
Posted by crazyjoe02 on 8/14/2015 9:37:00 PM (view original):
So are there any limitations on who you can trade players to? For instance in your example of Ricky Henderson can I trade him to any team I want?
No limitations like that. I hope there will be a fair number of big trades (without having overly lopsided ones).
Also from the original progressive league classified thread:
The minimum game rule can be self-policed by owners. In the Soto example, if no one notices that he played less than 5 games, then the original owner gets to keep him. If you're worried about the "proof" disappearing with team stats going away between seasons, do a screen grab of the team's stats.
The draft should go quickly between seasons, since there are not many new rookies to choose from. If an owner misses a deadline for posting keepers, his keepers will default to being his new rookies plus his players who had the most PA+IP in the season that has just ended, up to 25 players total. If an owner misses his time in the draft, we'll move on without waiting... the draft pool will usually be weak enough that missing a round is not a make-or-break thing for a franchise.
A player's WIS rookie season defines his first team. That makes it easier to identify the rookies, and also more likely to put a player on the team he was associated with for more of his career.
{EDIT: Let's call this the Ryne Sandberg Rule, since he is a good example. Sandberg will belong to the Chicago Cubs, because his first season in WIS was with the Cubs (1982). His 13 games with the Phillies in 1981 do not affect this, since he does not have a WIS entry from 1981. If a player splits his WIS rookie season between two or more teams, he belongs to the franchise that he played his first game with during that WIS rookie season.}
For players who missed 1977 in WIS, but were not rookies when they returned later, they can go into the rookie draft pool when they return.
Once a player belongs to a franchise, he stays with that franchise until being traded (in the sim) or cut... it is up to the owners here to be better general managers than their real-life counterparts.