Basic Concept
• 10 Year League
• Player Pool is all players with a 10+ year WIS career (all players exclusive/ no clones)
• 25 player draft / 1 round stadium draft (prior to start each owner may blacklist one stadium)
• Don’t have to start with player’s rookie year but must go chronologically from starting season (see below for more detail)
• Gaps in service (aka “IR” years) can be skipped over without penalty
• Each offseason, all teams will lose 5 players to free agency (2 determined at random and 3 are owner’s choice)
• Once free agents are set, there will be a 5 round free agent draft to get rosters back up to 25 (an owner IS allowed to draft one of his former players)
• The free agent pool is ONLY those from already within the league—no outside players can be drafted as free agents
League Rules/Settings
• 24 team league (may switch to 16 if struggle to fill)
• Standard WIS format
• Alignment is random in 1st year and will stay the same thereafter
• Salary Cap = $255MM
• No AAA, no WW, no live play
• DH will be used (I normally hate the DH but there will be too many quality bench players not to get them more AB’s)
• Trades Allowed (Max # of vetoes required)
• Transaction Deadline enforced
• Injuries are set to Yes
Draft Format / Rules
• Snake style draft format with draft order determined at random
• Open to conducting the draft using the automatic draft feature or through the forums
• Draft order for free agent draft will be worst to first but will be snake format (1-24, 24-1, 1-24, 24-1, 1-24)
• Tiebreakers for draft order are as follows: #1-worst expected win %, #2-most runs allowed, #3-worst home record, #4-coin flip
Roster Rules/Examples
#1—Cut and Dry Players: Some players will have 10+ years of WIS seasons available with no split seasons and/or no gaps in service. In that case, it is very cut and dry. The owner can pick any 10 year consecutive period he chooses.
Example: Ty Cobb has 24 WIS seasons (1905-1928) in the database with no gaps in service or partial/combined seasons. You could choose 1905-14, 1906-15, 1907-16 etc....all the way to 1919-1928. (strictly from a salary standpoint, the 1909-18 block would be the best)
#2—Partial/Combined Seasons: When a player has a partial/combined season in the mix, the owner may use either the partial or combined season, but must then move on to the next available season.
Example: Rickey Henderson 1989 has 2 combined and 2 partial seasons available. An owner may choose any of the 4 seasons, but at the conclusion of that season, owner must move on to his 1990 season.....in other words, an owner couldn’t use his 1989 Oakland season and then the next year use his 1989 Yankees season.
#3—Gaps in Service: When a player has gaps in his service, these gaps can be skipped over as if they didn’t exist. This applies to any gap in service, not just war time gaps.
Example: Ted Williams WIS career begins in 1939 and ends with 1960. Over the course of his career, he has WIS gaps in service from 1943-45 and 1952. If an owner chose to start with Ted Williams 1941, then his 10 year track would be 1941 (1), 1942 (2), 1946 (3), 1947 (4), 1948 (5), 1949 (6), 1950 (7), 1951 (8), 1953 (9), and 1954 (10).
#4—That One Crappy Year: When a player has a crappy year surrounded by several great ones, unfortunately you’ve just got to deal with the crappy one.
Example: Babe Ruth 1925 ($3,536,302 Salary). Since that was right in the middle of his career, with multiple $10+million seasons on either side of it, there’s really no way to avoid using it. You just got to deal with it that one year.
#5—Players with a 20+ Year Career: Can a player with a really long career be selected by 2 different owners as long as there is no overlap of their WIS seasons?
Example: Walter Johnson has a 21 year career. Could owner A use 1908-1917 and owner B use 1918-1927?
The answer is No. No clones allowed
#6—Players that were BOTH Pitchers and Hitters (over the course of their career): Babe Ruth was a WIS pitcher in 1915-17. If the owner chooses, he could use him as a pitcher in 1915-17 and then as a hitter from 1918-1924.
#7—What happens if an owner accidently drafts a player who doesn’t have 10 or more WIS eligible seasons? I/We will try very hard not to let that happen, but in the event that someone does make that mistake and it isn’t caught, we will deal with it as follows:
• The player with fewer than 10 years will be immediately removed from future use (if caught mid- season, the owner is required to place that player on “REST” for the remainder of the year)
• The owner must replace that roster spot with a 200K player that is assigned to him by the commish for the duration of the league (this player can’t be a free agent and therefore must stick with the owner until the league concludes)
• In the next free agent draft, the owner will pick last in each of the first two rounds
• What if the owner subsequently quits before receiving his punishment?
o We won’t punish a new/incoming owner for the previous owner’s mistake in order to not deter finding a new owner (penalty is only in effective on the offending owner)
o As a league, we will work to find a solution that doesn’t punish the incoming owner but that is also fair to the existing owners
o The offending/quitting owner will be named in the “Worst Progressive League Owners” thread and branded as such (if you screw up, we can live with it....if you screw up and quit; we’ll haunt you for years to come!)