I'm not certain the best way to approach this topic as this is a fun draft. I look forward to my pick daily, and have thankfully found the restraint to stop just short of turning extra space in my home into a 'war room'. I don't want it to get un-fun at all.

I respect Mike's work and effort in putting this together and completely respect his decision regarding manipulating URL's to draft players out of position. I'm not asking it to be changed.

If folks are used to playing the baseball sim this way then in no way would this have occurred to them as anything other than normal, so I don't believe anyone intended to look for unfair advantages.

I do believe that manipulating the URL of the website in order to get around the way that the game is intended to be played is clearly cheating. It's even been described as a "trick" in this forum. In no way is preventing this from happening "changing the rules mid stream". It's simply saying "if you were planning on doing this just know we caught you cheating before it became an issue, so don't do it". By allowing the manipulating of URL's it seems to me that we are changing the rules to allow cheating after the draft has already started. I guess I just think it should be on the record that we've changed the rules 5 rounds in to allow for a cheat to be used.

2010 Cliff Lee $3,949,291

1961 Elston Howard $6,953,034

1921 Joe Wood
$2,239,216

FWIW, I played in a league where we used only clones of one hitter to fill every position on the field. The only way I could draft my team of Hank Aarons was to use this so-called cheat with the URL. But it was understood in advance this was how we had to do it.

Honestly, after seeing how poorly someone performed at a position where they had no qualification, I don't see any reason not to let someone do it. Let them take the hit defensively.

Posted by redcped on 11/2/2018 2:48:00 PM (view original):
1921 Joe Wood
$2,239,216

I was surprised to learn this *is* the 'Smokey' Joe Wood who has some good pitching seasons a decade before this. I had no idea he had become a non-pitching platoon outfielder in his later career.

Posted by brianjw on 11/2/2018 3:00:00 PM (view original):

Posted by redcped on 11/2/2018 2:48:00 PM (view original):
1921 Joe Wood
$2,239,216

I was surprised to learn this *is* the 'Smokey' Joe Wood who has some good pitching seasons a decade before this. I had no idea he had become a non-pitching platoon outfielder in his later career.

Yes. He and Reb Russell have great seasons for both.

Posted by redcped on 11/2/2018 2:56:00 PM (view original):
FWIW, I played in a league where we used only clones of one hitter to fill every position on the field. The only way I could draft my team of Hank Aarons was to use this so-called cheat with the URL. But it was understood in advance this was how we had to do it.

Honestly, after seeing how poorly someone performed at a position where they had no qualification, I don't see any reason not to let someone do it. Let them take the hit defensively.

I don't think the owner would actually be using the player in this out of position spot - the intent is just to fill the roster spot with anyone they can.

There are several old time Pitcher/Hitters. I foresee some drafting mistakes because of it.

1928 Goose Goslin $6,691,425

Reluctantly I choose 1970 Johnny Bench $7,689,136.

Now that I have a catcher, I'll speak my peace on the URL thing. I personally don't think doing this provides any advantage whatsoever. Especially in a high salary league like this one, playing a player out of position would always be a major disadvantage, especially catcher and infield. If an owner makes the mistake of getting to a point where there are no catchers available, I don't see a problem letting them start a position player at catcher. In fact, I would love if all of you would play position players at catcher! It really wouldn't be any different than someone choosing a 50 inning $200,000 player as their only catcher and then playing a non-catcher at catcher all season.

Posted by jmissirlis on 11/2/2018 3:40:00 PM (view original):
Reluctantly I choose 1970 Johnny Bench $7,689,136.

Now that I have a catcher, I'll speak my peace on the URL thing. I personally don't think doing this provides any advantage whatsoever. Especially in a high salary league like this one, playing a player out of position would always be a major disadvantage, especially catcher and infield. If an owner makes the mistake of getting to a point where there are no catchers available, I don't see a problem letting them start a position player at catcher. In fact, I would love if all of you would play position players at catcher! It really wouldn't be any different than someone choosing a 50 inning $200,000 player as their only catcher and then playing a non-catcher at catcher all season.

This is a fair point, but again, just because a players is drafted out of position this does not mean that player will be played out of position or be compelled to do so. If I could draft my 28 Jimmy Foxx out of position as my C then I would do that but I cannot. I could just draft a random OF in the C spot but still clearly intend to use Foxx's secondary C as my primary catcher without suffering much downside defensively.

Posted by bothways on 11/2/2018 4:03:00 PM (view original):

Posted by jmissirlis on 11/2/2018 3:40:00 PM (view original):
Reluctantly I choose 1970 Johnny Bench $7,689,136.

Now that I have a catcher, I'll speak my peace on the URL thing. I personally don't think doing this provides any advantage whatsoever. Especially in a high salary league like this one, playing a player out of position would always be a major disadvantage, especially catcher and infield. If an owner makes the mistake of getting to a point where there are no catchers available, I don't see a problem letting them start a position player at catcher. In fact, I would love if all of you would play position players at catcher! It really wouldn't be any different than someone choosing a 50 inning $200,000 player as their only catcher and then playing a non-catcher at catcher all season.

This is a fair point, but again, just because a players is drafted out of position this does not mean that player will be played out of position or be compelled to do so. If I could draft my 28 Jimmy Foxx out of position as my C then I would do that but I cannot. I could just draft a random OF in the C spot but still clearly intend to use Foxx's secondary C as my primary catcher without suffering much downside defensively.

I'm confused by this. You can draft 28 Jimmie Foxx in the C spot the normal way.

only advantage I see is if your only rated catcher is also your only rated (for example) first baseman, and you're planning to play someone out of position at first base and the C/1B at catcher. that wouldn't hurt you particularly defensively (assuming you don't hit fatigue/injury problems).