1934 INAUGURAL PLAYERS DRAFT - TWO PICKS PER TEAM EACH ROUND
LEAGUE RULES:
Despite the fun of alternative baseball history, sometimes what is missing from a progressive league is a sense that you are managing something that feels like that team in the historical period you are playing in. But going with the actual rosters takes any creativity out of it.
The Core-4 Progressive League addresses both of these sides of enjoying managing a historical team under alternative conditions.
We take our name of course from the common usage of "Core Four" to describe the late 1990s-early 2000s New York Yankees, with the Core Four being Derek Jeter, Jorge Posada, Mariano Rivera and Andy Pettitte. The team made many changes during these players' careeers, but so long as they were on the team, it was identifiable as the Yankees that had started out together winning in 1996.
In this league we will play with the historical teams and our inaugural draft will begin with a draft of the teams/franchises from 1934. The draft order for the inaugural draft's initial phase of drafting teams/franchises will be random, using a random table generated by a non-league HOF owner at WIS from the website random.org.
Each owner will identify FOUR players from their team each season before we begin the inaugural draft and later on before we begin the first year player drafts. ONLY PLAYERS WHO PLAYED THE ENTIRE SEASON FOR THAT TEAM AND DID NOT PLAY ANY PART OF THE SEASON FOR ANOTHER FRANCHISE WILL BE ELIGIBLE TO BE AMONG THE CORE FOUR.
Those four will automatically be on the team for the year, without having to be drafted. New, first-year players can be listed as part of the Core 4 for the team they played their first season with, again so long as they played the entire season for that team.
Since this system will allow the strongest teams from each Real Life season to keep their four best players, our draft system will compensate: draft order will go in reverse order to historical W-L records for that season by the real teams. This included the inaugural draft for 1934, once owners have drafted their teams/franchises and chosen their Core 4. In the event of a tie, the team that finished further down in the standings in their league that year will pick before the other team with the same W-L record, first using standings (a 7th place team that went 70-84 will get priority over a 6th place team with the same record in the other league), then by games behind the league leader - the one that finished further out will get the earlier pick.
Each team will pick TWO players in each round of our drafts, further compensating the teams whose Core 4 are from a losing team compared with those of the league powerhouses.
KEEPERS LISTS WILL BE LIMITED TO 10 PLAYERS PLUS THE CORE 4 - A TOTAL OF 14. This will circulate useful players widely, without burdening us with long drafts, since with 2 picks each team each round, and most teams needing 11 players or so, we should have drafts that go only 6-7 rounds most of the time.
This also prevents tanking, since it is the real world outcome, not the outcome in our league, that determines draft position. The drafts will be straightforward (or gayforward) NOT serpentine.
PLEASE NOTE: Core 4 players are not considered to be drafted, and CORE 4 players cannot be listed as keepers. They can remain Core 4 and protected for as long as the owner desires AND they played historically for that team the entire season. But once they are no longer listed as Core 4, they return to the general draft pool.
Example 1: The New York Yankees owner lists Joe Dimaggio as a Core 4 player before the 1936 draft takes place, in which Dimaggio would otherwise be a rookie. Dimaggio continues to be listed by that owner as a Yankees Core 4 player through 1942. In 1943 through 1945 Dimaggio due to duty in the War, does not appear in WIS. He, UNLIKE ANY YANKEES DRAFTED PLAYER THAT WOULD BE ON THE DL/IR FOR THAT PERIOD, (which does not count against the 10 keepers), cannot be so listed. The Yankees owner CAN reclaim Dimaggio or any other Yankee player in 1946 that played all season only for the Yankees in '46, and so protect him from the draft. But if he does not list him as Core-4 Dimaggio returns to the draft pool.
Example 2: Tommie Agee, 1966 - the New York Mets owner (when we have expanded etc. by that time) must decide whether to:
1. list Tommie Agee as a Core 4 player, in which case they can continue to do so through his good seasons like 1969-1971, or else, if they do not also continue to list him as Core 4 for 1967 or for 1968, when Agee hit .234 and .217 respectively, Agee returns to the draft pool and cannot be kept as a keeper as a drafted player could.
or
2. to try to take their chances on getting Agee in the draft to have him as a keeper.
Teams will play in the historical parks of their team in that year.
We will begin in 1934 because in my view it is when statistically normal baseball began, no deadball era, no jackrabbit ball HR era like the 20s, no steroids. By the team we reach the present day, assuming we play 5 seasons a year, we will have played 105 seasons of baseball and I will be 81 years old. Plenty of baseball for everybody.
We will provide 6/6 below-average AAA to each team to ensure enough PA and IP at every position to further ensure competitiveness in the league.
IN ORDER TO REACH 25 ROSTER PLAYERS, ONCE - AND ONLY AFTER - EVERY AVAILABLE DRAFT POOL PLAYER HAS BEEN DRAFTED, EACH TEAM MAY DRAFT ANY PLAYER OR PITCHER WORTH A MAXIMUM OF $750,000 IN A SEASON (OTHER THAN THE CURRENT ONE WE ARE PLAYING AT THE TIME) IN WHICH THEY PLAYED FOR THEIR TEAM'S REAL LIFE FRANCHISE.
6/22/2021 6:55 AM (edited)