When Worlds Collide

Gauging interest on a potential new dual-season progressive/regressive league. The premise will actually be quite simple: we will start with the 1885 and 2025 seasons. Each season, we will go both up a year (to 1886) and down a year (to 2024) until we meet in the middle (the 1955 season). This will give the league a lifespan of 70 seasons, with each “era” representing basically the starkest difference in playing styles imaginable.

For example, the modern era (2010ish-present) will be paired with the beginning of baseball (1885-1900), the deadball era (1900-1920) with the steroid era (1990-2010), and so on. I think it will be very interesting to see how the stats end up playing out, as well as the strategies that go into roster construction. I have not seen any other progressives with season combinations like this, so I think it could appeal to those owners who are looking to try something new.

Draft:

There will be an initial 25 man draft with the 1885 and 2026 seasons as the player pool.

Afterwards, each year’s “rookie” pool will be a combination of actual rookies (for the years counting up), and retirements (for the years counting down). Therefore, each year the first and second rounds should be filled with enough high impact players where rebuilds should not take super long.

Teams:

The goal is for this to be a full 24 team league. With it being a dual progressive, there should be plenty of IP and PA with just 25 man rosters.

Divisions:

League alignment will be a combination of actual geography/MLB divisions. Each owner shall choose an existing city/ballpark with an MLB franchise for the given years, and that will be their franchise for the lifespan of the progressive*.
However, after each season, owners will have a chance to relocate to a city/ballpark that is currently not being used. Divisions will then be realigned based on the relocation.

AAA:

I do not think we will need to use AAA players because of the depth of the player pool. However, this will be a topic voted on after we secure our pool of owners.

Salary Cap/Free Agency:

A player drafted by a given franchise can remain with that franchise until he retires or is cut. If a player is on the IR and does not have a WIS season for a given year, an owner can reserve him until he comes back from the IR.

I do not envision there being a salary cap or the league using contract points to stop other owners from stashing talent. However, this is another topic I am interested in receiving feedback on.

*Use of the DH:

I would love to have it so the AL uses a DH, while the NL does not. I have not seen many progressives that do this, which may help add to the uniqueness of this league. When choosing initial cities/ballpark, owners will have the option to declare whether they want to be in the AL and use the DH or the NL and not use the DH. The goal of this is also to help owners develop an identity within their franchise as the league evolves.



Overall, the concept of the league is simple, so I do not believe the start up will be super difficult if we can find enough owners who are interested.

For those interested, I would love feedback on some of the housekeeping items (DH vs no DH, salary caps, division alignment, etc.) If this gains enough interest, I will set up a private forum where we will begin discussing start-up procedures.

Sign-Ups:

1) giannivanaco (TBD)
2) Kaboom1969 (Atlanta) - NL
3) dilligafdbp (Los Angeles) - NL
4) odalisgagne (Detriot) - NL
5) Ribbentrop (TBD)
6) kujhawker (Kansas City) - AL
7) Husker75 (Houston)- AL
7) chargingryno (TBD)
8) Trentonjoe (TBD)
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If interested, also declare which franchise you would like and whether you would like to be in the NL or AL.

The 2nd year draft - will it be only rookies from 1886 and retireees from 2024, or will any undrafted players from previous years also be available?

Also, what about cut players, will they also be available ?

Any non-drafted player from the initial draft will also be available, as long as they have a WIS season. Keepers can be posted after game 120, with next seasons keepers due by game 155.

To keep track of eligible players, I will use a taken list. Anyone not on the taken list will be eligible to be chosen in the draft. I know most leagues use an availables list, but I have personally found that a taken list makes things easier to keep track of who is already rostered.

I am interested in joining - AL - Kansas City

Love to hear it! The first domino has fallen

if i missed it, is this a live draft?

No, this will be a draft in a private forum, similar to other progressive leagues. There is still plenty of time to join

This seems really cool. I’m potentially interested but haven’t done a progressive before and expect to suck. Are we going to have a draft rule where bad teams get high picks or is it going to be some sort of lottery where there is a high chance to stay bad? I’m only going to play if being bad gives me real chances to get better.

Giving the first pick to the worst team is a BAD idea.
It leads to certain bad teams *intentionally* tanking games in order to get pick #1.

You may be bad for a few years but there will be better teams tanking to get the first pick, and then you end up picking 4th anyway.

Some leagues do lowest to highest by total season spend for the 25 man roster, that way there is no incentive to tank games but bad teams still get priority for improving. I’d be open to something like that if people actively dislike potential tanking and don’t want to deal with creating draft penalties for throwing games.

I might be interested if we do some sort of anti-tanking like Total Salary/Wins.

I would play

nope dead ball pitchers FU%$ up everything