Okay, back from my weekly night out with the boys at the Chess Club. It's easy to think there.
So, let's get the rules finalized.
There has been concern expressed about the need for encouraging long term contracts more because the current rules may not incentivize them enough. I'd like to wait and see on this. In February we'll get the first group of long term signings, and then in October we'll really get a good idea. I'd like to wait until at least then to see if this is a needed change or not. Fillies wisely said that the players value will seek their own levels as it's a marketplace.
If it turns out we do need to do more to encourage long term signings, there have already been two interesting proposals made, one by Ox and one by Lou. For now though, let's table this discussion until we know if things are working or not.
To werewolf's concern about finding committed owners, I'm really not worried about this too much. This league is very unique. I think there are a lot of owners who are probably looking in on our draft and would love to join, even with a lousy team. I'm also heartened by the e-mails. I was expoecting to get about half the owners sending one in each day and was worried that people would disappear for a week. It still may happen, but right now I'm getting e-mails from 20-23 people a night. And that's with the e-mail hacking problems which my son tells me he has now fixed. We'll see.
For the in-season trading, I want to settle on Lou's compromise number, 1,150.
So here's the league schedule.
Each year around October we'll have our annual auction.
By the end of the auction your salaries must be 1,000 or less.
Sometime around December-January we'll play our WIS season. Due to preseason and in-season trades, your salaries can go up to a maximum of 1,150.
In February you have a chance to sign your newly auctioned players to long term contracts using their auction values as first year salaries. You salaries must be 1,000 or below.
From March to October you'll watch your players play real major league baseball on tv.
In October you'll have to decide on each of your players whether to release them as free agents or sign them again if their contracts are finished. If you sign them, their first year salary must be a raise from their last year's salary.
Going into the auction you must have 1,000 or below. You better be below to give yourself some room to buy some rookies and free agents because at the end of the auction you must be at 1,000 or below.
Hope that all makes sense. Sorry to have this come up during the auction. Trading during the auction was something I hadn't anticipated. In the end I don't think it worked.