Ok, so I watched most of the Ken Burns' documentary "Baseball" on MLB Network during the holidays. And, I got to thinking that one progressive we haven't seen in a while would be going back to the very beginning, when they called the game "base" or "rounders". For we WIS afficienatos, that would be 1885!
Here's the proposal, I need 15 other owners eager to go back 2 centuries and start a 16-team progressive. The initial season would be made up of players whose 1st year in the WIS database is between 1885 and 1889. By my rough calculation, that would give us 498 "rookie" seasons available. In a 16-team league we would need 400. In each subsequent season, our players would progress one year like any other progressive league. The rookie class for each new season however would be from 2 years. Example: season 2 would be 1890 & 1891 rookies, season 3 would be 1892 & 1893, etc.
Edit: The players will progress 1 season at a time. For example, players selected in the initial draft who were 1885 rookies, will be in their 1886 season in year 2. If they were 1887 rookies, they will be in their 1888 season in year 2. Players selected in the 2nd season draft will be either 1890 or 1891 rookies and progress to their 1891 or 1892 seasons respectively in year 3.
The reason for doing it this way is that it will give us more to choose from once the old American Association disbands in 1893. It also marches us through time in double time, and by using multiple yet contiguous years, it gives us a bit of variety from the anticipated results.
Just for general information. There are 498 "rookie" seasons available from 1885-89, 400 of which will be selected. The second year draft with 1890-91 players will have a total of 190 "rookies" because 1890 has 171 by itself. But from 1891 through 1900, the average number of rookies is 42, which only gives us two drafting rounds per team. That was the reason for suggesting we use a 2-year pool of players.
Below is a listing of some of the rules that I'm suggesting we play by, but it will be a democracy and owners will have a chance to amend them if and when we see fit(majority rules).
1/12/2014 10:52 AM (edited)