SORRY, I KNOW THIS IS NOT THE MOST APPROPRIATE FORUM, AND I HAVE POSTED THIS IN THE PROGRESSIVE CLASSIFIEDS, BUT SINCE NOT EVERYONE READS THAT FORUM REGULARLY, AND THIS IS AN INNOVATIVE IDEA THAT MIGHT APPEAL BOTH TO PROG REGULARS AND THOSE WHO USUALLY PLAY ONLY OPEN LEAGUES, I POST IT HERE AS WELL.
Alphabet Progressive League
The premise – use every player in the database, have players from all seasons available in the league every year, creating some of the fun of OLs in a progressive league.
Structure
There will be 24 teams, a standard 4/4/4 setup with a wildcard.
All stadiums but stadiums will be exclusive to the owner/team, and will be chosen as a draft pick in the inaugural league draft.
Teams will have a geographical location and a team name. Divisional alignment will be geographical to the extent it is practical.
No DH, No AAA, No WW. No Clones.
THE KEY FEATURE OF THE LEAGUE:
Every single player in the WIS database will be included in the league. Every player will enter the league in alphabetical order, in their first WIS database season.
Rosters will be a maximum of 35 each season to guarantee enough PA and IP for every team.
But the larger rosters are intended to enable teams to play the season, not to stockpile talent for years as players develop. This is what the Rule 5 draft is meant to avoid in MLB, and instead we will limit keepers to a maximum of 20.
Inaugural Draft and Subsequent Draft rules
In the inaugural draft, the first 600 position players and the first 400 pitchers by alphabetical order of last name will be available. We will draft up to rosters of 35 – 21 position players and 14 pitchers, and the excess over 25 players you draft will be kept as 6-4 AAA. No computer-generated AAA will be used.
The availability of players is determined by beginning with the letter “A” for last name, setting PA or IP to zero, setting season type to “Full”, setting “Last/First” to “First”, setting the number of players to the maximum of “500” and ordering the presentation in order of Last Name.
We begin by merely searching first seasons of players whose last names begin with the letter “A”. Doing so gives us, for our inaugural draft Henry Aaron 1954 as the very first position player, and the last name beginning with the letter A is Oscar Azocar 1990 at 219. We begin the same process with letter “B” and we need another 381 names to reach 600 position players. Charlie Babb 1903 is the first player to come up under B and number 381 is Don Bosch 1967.
So, our first position players draft pool goes from Henry Aaron 1954 to Don Bosch 1967. For our second season, and for subsequent seasons, any undrafted players will remain in the draft pool, as will those players cut from the 35-man rosters to meet the 20 player keepers maximum. Alphabetically, for new players in the pool we will start at “bo”and then go through ever second letter in the “B” last names, until we complete that letter, then moving on to “C” etc. until we arrive at a draft pool of 250. Each season draft we will add 150 position players and 100 pitchers to the draft pool, and players that remain undrafted stay in the draft pool for the life of the league, but any undrafted players will continue to progress in time.
The alphabetically system does mean that fans of Carl Yastrzemski and Cy Young will have to have patience, but it provides an unusual and quirky draft pool that will eventually use every player in the database.
For pitchers, we do the same, drafting from a pool of 400 pitchers alphabetically by last name for the inaugural draft, and then from a subsequent pool of 100 for each season afterward, along with those cut from rosters to meet keeper limits and those undrafted from previous drafts.
So for the inaugural draft, the first name to appear alphabetically is David Aardsma 2006. There are 175 pitchers whose last names start with “A” and the last of these is Bob Ayrault 1992. We need another 225 pitchers for the inaugural draft, so we move on to “B”. There are 500 plus “B”s starting with Bob Babcock, and we will go to number 225 who is Randor Bierd 2008 (sounds like a name from Tolkien doesn’t it?).
The inaugural draft order will be determined by random numbers generated by a non-league member HOF owner using the engine on random.com. All subsequent drafts, in order to avoid tanking, will work as follows: the first round order will again be entirely random, using the method described above. All rounds after the first round, however, so as to provide some chance for weaker teams to rebuild with some advantage, will be by reverse W-L order, with ties broken by W-L record against each other, with the team having won the most in direct competition having the earlier draft position in that case.
Encouraging trading by providing an additional draft pick
However, to encourage trades and the circulation of players throughout the league, for every two trades a team has carried out during the season, it will obtain an additional third round draft pick at the end of that round in the following draft.
Join the Alphabet Progressive League and rewrite Baseball History ! It is easy as ABC..
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