Summary of draft
Round 1
Order: 1-16
Action: Select exclusive position player
Round 2
Order: 16-1
Actions: (1) Select exclusive pitcher. (2) Assign a season for the exclusive position player chosen (in round 1) by the owner who follows you in this round.
Round 3
Order: 1-16
Action: Assign a season for the exclusive pitcher (chosen in round 2) by the owner who follows you in this round.
Round 4
Order: 16-1
Action: Assign an exclusive park to the owner who drafts 8 slots after you in this round
Round 5
Order: 1-16
Action: Assign an exclusive franchise-decade to the owner of your choice
Round 6
Order: N/A
Action: Pick a player-season from the franchise-decade assigned to you, and assign him back to the owner who gave you that franchise-decade.
The most important concept is: You will get screwed over.
The corollary to that concept is: You will screw over others.
If you can accept those conditions, you are in business. If not, there's probably an open league or a $255m league you can play where you won't have to make tough choices.
Now that you know you will be hosed, and that you will hose others....The big question is how?
24 16 owners will sign up in the forums. Upon signup, owners will nominate one position player and one pitcher. NOTE: you are just nominating them to be part of the pool of players from whom we will draft in rounds 1 and 2.
The position player must:
-- Have at least 10 WIS-eligible seasons as a hitter (seasons means seasons, not versions. 1989 Rickey Henderson is 1 season, not 4)
-- Have at least 1 season with a salary of $6M or greater
The pitcher must:
-- Have at least 10 WIS-eligible seasons as a pitcher
-- Have at least 1 season with a salary of $7M or greater (so Mariano Rivera, for example, is not eligible.)
Once 24 16 owners are in and all exclusive players have been nominated, we will have a 6 round serpentine draft, with random order generated from random.org (I will ask a HOF owner who is not in the league to generate the draft order.) There are pros and cons to every draft slot. It’s possible one draft slot may have a strategic advantage over another; them’s the breaks. By signing up for this league you agree to play the cards you are dealt. As with every league I run, the principle of NO WHINING applies here.
The draft will proceed as follows:
Round 1 (1-16) Select your exclusive position player from the list of 16. Exclusive means exclusive. No one else can have any version of this player on their team.
"Wow, you mean I can draft any of those 16 guys I want and no one else can have him? Cool."
Yes...but wait.
Round 2 (16-1) In this round you will do two things. You will select your exclusive pitcher, and you will assign a season for the exclusive position player for the owner who drafts after you. So owner 16, drafting first in this round, will assign a season for the exclusive position player chosen by owner 15 in round 1. Owner 1, drafting last in this round, will assign a season for the exclusive position player chosen by owner 16 in round 1. As with the position player, your exclusive pitcher is exclusive to you. No one else can have any version of that pitcher on their team.
"Wait...I picked Babe Ruth and someone just assigned me his 1935 season?"
Yep. Or maybe worse, his 1921 season that costs a tidy $27M, and you have just $53M left to fill out your entire roster.
Round 3 (1-16) In this round, you will assign a season for the exclusive pitcher for the owner who drafts after you. So owner 1, drafting first in this round, will assign a season for the exclusive pitcher chosen by owner 2 in round 2. Owner 16, drafting last in this round, will assign a season for the exclusive pitcher chosen by owner 1 in round 2.
Round 4 (16-1) Assign an exclusive park (from the list posted below) to the owner who drafts 8 slots after you. So owner 16, drafting first in this round, will assign an exclusive park to owner 8. Owner 15 will assign a park to owner 7, etc. Owner 8 will assign a park to owner 16, owner 7 will assign to owner 15, etc.
"OK, Coors, cool. Ruth might hit 120 home runs there."
Yes - be careful what you wish for though....
At this point we will have done four rounds, and each owner will have screwed 3 other owners, and been screwed by them in return. Having fun yet? You devious weasels have two more screwings to give, and to receive.
Round 5 (1-16) Assign an exclusive franchise-decade to an owner of your choice. Obviously each owner can only be assigned 1 franchise-decade. So owner 1, drafting first in this round, will assign an exclusive franchise-decade to any owner he chooses. Owner 2 will pick another owner and do the same, etc.
"Whoa...I have to put the 1931-40 St. Louis Browns pitching staff...in Coors?!?"
For this round we will allow owners to choose any 10-consecutive-year period (from 1885-2019) for the franchise they assign. The franchise must have been active for all 10 of those seasons. We will use www.baseball-reference.com as the definitive source for franchise lineage. Again, franchise-decades are exclusive; there can be no overlap with any other franchise-decade.
But choose carefully, because in round 6 turnabout once again becomes fair play.
Round 6 (order does not matter). The owner to whom you have assigned a franchise-decade may choose any player-season from that franchise-decade and assign it back to you. You must roster this player. So for example, if in round 5 an owner assigns me the 1976-85 Twins, I can choose in round 6 to assign him 1985 Kirby Puckett in return. He must then use '85 Puckett on his roster.
Now – this is very important:
Your roster must include THREE players (the exclusive position player you chose in round 1, in the season that was chosen for you; the pitcher you chose in round 2, in the season that was chosen for you; and the player-season who was assigned to you in round 6). If any of those players were traded during the season, you must use the COMBINED version with the highest salary in WIS. And all 3 of those players must meet or exceed their real-life PA/162 or IP/162 totals for you. (Up to a maximum of 750PA or 500IP...I don't want anyone completely doomed to fail right out of the gate by getting saddled with, say, Billy Hamilton's 1894 season where he has 860 PA/162. If you get assigned such a season, you need to "only" get 750PA for your player.)
If any of the three fail to do so, your team is ineligible for the playoffs. In the event a team wins enough games to make the playoffs, but any of their three players fail to match/exceed their required PA/162 or IP/162, the forfeited playoff spot will go to the team with the next-best record from the same league (most wins not already in the playoffs). Tiebreaker will be Expected Winning Percentage as found in the advanced standings…so a small but important incentive for no one to play silly games with fatigued players. In the extremely unlikely event that we still have a tie, we will use random.org to decide the winner.
Other than those 3 players, your ENTIRE roster must be made up of players from the franchise-decade assigned to you in round 5. You MAY use a version of the player you assigned back in round 6, but not that exact season. So continuing with my example from above, if I am assigned the 1976-85 Twins in round 5, and choose 1985 Puckett to give back in round 6, then my entire roster (other than the 3 players noted above) must come from the 1976-85 Twins. I can use 1984 Puckett, but not the 1985 version, on my team. IMPORTANT NOTE: Exclusive player takes precedence over franchise-decade. For example, if I have the 1976-85 Twins and someone has (hypothetically) chosen Rod Carew as their exclusive player in round 1, I may not use ANY version of Carew on my team.
After that, rules will be straightforward:
- No AAA, No WW, No trades, No DH, No Clones
- injuries on (be sure you draft enough PA/IP, especially if you get dealt one of those nasty offense-heavy parks)
- We will do ONE random realignment
- $80m cap
- - Although this is unlikely, it is possible that in round 5 we could come down to the final slot and have an owner needing to self-assign a franchise-decade. Obviously this cannot be allowed, so if necessary I may require the owner picking 15th in that round to assign a franchise-decade to a specific owner, in order to avoid this possibility
- Lastly, although this is also unlikely, we do need a rule to prevent collusion, or in case someone just doesn’t get the concept. The idea of this theme is to make things difficult for other owners. So no one should be assigning (in round 5) a great franchise-decade, or (in round 6) giving out a player-season that will be easy to use and a great value at an 80M cap. If 3 or more owners object to any of the choices made, we will put those selections to a league-wide vote (majority rules). Hopefully this will be unnecessary.
10/15/2019 2:35 PM (edited)