2019 Rules Discussion

[Cardinals]

Since we are discussing the haves and have nots, how about a quick fix for UFA. Since this has already come up with the claiming of Zips guys when each team is posted in the off season, why not just have that built in for UFA all year around. Like why can't we institute a 5am/2am processing time so teams could submit claims for UFAs they want rather than the first guy to read the BA/BP/FG post (or the beginning of the season Zip posts). If that team is highest on the list at the time of processing, they get the guy and they are moved to the last name on the list. The list could be reset at the end of each month like the WW list or it is set at the beginning of the season and untouched throughout the season. This would obviously need to stay blind and guessing that it might be difficult knowing if you are going to get your guy, but this would only seem to be a potentially issue around the Thursday/Sunday DB releases.

This seems to make it difficult for teams who need to add a player quickly due to injury.

[Giants]

The focus should remain on rewarding winning instead of penalizing losing.

I don’t want to penalize losing, I want to penalize trying not to win over multiple years to the point of absurdity for the purpose of getting top draft picks. The threshold should be around uncompetitive teams designed to lose 120 games.

[Mets]

The focus should remain on rewarding winning instead of penalizing losing.

I don’t want to penalize losing, I want to penalize trying not to win over multiple years to the point of absurdity for the purpose of getting top draft picks. The threshold should be around uncompetitive teams designed to lose 120 games.

This seems very hard to prove unless teams are deliberately sitting guys with better projections. Teams collecting top-5 picks seem to be trying to win through the draft. I could be counterintuitive to keep collecting top picks with no desire to ever get better. Look no further than the Nats, Cubs and Astros as recent MLB teams that have successfully built this way.

[Athletics]

Since we are discussing the haves and have nots, how about a quick fix for UFA. Since this has already come up with the claiming of Zips guys when each team is posted in the off season, why not just have that built in for UFA all year around. Like why can't we institute a 5am/2am processing time so teams could submit claims for UFAs they want rather than the first guy to read the BA/BP/FG post (or the beginning of the season Zip posts). If that team is highest on the list at the time of processing, they get the guy and they are moved to the last name on the list. The list could be reset at the end of each month like the WW list or it is set at the beginning of the season and untouched throughout the season. This would obviously need to stay blind and guessing that it might be difficult knowing if you are going to get your guy, but this would only seem to be a potentially issue around the Thursday/Sunday DB releases.

This seems to make it difficult for teams who need to add a player quickly due to injury.

Can we make a tiered add system where you can queue more than one guy to add for the same dropped player. Then a team is insured of a guy being on their team for the next day.

[Cubs]

If we are having discussions on changing the rules, can I put my $0.02 in as well and suggest we actually have rules in place which we can change? This always seems to fall on deaf ears, but am I the only one who thinks we should have somewhere showing what the damned rules are before we work on changing the rules? Other than random rules decrees buried in the forums of course...

I'm with you on this one Nils, would be nice to get this updated. Willing to work on it but would need some help because I obviously don't know (see Seth Smith).

[Cubs]

Raising the roster size
Should be done (was an advocate of this ten years ago when I had 10 guys on the DL at the same time), go up at least five guys.


Changing the draft/inactive roster
Should keep it but let us have three years of protection. Just when a guy starts to get to the point of being ready to contribute or the AA test you have to make a decision. We also should change the rule where if a guy is in the SIM and you're using him he doesn't count for your draft roster. This penalizes guys for drafting well, bad rule.

Draft pick compensation
No real opinion here other than I would hate it if I was in the top 5. Looks like that might be the case this year after another shitty start to a season.

Raising minimum actives
No-brainer, gotta have a full roster (25 active), would help if we raise the roster size, see above. It would also help if Zips didn't suck so bad. You gotta have stars with these projections - everybody else sucks.

[Orioles]

Anybody for status quo?

I'm all for improving competitive balance but short of adding some version of the Rule 5 or a "FA draft" of some kind (which I don't love either) I'm not sure anything proposed would have a meaningful impact without either threatening the realism factor we're going for or unnecessarily complicating things.

Ok, I guess I could see adding 3-5 roster spots due to the increased frequency of DL trips now that it's 10 days. If contending teams have to fill injury holes with prospects who happen to have a projection but no business being in a major league game, it hurts the realism of the whole thing. Contending teams will use the spots for veteran taxi squad guys to deal with injuries and non-contenders can load up on prospects. Perhaps this boosts competitive balance by allowing rebuilding GMs to stockpile assets while contending GMs roster players they will immediately cut at season's end.

Also, the idea of a 3rd year draft roster is interesting because I hate those decisions, but it also might be because I draft more teenagers than most, so if other GMs don't notice this issue we should leave it as is.