IBC

Okay, these three thoughts go hand in hand. Interested in what others think or if there are any other ideas out there for helping to avoid these conflicts.

#1
Go to managed injuries. OOPSS pulls the injuries from a source on a timely basis (see #2), determines which players need to be deactivated, emails the GM and the person who puts them into DMB. No more injury penalties. No more worrying about whether you have the right players deactivated. This is already partially implemented in that OOPSS pulls out new injuries, would just take a little work to perfect the implementation.

#2
Switch back to daily DL. With all the extra help provided by OOPSS, much easier to send lineups when necessary and if you can't, you won't get hit with a DL penalty. This way, injury times match up in days, not in weeks. Makes the DL rules much more simple and easier to manage your guys.

#3
Go totally black and white. Either the guy is on the DL (and therefore can't play in IBC) or he isn't (and can play). If a guy breaks his leg but doesn't get put on the DL, he can play. Everybody puts up the same risk by switching to this, you could benefit, your rivals could benefit. Again, makes the DL rules much more simple and easier to manage and avoids the ugly gray area that we've just gone through, as well as the need for an injury panel.

Please chime in, very interested to hear opinions.

I say #3, with the caveat that when a player is "shut down for the season because of injury" with no chance to play, and that is proven, then he's out.

is this for the full season or for september? because some of these sound like they could be applied to the full regular season and I'd personally be opposed to changing the current regular season system.

as for the september issue, why not keep it as-is with the ability to appeal decisions to a league-wide vote, same as the TRC.

We do 2 & 3 in BCMBL and it works magically.

If he's on the MLB DL, he's on the BCMBL DL. If he's not, he's not.

Some guys miss only 3 days because of retro-active DL'ing, but everyone is playing with the same rules, so it's just luck of the draw.

Of course, this requires daily DL'ing. We lag one full day behind, meaning, if he' goes on the MLB DL on Tuesday, he won't be DL'd in the league until after Wednesday's SIM. The same goes for activations.

Whichever the rule, the most important thing for a successful DL system is to eliminate the gray areas.

I will say, my biggest complaint with the current system in IBC is that if a guy is on the DL for 16 days in the MLB, he essentially has to miss 21 days in IBC because of timing.

Mets wrote:We do 2 & 3 in BCMBL and it works magically.

If he's on the MLB DL, he's on the BCMBL DL. If he's not, he's not.

Some guys miss only 3 days because of retro-active DL'ing, but everyone is playing with the same rules, so it's just luck of the draw.

Of course, this requires daily DL'ing. We lag one full day behind, meaning, if he' goes on the MLB DL on Tuesday, he won't be DL'd in the league until after Wednesday's SIM. The same goes for activations.

Whichever the rule, the most important thing for a successful DL system is to eliminate the gray areas.

I will say, my biggest complaint with the current system in IBC is that if a guy is on the DL for 16 days in the MLB, he essentially has to miss 21 days in IBC because of timing.

I'm not quite sure I follow that last part? How does a guy end up missing 21 days in the IBC?

Lets say for example the guy goes on the DL in the MLB on a Wednesday. He plays in the IBC until that Sunday, he's not immediately put on the DL on Wednesday in the IBC.

Then when he's eligible to come off the DL in the MLB in 15 days (the 2nd Thursday afterward). He's elibile to come off the IBC DL that following Sunday....so he only missed 15 days in the IBC, as well. Sunday to the 2nd Sunday. I'm not sure where this "additional" time in the IBC ends up coming from?

My vote is for #2 and #3. Everything is cut and dry, with no "decisions" to make. Sometimes a team will benefit, and sometimes there opponent will benefit, but it's luck of the draw, and it's a level playing field where the same rules apply to all. No voting, no decisions to make.

Have we had a daily DL rule in the past? #2 says "back to daily", I didn't remember us having a "daily" rule in the past, but I just might not be remembering it.

The issues with gonig to the Daily list have always been.

1) Someone has to volunteer to track the dailly DL changes and then notify the guy SIMing each day.

2) If GM's are not around or available mid-week to make a roster change, they will get penalized by having the SIM auto fill a player from your depth chart into your lineup until you get a chance to send in a roster update.

The Daily DL idea is fine, its just more work and GM's can be penalized by not being available to do roster updates middle of the week.

The upside is obviously there shouldn't ever be a DL violation, as long as the daily DL guy doesn't screw up and miss someone.


#3 is one way to solve the subjectivity that is experienced every September by our current system. It puts GM's at the mercy of MLB teams roster management but everyone is at equal risk with eyes wide open going in. It would solve the current DL fiascos going on but could also be very painful for someone.

The only way to not have any controvery in September/October is to go to #3. I'm not sure if it is "better" that way, but it would definately eliminate the grey area.

I still prefer our current weekly DL system with the possibility of adding #3 so the September/October controversy is eliminated, however I can see how people with more free time would be attracted to the daily system.

I'm curious, if the concern here is about the vagaries of the September DL system, what the heck do options 1 and 2 have to do with that?

Neither provides solutions to the issue at hand. Rather, it seems like perhaps someone wants to take the September controversy as an excuse to try to push through other ideas. The problem here isn't the DL penalties, a DL notification sysem or the Weekly DL system, all of which work very, very well. Why fuck with that?

The only option which addresses the September DL issue is option 3, which isn't really an option if there isn't n alternative presented with it, it's just an idea. Personally it's not an idea I like, but I could live with it if it would stop all the kvetching.

A few other thoughts...
Option 2 -
First of all, it's not "Switch back to daily DL" the IBC has never used daily DL.

Secondly, not everyone in the league has the ability to send in a roster every single day. Most of us do have that ability, but not all of us do. And really, do you want to HAVE to check for injuries every day or else risk a penalty? I don't.

Option 1 -
Getting rid of DL penalties would be a HUGE mistake. The DL rule would end up being abused. let's say I had a series starting up with Nils and Webb is going to start game 1 but he gets injured and goes on the DL. By eliminating the DL penalties, there's no drawback to still starting him in game 1 and putting him on the DL after that game. And assigning the resposibility to someone else isn't going to help matters either, if anything it will make the process more complicated and dumps all the problems on one person. DL responsibility is an individual thing.

The idea we've been kicking around for September DL in the ExCo is that, in mid August we'll appoint some guys from teams that are out of contention to an injury committee to oversee September injury appeals. This way it won't been see as any sort of favoritism and looking out for ourselves like we're currently being accused of

I'm not sure it's appropriate for anyone who has never participated in a daily DL system to voice strong opinions on it.

I would invite anyone who is currently in a daily DL league, BCMBL, IYFBL, CBA, etc to voice your experiences, rather than having to constantly read opinions based on assumptions.

Personally, I don't consider myself to have a ton of free time every day, yet somehow I'm able to carve 10-15 minutes a day to run a league, which involves simming, doing all the DL'ing & Activations, all free agent transactions, trade processing etc. in addition to running my own team.

What ends up happening in the daily DL system is this. On average each team will lose 10-12 starters to the DL over the course of the season. Either A) they download the newest DB, make adjustments and send in their MP when that happens, or B) they play with a 24 man roster (which many MLB teams do throughout the year) until they can get 5 free minutes to adjust their roster.

With the day lag, it essentially gives every GM 36-48 hours to get their updated MP in before the injury affects their roster.

Again, if anyone with daily DL experience wants to weigh in. I'm not going to waste my time arguing that it's the best system, I will just illustrate examples in which it works successfully, and answer any questions anyone may have about it.

I do think there is one major flaw in the IBC system. If I didn't DL a guy and played him illegally, he gets an extra 2-week penalty. Well that guy is on the DL for 3 months. When he comes off, who is monitoring that the penalty is getting applied? Even as the owning GM, I'm not going to remember 3 months down the road. That's something that'll probably need to be addressed if we continue with the current system.

I love the "BCMBL" system!

When I was traveling in August and away from my database, I was confident that I would not get 'penalized' for an injured player because I knew those players would be DL'd and all I had to do was get a replacement player in at the next time I was around my DB.

It was much harder in IBC. In IBC I had to go through all 25 players for the last week and make sure none of them got DL'd. Not only that but I had to do it at hotel lobby computers. With BCMBL I was not forced to do anything unless I wanted to make sure I had 25 active instead of 24.

I'm definitely on board with #1 + #2 for sure, and have been hoping this kind of system would be doable at some point given how centralized and efficient a tool the website has become through Shawn's work/constant improvements. The penalties are currently a "necessary evil" b/c of the admin time required to handle injuries centrally (rather than leaving each GM responsible for his own guys), but if the admin can be made efficient enough to eliminate penalties, I think the increase in accuracy as far as inj time definitely improves the league. Ok, so you might not see the email, or make a lineup change in time to account for each and every DL transaction the day it occurs, but that beats having a key guy on the DL an extra week b/c his team decided to activate him on a Sunday instead of Saturday. This also cleans up the problem John mentioned above of tracking penalties (particularly when a player is traded who hasn't served their penalty)

As for #3 I like sticking w/ the MLB DL up until Sep. 1, then having a vote on the questionable cases. Maybe we should just have different group of voters, as some has suggested. Say, 7 GMs representing a decent cross-section of the league (ExCo included, if we want - tho I'm sure none would mind having responsibilities spread out a little). Have one vote Sept. 15, and another at the close of the reg. season. On 9/15, GMs voting would not be able to vote on the status of their own players, or other players in question in their division. At seasons' end, postseason participants would only be able to vote on players in the other league (or not vote at all unless needed to break a tie).

If we have specific dates for assessing who "should" be on the DL, but isn't as a result of a non-competing team or b/c of roster expansion, and make the voting easier by providing some guidelines for designating a player to be voted on as presumptively injured until proven otherwise (like if they've been "shut down for the year" after Sep. 14). That way we could attempt to be consistent w/ our reg season DL=out in the IBC system while directing any discussion w/ guidelines and limiting it to specific dates down the stretch.

Mets wrote:I'm not sure it's appropriate for anyone who has never participated in a daily DL system to voice strong opinions on it.

I would invite anyone who is currently in a daily DL league, BCMBL, IYFBL, CBA, etc to voice your experiences, rather than having to constantly read opinions based on assumptions.

Personally, I don't consider myself to have a ton of free time every day, yet somehow I'm able to carve 10-15 minutes a day to run a league, which involves simming, doing all the DL'ing & Activations, all free agent transactions, trade processing etc. in addition to running my own team.

What ends up happening in the daily DL system is this. On average each team will lose 10-12 starters to the DL over the course of the season. Either A) they download the newest DB, make adjustments and send in their MP when that happens, or B) they play with a 24 man roster (which many MLB teams do throughout the year) until they can get 5 free minutes to adjust their roster.

With the day lag, it essentially gives every GM 36-48 hours to get their updated MP in before the injury affects their roster.

Again, if anyone with daily DL experience wants to weigh in. I'm not going to waste my time arguing that it's the best system, I will just illustrate examples in which it works successfully, and answer any questions anyone may have about it.

I do think there is one major flaw in the IBC system. If I didn't DL a guy and played him illegally, he gets an extra 2-week penalty. Well that guy is on the DL for 3 months. When he comes off, who is monitoring that the penalty is getting applied? Even as the owning GM, I'm not going to remember 3 months down the road. That's something that'll probably need to be addressed if we continue with the current system.

I agree with John. I've been involved in DL systems both ways, and with daily DL's, there is essentially zero complaints and zero controversy, etc. Basically the IBC is the only league I'm in where injuries are handled in this fashion, and there is constantly disagreements.

Astros wrote:

Mets wrote:I'm not sure it's appropriate for anyone who has never participated in a daily DL system to voice strong opinions on it.

I would invite anyone who is currently in a daily DL league, BCMBL, IYFBL, CBA, etc to voice your experiences, rather than having to constantly read opinions based on assumptions.

Personally, I don't consider myself to have a ton of free time every day, yet somehow I'm able to carve 10-15 minutes a day to run a league, which involves simming, doing all the DL'ing & Activations, all free agent transactions, trade processing etc. in addition to running my own team.

What ends up happening in the daily DL system is this. On average each team will lose 10-12 starters to the DL over the course of the season. Either A) they download the newest DB, make adjustments and send in their MP when that happens, or B) they play with a 24 man roster (which many MLB teams do throughout the year) until they can get 5 free minutes to adjust their roster.

With the day lag, it essentially gives every GM 36-48 hours to get their updated MP in before the injury affects their roster.

Again, if anyone with daily DL experience wants to weigh in. I'm not going to waste my time arguing that it's the best system, I will just illustrate examples in which it works successfully, and answer any questions anyone may have about it.

I do think there is one major flaw in the IBC system. If I didn't DL a guy and played him illegally, he gets an extra 2-week penalty. Well that guy is on the DL for 3 months. When he comes off, who is monitoring that the penalty is getting applied? Even as the owning GM, I'm not going to remember 3 months down the road. That's something that'll probably need to be addressed if we continue with the current system.

I agree with John. I've been involved in DL systems both ways, and with daily DL's, there is essentially zero complaints and zero controversy, etc. Basically the IBC is the only league I'm in where injuries are handled in this fashion, and there is constantly disagreements.

Just to be fair, I don't believe the Weekly versus Daily DL issue is causing any disagreements in the league currently, other than individual GM preference.

For five months out of the season there is no question regarding whether a player should or should not be on the DL. Our problems occur in September/October when MLB teams shut players down and they are never added to the official MLB (Rotoworld) DL list, thus causing the disagreements on whether or not those players should still be allowed to play in the IBC.

Changing the DL system from weekly to daily isn't going to solve that issue. So the issues are two totally different items. Shawn's post at the top is blurring the lines a little because he's asking opinions regarding both topics in the same post.

1) Do we stay with the Weekly DL System or go to a Daily System.

2) Do we change how we regulate the DL list in September/October from our current system of making subjective decisions for those players that are shut down early but not put on the official DL list.

The question of changing to the daily DL system comes up every offseason and there is a pretty heated discussion every offseason regarding the pros and cons of changing to the daily DL system. I imagine we'll be having that discussion again soon.

Mariners wrote:Just to be fair, I don't believe the Weekly versus Daily DL issue is causing any disagreements in the league currently, other than individual GM preference.

There are still DL violations during the season, as compared to the daily system where there are NO violations. Now obviously an owner could be hurt if he doesn't make a roster move, but with daily DL's, the opposing team is never affected.

As far as weekly vs daily DL goes, I don't have a preference. I can get on board with either. They both have their pros and cons.

However, when it comes to September injuries, I stand firmly behind the system we have in place now. It might not seem like it right now because of the Hamilton debate, but in reality, 95% of the decisions made this way end up being the right decisions and are accepted as such. We eliminate the "luck of the draw" aspect of it and try to keep things as reality based as possible for a sim league.

I think the Injury Panel is a good idea and I do think there should be some kind of appeals process. The league is filled with brilliant baseball minds - they can be trusted to make a decision. At the very least I think we should wait to make any changes. Let the heat of the Hamilton argument die down before we rush to make changes. This system works. There's always gonna be some complaints, but overall it has served us well in the past. We should take the steps needed to improve it if we can, but eliminating it is, in my opinion, the absolute wrong move.

Astros wrote:

Mariners wrote:Just to be fair, I don't believe the Weekly versus Daily DL issue is causing any disagreements in the league currently, other than individual GM preference.

There are still DL violations during the season, as compared to the daily system where there are NO violations. Now obviously an owner could be hurt if he doesn't make a roster move, but with daily DL's, the opposing team is never affected.

I agree with you there, the Daily DL system re-assigns the responsibility of DL'ing players from the individual GMs to a single volunteer who takes on that responsibility for the whole league on a daily basis and de-activates or tells the guy SIMing who needs to be deactivated every day before SIMing.

Now, there is no reason that same method couldn't be applied to the weekly system currently in place, however the issue in both cases is coming up with a volunteer who is willing to do it.

We had exactly one DL complication in BCMBL this year. It actually involved Oswalt. The GM who owned him argued for about 30 seconds that he'd pitch if his team was in it, but the rules were black and white...DL = DL....and that was it. Everyone knew it. There was no committee to vote on eligibility. It sucked, year, but it was luck of the draw. Injuries are a part of the game.

I think the biggest opponents against the daily DL system are those who have never actually tried it. There's seems to be a great misconception about how long it takes and how much work it is...blah blah.

Mets wrote:We had exactly one DL complication in BCMBL this year. It actually involved Oswalt. The GM who owned him argued for about 30 seconds that he'd pitch if his team was in it, but the rules were black and white...DL = DL....and that was it. Everyone knew it. There was no committee to vote on eligibility. It sucked, year, but it was luck of the draw. Injuries are a part of the game.

I think the biggest opponents against the daily DL system are those who have never actually tried it. There's seems to be a great misconception about how long it takes and how much work it is...blah blah.

I agree. Anyone who has used the daily DL is not against it...it's only the owners who have never tried it who seem to be so against it.

Astros wrote:

Mets wrote:We had exactly one DL complication in BCMBL this year. It actually involved Oswalt. The GM who owned him argued for about 30 seconds that he'd pitch if his team was in it, but the rules were black and white...DL = DL....and that was it. Everyone knew it. There was no committee to vote on eligibility. It sucked, year, but it was luck of the draw. Injuries are a part of the game.

I think the biggest opponents against the daily DL system are those who have never actually tried it. There's seems to be a great misconception about how long it takes and how much work it is...blah blah.

I agree. Anyone who has used the daily DL is not against it...it's only the owners who have never tried it who seem to be so against it.

I'm not against trying the Daily DL, I'm just trying to figure out how it solves our real DL problem right now which is the September/October issue.

Every time I've asked the question on why wouldn't the implementation of the same process the daily system uses into the weekly system not get us to the same place of solving DL violations, the people who are in favor of the Daily system go off on a rant about how people who haven't used the Daily system don't know what they are talking about.

Its like talking to a Republican the past eight years. When you ask them a reasonable question in order to be able to make a fair/logical comparison of the two systems they go off ranting about how moderates or Democrats don't know what they are talking about.

Tell me if I'm wrong, but the key to the success of the Daily DL system appears to be the process of taking the DL responsibility away from individual GM's and consolidating it with a single volunteer who monitors the MLB DL list on a daily basis and sends needed changes to the SIMing guy each day before games are SIM'd.

So the key to the success of the daily system eliminating DL violations has nothing really to do with it being a daily or weekly system, its success in eliminating DL violations is the process of consolidating the monitoring responsbility with a single GM rather than having it be the responsibility of each individual GM each time they send in a roster update.

I have not heard a reason or response yet on why that same process wouldn't work in a weekly DL system. The volunteer would just be monitoring the MLB list on a weekly basis instead of daily.

Now the preference to try a daily system because that is how others are doing it in other leagues is fine, but I don't believe the fact that it is a daily versus weekly system is the key to why it is succeeding in eliminating DL violations throughout the season. If the GM's in the league that do operating in those other leagues under the daily DL system see something in my assumptions here that is completely wrong, please chime in.

I guess the reason the daily DL argument would solve the Sep/Oct issue is the way the daily DL system is run, meaning DL=DL, day by day. It's a simply system.

But then again, if we adopted a system like that, what would be left to regurgitate each offseason??

Astros wrote:I guess the reason the daily DL argument would solve the Sep/Oct issue is the way the daily DL system is run, meaning DL=DL, day by day. It's a simply system.

But that solution is really a matter of changing our current September/October DL policy. That's where I think some aren't seeing the distinction between the problems and the solutions. That solution isn't a matter of Daily versus Weekly DL system. That solution is a matter of altering our current September/October DL policy of having some DL decisions currently be evaluated by the ExCo instead of just keeping our current April - August DL = DL system in place for the final month.


That said, there is no reason we can't and I'm sure that we will, have the discussion this offseason again about whether or not we should switch to a Daily DL process.

Astros wrote:But then again, if we adopted a system like that, what would be left to regurgitate each offseason??

Oh, don't worry about that. If you've been around this league for any length of time, you'll realize the GM's here will ALWAYS find something to "regurgitate" about every offseason.

As a league Admin, I can honestly say that keeping up with injuries on a daily basis is MUCH easier than doing it all at once each week.

I guess it depends on if you'd rather spend 5 minutes each day, or 1 hour on a weekend?

It's just a preference. An analogy is I like to do the dishes that I use right after I'm done using them. My wife likes to let all of her dishes pile up during the week, then spend a chunk of her Saturday morning washing them all, which actually takes longer because the food has dried on, and they're more nasty.

To the analogy, I can see two possible issues.
1) I would think there would be a greater chance for an injury to somehow get missed
2) If the DL is updated every Sunday, for example, and a player in the MLB comes off the DL on a Monday, would that team need to wait until the following Sunday to be able to activate that player? A bi-weekly system has been sort of a compromise to this point.

Again, it just depends on the prefernce of the Admin.

I agree with your analogy of the dishes. That part does come down to personal preference......spend a little time every day or spend a larger block of time every week. Competely personal preference.

Now the point, I think or hope, that everyone is beginning to see is that the part of the, lets call it "Daily" DL system, that is truly the part that has solved the issue of having DL violations is the consolidation of the DL De-activation or monitoring responsibility with a single individual. That is truly the key part of the "Daily" system that eliminates having GM's forget to de-activate their own DL players.

That is truly the part of the Daily system that appears to have proven to have solved the problem. It doesn't matter if that person is actually doing the de-activating on a daily or weekly basis, it is the fact that the responsibility has been placed with a single person that appears to have solved the problem.

Now that individual may argue that it is easier for them to keep up with their responsibility on a daily basis rather than a weekly basis, and that is fine, that is a fair argument to be made.

I'm willing to do whatever the league decides to do, and I really have no problem doing it either way. My preference would be a daily DL, and also having DL=DL all year long. I had zero DL violations this season, so I'm willing to keep up on my end regardless of which system is used.

OK, I've offered my 2 cents, now I'm dropping back out of this discussion...