7.06.2007

Proposed Minor League Amendment

Article 6 - Minor Leagues
(a) Minor League Draft - At a convenient time following the keeper deadline and preceding the auction draft, there shall be a supplemental draft round during which each Participant may draft one free agent minor league player at no cost to his draft day budget. This shall be the only time during the season when minor league players may be claimed outside of the the normal waiver process. The Participant with poorest record the previous season shall have the first pick and the Participant with the best record shall have the last pick, etc.
(b) Minor League Player - A minor league player shall be defined as any pitcher or hitter who has not yet qualified as a rookie according to MLB (a hitter who has not had 130 ABs or a pitcher who has not pitched 50 IP in any one major league season).
(c) At no time may a Participant claim rights to more than three minor league players.
(d) In connection with the passage of this Article, the Constitution shall be amended to add an additional bench slot.
(e) The Participant may lose exclusive rights to a claimed minor league player in three ways: (1) the minor league player is added to the hosting website's player universe and is not added to the Participant's roster within 15 days, (2) the Participant notifies the Commissioner of his desire to release a minor league player to acquire a new one before the Minor League Draft, or (3) a trade.
(f) In YEAR 1, when a player is no longer a minor league player as defined in subsection (b) of this Article, a Participant may keep this player at an initial cost of $5. After YEAR 1, normal keeper rules apply except as noted in (g)-(h) of this Article.
(g) Franchise Player - A Participant may tag one former minor league player exclusively from his team's minor league system as a "Franchise Player." This gives a Participant a potential fifth keeper slot for this limited purpose until such a time when the Participant no longer wants to keep that player.
(h) A Participant may only apply YPIA in year where a former minor league player's value is above the minimum value as noted in Article 4(c) (currently $15). Consequently, YPIA may only be applied in YEAR 3 at the earliest (if the player remains eligible).
(i) Each Participant's minor league system shall be posted on the FLB blog.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I like it, particularly the Franchise Player clause. I would put a definition on "reasonable amount of time" to put a minor leaguer on the roster -- perhaps 30 days.

Rich said...

Sounds good. FYI, I envision the supplemental round to take place via e-mail so we can do it at our leisure. Also, we could write something about skipping the round where we would have filled the additional bench slot and have that done through FA/Waivers to avoid adding time to the draft.

Strobl said...

Aside from logistical issue that I'm sure we could iron out, my concern is that Yahoo! is astinishly crappy at making available in a timely fashion players who have been called up to the majors.

2 cases in point: Aaron Laffey of the Indians threw 2 starts before he was available in the Yahoo! universe, and Joba Chamberlain was not available until almost a week after being called up.

It pissed me off on a couple levels- I was watching for these guys and others like them and would have used a waiver pick if they had been propoerly available, and if that were the minor league guy I drafted onto on my team I would have pretty angry at missing out on playing time.

I'm not sure waht we could do about this problem other than move the league to ESPN.com, which has its own issues. But this is something to be considered if we decide to do this.