By my count, there are 8 owners in favor of allowing Greg a replacement pick for Ed Yarnall. Therefore, Greg will pick up another player. There seems to be some discussion of restricting his pick somewhat. Greg himself offered to pick up a minor leaguer, so unless a full majority of the owners wants to further restrict his pick prior to this Sunday, Greg will be able to pick up any minor leaguer.
The commissioner system appears to be working pretty well so far. In the case of Kirk and Tim, I allowed them to pick up a free agent after the 1 week deadline because Kirk is new to the league. In this case, a majority of the owners could have overturned the decision, but since I haven't heard anything from anybody on it, I assume nobody objected too strongly. In Greg's case, I was the ONLY owner objecting to his picking up another player. I asked Greg to e-mail the league to find out if he had support and he got it quite easily. Since nobody else objected, I probably would have allowed 5-6 votes to reverse my decision. Normally, I would want a majority. In either case, he got it and now he gets a pick.
Gotta go, I'm drafting a new Constitution for The Democratic Republic of Kosovo in between internet updates of Joe McEwing and Sean Casey's bid for .400
I've extended the deadline for a CLAIM to Kirk and Tim until this weekend. Kirk has first choice and he'll have until Saturday night. Tim will be able to pick up a free agent Sunday or as soon as Kirk is finished. Usually, owners have 1 week to CLAIM.
Why the exception? Kirk was unaware of the CLAIM policy, so I thought we'd help him out a bit, considering his rookie status. Tim gets to ride on Kirk's coattails because his player was involved in the same trade.
I haven't picked up Baseball weekly yet today, but I'm assuming the 25 man rosters are in there. As was done last year, this will be the official list of available players for the auction (including the DL). All other players (minor leaguers mainly), will be available for the reserve draft following the auction.
If there are players who come up this week that are not on the Baseball Weekly rosters, they will have to be identified and agreed upon prior to the draft. I know this may spoil some plans to get a sleeper/little-known player, but I think it's the best way to go in order to avoid controversy and confusion.
As of Thursday, only Doug and Robb have replied to my email of last week requesting your input as to the role of the Commissioner and your opinion of a few rule changes. Please send me an email that addresses the role of the Commissioner and the rule changes I outlined. If you need my email again, ask and you will receive. We can hammer out the rule changes during the season if need be, but we should clear up the role of the Commish ASAP. I take it that Doug and Robb support the role of the Commish as I outlined. Basically, it allows the Commish to make any decision/rule change which would then be subject to reversal by a majority of the owners. This would allow decisions to be made swiftly and still preserve a notion of democracy and rule by majority.
What follows is part of my response to Robb's league wide email. It applies to Doug's as well because he brought up many of the same points:
I take it you too are against owners being committed to accepting a player before the salary is assigned. Of course you realize that only those owners who want stats immediately would have to do this. An owner who doesn't mind waiting up to 2 weeks would not be forced into this. In other words, the rule remains the same with the added option of getting stats immediately if you want them bad enough. I imagine that an owner who loses a star player in late August, and is in the hunt, will not want to wait 2 weeks, or even 1 week, and will accept any salary voted upon in order to get stats ASAP. Further, I'm not concerned with salaries being inflated during such a situation. And if they are a little high, the owner in question would simply not protect that player the next year. But the owner would get those stats which seems a little more important to me.
We have a 12th owner- Greg's cousin Kirk reconsidered and will attend the the draft Friday night. I haven't heard from Tim J since Thursday, so, as far as I'm concerned, he's out. I've instructed Eric to return his money. Kirk will take over Tim J's team. He'll take over the full roster and protect 7-15 this week. I'll get his protected list out as soon as I have it. Chris Ewing's email is [email protected]. Chris E's phone is (916) 489-3096. He's bringing $ to Eric Friday; Bill E can do the same. Remember, everybody should bring $9 for stats for Bill C.
I thought I'd send out an email before going to Arizona Friday for spring training. While there's nothing major to report, I would like to pass along a couple ideas for rule changes and also ask again that any other ideas be circulated quickly (before draft day).
1. Mid-season trades involving the AL. As it stands now, an owner can be delayed up to 2 weeks before getting a salary assigned and then claiming that player. This means 2 weeks without stats in some cases. Part of me wants to leave it this way. These are the breaks. Another part of me says that we should allow an owner to claim a player and receive stats beginning the next week, before a salary is assigned. This way, an owner would wait no longer than 7 days for stats. This leads to a new question: would the owner then be committed to keeping that player regardless of the salary assigned later, or would the owner have the right of refusal at that point. I vote for the former- if you want a player's stats immediately, then you have to keep him at the salary assigned.
2. The rule currently states that salaries will be assigned within 48 hours. I'd like to lengthen the time frame to 1 week. This clearly seems the more appropriate period to me considering our work schedules. Again, if we allow owners to claim and receive stats beginning the next week (see above), this 5-day extension will not keep owners waiting any longer than usual.
3. Barry proposed to me that we not allow trading during the draft, as was done last year on a couple of occassions (Servais , and that Marlins pitcher).
Finally, what is the commissioner's role in the league? Ideally, I think the commissioner should do the following
a. serve 1 year,
b. follow the rulebook as closely as possible, but
c. have the power to make decisions in the best interest of the league. In other words, follow the rulebook first, but be able to make decisions that are not covered by the rulebook and decisions that the rulebook "poorly" addresses.
d. ask for league opinion before making a ruling/ or a rule change.
e. be able to make rule changes immediately (during the season).
f. be overruled by a majority of the owners.
We've tried the system by which everything is put to a vote. Obviously, this didn't work as well as we'd like it to, so we are doing the commissioner thing. But again, my question is "what is the commissioner doing?"
Basically, I'd like to see the commisioner do the following. Make decisions that go into effect immediately unless a majority of the owners disagree. If there's something that I think needs to be changed/done, I'll sample league opinion first, then I'll make a ruling (or maybe even a rule change). Unless a majority of owners disagree, the ruling will stand.
I think we need to give somebody this power to help make the league run smoothly. If we disagree with any decisions made by the commissioner, we'll have the power to reverse his decisions. I'm planning on retiring at the end of this year and working on my memoirs, so fear not a Milosevic at the helm of league No Fehr. Or maybe I'll run for Senate in New York, mmmmmmm...
Please give me some feedabck on all of the above over the weekend. I'll talk to Greg, Eric, and Scott over beers at Ho Ho Kam Park.
BatBold is now Gordon Wood. I realize that Bill Counts may have a hard time believing this to be only a morbid coincidence, but 'Wood has been in the works for several weeks now. Patent and copyright approval finally came through yesterday.
So ends the 3-year run of a franchise whose name nobody ever quite understood, and we begin yet another that may leave a few people scratching their heads. Although we think the name is pretty cool. Here's to Gordon having a better season than his sibling Kerry...
From the Stat Manager (Bill C.): Stats were $100 this year. So $9 per team will cover it and put a couple of McSunday cheeseburgers into the wife's mouth. At the draft or mail by draft day is fine.
Scott Flodin will take over the roster of I'm Idaho, and Chris Ewing will take over the roster of Purple Starfish. The roster of Stanwyck Shepherds will return to the pool for draft day.
Scott will have first choice of which roster he wants to assume. Chris Ewing gets second pick. The third, unselected roster, will go back into the pool for the draft. Please send any rule change proposals to the league for review and comment. We should get these taken care of before the season starts.
For the record, after the penalties for missing the IP requirement are factored in, BatBold dropped 2 spots while Stanwyck Shepherds and Opportunistic Infections each gained 1.
Under present rules, I would therefore draft 2 spots higher in the reserve draft, from the 11th (or 3rd) position. Jeff T. and Bill C. would fall one spot in the reserve draft. This seems a bit counterintuitive to the objectives of the penalty, namely to penalize those teams not getting to 1150.
Absent objection, the reserve draft will reflect the final standings as they're posted on the website. I'd like to change the rule from here to prevent those who fail to get 1150IP from receiving the benefit of a better reserve draft position. Remember, it is a PENALTY. The IP penalty should be used to change the final standings and the awarding of pot $ ONLY, not the order of the reserve draft.
This should be the first of several rule changes to be implemented before the season begins. Most have to do with the fact that we have a Commissioner this year and are not using the voting method to resolve league disputes.
Please take a look at the rulebook and suggest any rule changes to the league. Another one I think we need to change is the way we assign salaries to AL players. The rulebook describes a 48 hour window to do so. I think it should be a week. I'll send a more detailed proposal later.
Chris Ewing is the 12th and newest member of the league. Some of you may know him, as he is from Sacramento and was a couple of years behind most of us in high school. He hasn't played rotisserie before, but he is a baseball junkie and is looking forward to getting started.
Unfortunately, he doesn't have an e-mail account at the present time. He may be able to use his roomate's account, and there has been talk that they may even share the team.
Because Scott did not join the league until a couple weeks ago, he did not cast a vote for the off-season compensation item that passed 7-3. I thought this same logic should apply to the salary votes that will now take place. All of these should have been taken care of months ago. In addition, because he hasn't participated in an draft/auction (for a few years at least), I thought he might not be completely familiar with the salary market. Therefore, Scott will not send salaries to Bill C for AL players in question, including any that his team may have rights to. I spoke to Scott on the phone today and he is OK with this.
Off-season compensation has passed 7-3; owners will now be compensated (under certain conditions) for players lost to the AL during the offseason.
The next item of business is to assign salaries to such players lost thus far, this off-season. I think it's most wise here to assign responsibility to individual owners for their lost players that they wish to claim. It should not be the responsibility of the league or the Commissioner to alert owners of the status of their players. Therefore, if you lost a player(s) to the AL, have the right of first choice for the player(s) coming over, and wish to keep said player(s), contact Bill Counts. Bill will then e-mail the league requesting each owner to assign a salary.
In cases involving multiple players from the NL, the owner of the higher salaried player has first crack at the player from the AL. If you are one of those owners, you have until Thursday February 18 to claim that player (or at least an interest in finding out what his salary will be). After that date, the owner of the player with the 2nd highest salary will have rights to the player from the AL, and so on, and so on, and so on.
Cases involving new owners (only Scott so far) will have to wait until March 8 or so, or whenever teams are doled out to the newcomers. I know this may create a logjam, but so be it.
Bill C, in cases involving only one owner, I would suggest waiting until several players are up for salary review before e-mailing the league. We can then send you salaries for several players at one time. This will cut down on e-mail and reduce the chance of players getting lost in the mix. After Bill requests salaries, please respond promptly. I believe the deadline for salary submittals is 1 week after his request.
Also, it is important that all owners submit a salary for each player. The league only works as well as its component parts. We've done a good job the past few days getting things done. Let's continue this biparpartisan spirit. If you don't know what Joe Lunchbucket's stats were last year or what his role will be this year, educate yourself. Buy a STAT mag, go to a website, ask your momma. But send Bill a salary.
If you know of a website that has this kind of information, e-mail the rest of the league so we can look at it ourselves. The Commissioner doesn't even have cable yet.
Just so we don't lose track, following is a list of the interleague trades completed so far this off-season. (The Phillies' Jerry Spradlin was dealt to Cleveland, but I don't think anyone had him last year.)
First trade: Mark Leiter (Purple Starfish, 5B) to Seattle for P Paul Spoljaric.
Second trade: Paul Konerko (Big Johnsons, 18B) to Chicago White Sox for OF Mike Cameron.
Third trade: Ricardo Rincon (Oriole Connection, 1B) to Cleveland for OF Brian Giles.
Fourth trade: Gregg Zaun (Winning O'Men, 7B) to Texas for PTBN or cash.
Fifth trade: Charles Johnson (Harry Careys, 11C) to Baltimore for Armando Benitez.
Sixth trade: Willie Blair (Harry Careys, 10B) to Detroit for Joe Randa.