2023 Rules

[Deleted]

League Rules -2023

ROSTER:



League consists of 20 teams that will have 40-man rosters with a 25-man active roster that consists of the following:



2 Catchers

1 1B

1 2B

1 SS

1 3B

1 Corner Infielder (1B or 3B)

1 Middle Infielder (2B or SS)

5 OF

2 Utility (any batting position)

10 Pitchers (any combination of SP and RP)



Players will be eligible if they have played 5 games at the position in the current season or 10 games at the position in the prior season. Rookies will be available at the position Fantrax has them listed.



Each week you can choose your 25-man active roster from your 40-man major league roster. If you wish to promote a minor leaguer to your active 25-man roster, you must make room for him on your 40-man roster and have the salary cap space to do this. Your total roster limit will be 250 players on Jan 15th of each new season.



SALARIES:



Salary Cap for each team is $100,000,000.



Maximum player salary amount is $20 million and the minimum player salary is $300,000. Any player on the 40-man roster will be given a salary of $300,000 or greater, regardless of prospect status.





Fantrax monitors rosters and salary caps and any teams not conforming do not accumulate points for any period they are in violation.



FREE AGENCY:


There are two periods of free agency each year: in-season and off-season. To be eligible to be bid on in off-season free agency, a player must either have passed the 50IP/130AB prospect threshold or be 25 years or older on April 1st of that season.



In-Season free agency consists of all players who are not on any Perfect Game roster but are on an MLB team’s active 25-man roster or are 25 years of age or older. Player must be introduced in the Free Agency forum on the message board site and a league minimum bid of $300,000 must be given to the player. Everyone in the league is then free to bid on this player, assuming they have the cap space. Once bidding has ceased for a 24-hour period, the player is awarded to that team with the highest bid. The winning team then has 24 hours to determine contract length between 1 and 5 years. If no contract length is stated, player will be given a default 1-year contract.



Off-Season free agency follows the same bidding process, but bidding will take place over weeks with players divided into groups by position. Each team owner can make bids on no more than 5 players at any one team. If they are caught to have more than 5 bids, they will be suspended from bidding on that group for one week.



When entering off-season free agency, each team can protect 3 players from being lost to free agency by declaring them as “match” players. The players will then be bid on by the other owners. The winning bid will then be able to be matched and the player will stay with its previous team. Only 2 of the 3 players may be matched, but the 3rd player can then be bid on by the previous owner if he has used his 2 matches.

An owner can't have bids on players without cap room.

Example:
Cap is 100 million if your current team salary is 80 million, you can't have active bids of more than 20 million.

I will notify you of the illegal bid, and delete the bid/s to keep the time stamp accurate.




Franchising a player can also be done when a player’s contract is up. His salary will be 120% of his final year salary or $8 million whichever is greater and will last for 3 years. Only one franchise player is available per team and they will not be able to be waived, traded or released.



Owners who fail to resign their free agent players from the previous season will be awarded compensation picks in the FYPD based on their former player’s free agent salary according to the following formula:



Free Agent Compensation based on salary:



The top 25 free agent salaries each season will earn a comp pick for them losing the player, as follows:

Top 5 salaries: 1st round picks 21-25
Next 5 salaries: 2nd round picks 21-25
Next 5 salaries: 3rd round picks 21-25
Next 5 salaries: 4th round picks 21-25
Next 5 salaries: 5th round picks 21-25


CONTRACT OPTIONS



Each team is allowed up to 3 option contracts each off-season. Option contracts are option years that the team has on a player and can be broken down into any combination of 5 years or less at your discretion, meaning 1yr + 1yr, 1yr + 2yrs, 1yr + 3yrs, 1yr + 4yrs, 2yrs + 1yr, 2yrs + 2yrs, 2yr + 3yrs, 3yrs + 1yr, 3yrs + 2yr or 4yrs + 1yr. There is a maximum of 7 option contracts at one time per team.



PROSPECTS and y2y CONTRACTS:

Each team may have a minor league roster of no more than 210 prospects. The maximum number of players on a roster is 250 as of each January 15th. Minors rosters may expand over the course of the season to accommodate draft picks and trades and may never exceed 260 minor leaguers. If a trade or draft pick will put a team over the 260 mark during the season, a player must be dropped to make room. Teams will then have to cut back to 250 total players on the next January 15th.



Any player who has less than (or equal to) 50 innings pitched or 130 at-bats in the Major Leagues going into the beginning of a season is considered a prospect.



Once a player is promoted to a 40-man roster by an owner, he is given a salary of $300,000 based on our y2y (year to year) contract structure. If the player then passes the 50/130 threshold, this will be his y2y.1 contract year. If he fails to pass the 50/150 thresholds, he retains a contract of $300,000 and y2y1 stays to start the next season.


If a player is not promoted to a 40-man by an owner, but passes the 50/130 threshold, he will then be “forced” up the following year and be in his y2y.1 contract year.



Minor League call up contract:

Year 1 - $300,000

Year 2 - $600,000

Year 3 - $900,000

Year 4 - $1,200,000

Year 5 - $3,600,000

Year 6 - $5,400,000



Player can be cut before any new season under this contract, but not during the season. Player may be optioned from 40-man to minor leagues in the first 2 seasons (y2y1 and y2y2) of this contract without needing to clear waivers.



TRANSACTIONS:



Trade Deadline

Trade deadline will be the 2nd Sunday in August at 11:59pm. Draft picks can be traded up to 1 year in advance of the draft. All players (besides franchise players) can be traded unless they were signed as free agents in the previous off-season. These players will not be allowed to be traded until June 1st.



Trade Approval

All trades must be approved by one of the two league commissioners. Only trades that affect the competitive balance of the league or are suspect of collusion shall be denied or asked to be reworked. Unbalanced trades or those done for salary cap reasons will not be denied. Trades cannot be done for cash or for future considerations.



Waivers

You can place a player on waivers and attempt to send him to the minors at any time. Other teams will then have a 24-hours to claim that player. Team with the worst record wins the claim and will inherit his contract as is. Unclaimed players go to paid minors.





DL



Only players on the 60-day DL can be placed in a PG IL spot and removed from your 40-man roster. When a MLB player is activated from the 60 day IL, his PG owner will have until the end of the next full scoring period to be returned to the PG 40 man or posted on waivers. This rule is waived after PG playoffs begin when 40 man rosters lock.



SCORING:



The scoring period for each week runs Monday through Sunday. Because Opening Day may be on a Sunday, the scoring period for the first week will be Sunday through Sunday. All games will be contested in head-to-head match-ups based on the following categories and winner-take-all values:



On-base % 1.2 Wins

Runs 0.7 Wins

RBIs 0.7 Wins

Total Bases 1.1 Wins

Stolen Bases 0.3 Wins

Wins + Quality Starts 0.8 Wins

2 * Saves + Holds 0.7 Wins

ERA 0.7 Wins

WHIP Ratio 1.1 Wins

Strikeouts – Walks 0.7 Wins

TOTAL 8.0 Wins



Each match-up has a possible 8.0 Wins at stake. The point values were chosen in order to make the results as realistically representative of actual player values as is possible without developing a significantly more complicated point system grid. ** All points are multiplied by 10. Due to this, we are playing a 1600 game season instead of 160**



PLAYOFFS:



The regular season will be 21 weeks long. The top 8 overall seeds make the playoffs. Round one will be week 22 and will match #1 vs #8, #2 vs #7, #3 vs #6, #4 vs #5. Round two will be week 23 and the championship will be the beginning of week 24 through the end of the MLB regular season. Ties in playoffs will be decided by regular season record.

40 man rosters lock at the start of the playoffs. No players can be promoted or demoted after this. Though rosters can be reset before each playoff matchup, in multi week playoff matchups, no roster moves will be allowed after the start of the matchup.



DRAFT RULES:

Draft order is set as follows:

Non-playoff teams are assigned pick slots in reverse order of standings, so the 20th place finisher in the league gets the first pick and so on.

Playoff teams slot in according to there finish in each round. After round one, the four losing teams are slotted with the lowest seeded loser getting the 13th pick and so on. That process continues through the last two rounds, with the league champion getting the 20th pick.



FYPD Rules:

The FYPD (First year player draft) will take place starting on the Monday after the deadline for players to have signed each season. This draft will last for 20 rounds with each team having a 30-minute window each day to make their pick. Owners are free to make their pick anytime after their time slot as well.



Only players selected in the current season’s MLB June draft who have signed are eligible.





MLFAD Rules:



The MLFAD (minor league free agent draft) will take place starting on the 2nd Monday in March of each season. This draft will last for 20 rounds with each team having a 30-minute window each day to make their pick. Owners are free to make their pick anytime after their time slot as well. 


Only players under the control of an MLB team and do not belong to another franchise are available in this draft. Player must also be under the 50/130 prospect threshold.


Transactions:



Any transaction that involves a change to a team’s 40-man roster can not be official until the appropriate posts are made to the ProBoards message board. We will use the same procedures as MLB for playoff transactions. In two week matchups (or more), only players placed on the MLB injured list can be replaced in the second or subsequent weeks on a PG playoff roster. 40-man rosters will lock upon the start of the PG playoffs. Any player not on the 40-man roster of a PG team at that time can not be promoted. This includes players activated from the 60-day IL by their MLB teams.

[Motor City Kitties]

My thoughts - Keep the 250 player limit. I’d actually be in favor of stricter enforcement if possible. Something like if you select a guy and there is no room on the roster, then that pick doesn’t really count.

I’d be open to changing the comp pick format - I think the current system decreases the amount of trades in-season. Too often owners are holding on to expirings based on comp picks.

60 day DL. I’d like to see a separate designation here. I’m sure there are guys hiding in teams Minors that are in real life no longer on the 60 day

I like the one week play off and 2 week championship. Similar to MLB the early rounds are more of a crapshoot because of short series. The longer the series the more likely the better team will win.

Drafts. Definitely need to be shorter. Owners become less active in later rounds. A shorter FYPD leads to better players available in a FA draft. I’d actually like a 15/10 breakdown. Make every pick a little more important.

Just my 2 cents……..

[Glenside Gladiators]

Can we have a DL of some sort? Also can we change the scoring as the weighting seems a little crazy. Just make each category woreth the same value if possible.

[Ohio Spiders]

My .02 below: 

250 player roster limit- do we want to have a single point of compliance each season or is it a hard cap? Since COVID, we’ve allowed extra guys, but it might be time to find a level we can live with. Some teams are well within the 250 limit now, some have a ton of work to do to get down to that number. We also need to make sure we are accounting for players drafted but not listed in Fantrax as yet. - I think a limit should be decided upon.  It appears the proboards rules conflict with Fantrax.  I would offer some flexibility for drafts (hard rules like picks won't count are harsh).  If we want to be that hard, then it should be stated at the beginning of a draft how many spots a team has and when they can pick and when they're done.  If we don't do that, then a GM should have a chance to drop players to have picks added.  It's also hard to gauge since not all players are in Fantrax.   I'm not trying to be squishy here but I think the 40 man should be hard and fast but drafts should be a little flexible. 



Do we want to keep the current comp pick format? I think comp picks should be reduced dramatically.  Why should someone get a comp pick for a low salary ($1.0 or higher)?  I would say no comps after $5.0.  All these extra picks just dilute the rest of the FYPD picks. 



Do we want to have IL spots for 60 day IL guys or continue to just send them to our minors?  Yes, we should add IL spots.  If we are going to be stricter on roster limits, then IL shouldn't count towards your minors or 40 man roster spots. 



We used to have two-week playoff rounds in the original rules. This season we had to adjust. Any thoughts on how we go forward? There are a lot of interesting possibilities.  I don't mind the way it was this year where it was like a 10 day final.  But lineups should be closed once play starts.  We shouldn't be able to change rosters on the second Monday.  Teams can't change their playoff rosters mid series IRL, so we shouldn't be able to here. 



Do we want to switch the number of rounds in our drafts? With the shortening of the June Draft, 25 rounds has us scraping the bottom of the barrel. There are plenty of minor league free agents to do a longer draft there. Maybe 20 rounds in each draft?  I support 20 rounds for each draft.   With MLB reducing rounds I support a reduction here. 

The trade deadline may conflict with the FYPD. In order to facilitate trades during that time, we may want to consider allowing trades after the official deadline which include only draft picks and/or prospects. Thoughts?  Trade deadline should be hard.  I don't think you need to have the trade deadline open for the entire FYPD.  Set the date so you can make trades at the beginning.  If a GM doesn't pick and then just wants to dump the picks, they shouldn't be rewarded for not participating.   Trade Deadline should be set to allow trades for possibly the first week of FYPD.   The first Monday after the sign deadline was 8/8 this year.  I'm pretty sure it was 8/9 in 2021.  So make it the Sunday after the start of FYPD or specific date a week after that.  

[SLC Bums]

get rid of comp picks after round 5 and up the 1st 5 rounds by 20% for round 1 and 10% for the other 4 rounds we need to promote spending!

[DC Vipers]

So the league rules have been archived and replaced with this? Just so I understand how things are working now.

[Deleted]

This is a cleanup of the rules document. It's largely the same document. There are some things clarified and some things we changed because we haven't done it as written for quite some time. We also made some tweaks based on some of the discussion that we had in various threads.

We still have work to do on this as the details of free agency are not included here, for example.. There is a thread for free agency discussion so that we can clean up that area for 2024.

[Greenville Drive]

Sept 10, 2022 18:40:28 GMT -5 Deleted said:

Free Agent Compensation based on salary:



The top 25 free agent salaries each season will earn a comp pick for them losing the player, as follows:

Top 5 salaries: 1st round picks 21-25
Next 5 salaries: 2nd round picks 21-25
Next 5 salaries: 3rd round picks 21-25
Next 5 salaries: 4th round picks 21-25
Next 5 salaries: 5th round picks 21-25

Bums, are we still going with this for comp pick scenario? I know there was a lot of opinions when it changed with little/no discussion last year.

[SLC Bums]

I think we should expand Comp picks to 10 per round with the exceptions no comp picks awarded below 5 mil and No 1st round comp picks of less than 10 mil

My reasoning to limit to ten: with 20 slotted picks and 10 comp picks that's 15 hours of draft. Any more than that and hours become unreasonable, and spliting a round into 2 days becomes more complicated to remember when your next pick comes while also changing the set 20 pick times that should be set in stone.

Would anyone be opposed to this?

We can make tweaks again after this season.