Draft and New League Format Poll

[Cubs GM - Monty]

There has been much discussion as to how to handle this essential rebirth of our awesome league and have come forward with a proposal for the entire league to vote on.

We are proposing the following change to our league:
- Cubs’ and Twins’ rosters will be folded and consolidated into 1 player pool
- The entire league will draft from this player pool during a 5 round, non-snaking, slow draft on Proboards
- League will change from 20 to 18 teams



We feel this would benefit the league for the following reasons:
- Cubs built an amazing team. With him leaving it does not feel right to hand this off to a new owner, especially with the disparity of the talent between Cubs’ and Twins’ rosters which would both be going to new owners. This is not in any way a vindictive act towards Cubs for leaving.
- This would greatly help the competition in this league. The proposed draft would go in order of last year’s standings and the non-snaking aspect would allow the bottom-finishing teams a chance to pick earlier in all rounds. The high-level talent would be distributed to the lowest ranking teams.
- This will add a new, fun twist that will take up time during the boring-ass lockout.

Any undrafted players will head to the UFA pool for UFA bidding later in the offseason.

Teams will not be required to make all five picks. If you wish to stop making picks, you only need to post “Pass” in the thread during your pick time and the draft will continue. Please note, a “Pass” will remove you from all picks moving forward.

These draft picks will not be tradable.



This change will also create a new structure of our divisions. With 18 teams in place, we cannot run 4 5-team divisions. As a result, we are proposing the following:
- 3 6-team divisions
- 3 division winners with 3 Wild Card teams made up of the 3 best non-division winning teams
- Top 2 division winners will receive byes while Rd. 1 includes #3 vs. #6 and #4 vs. #5


A vote of YES means the following:
- You approve the creation of a new draft, for this year only, based on the player pools of Cubs’ and Twins’ contracted rosters and you approve of the change from 20 to 18 teams which will change the structure of the divisions

A vote of NO means the following:
- I wish for the league to stay in place as is and search for replacement owners for Cubs and Twins

Poll will close when 12 votes have been cast for either option, or 7 CST Friday (January 21), whichever comes first. If 12 votes have not been cast for either option, the majority will rule.

Draft would begin 7 AM CST on Saturday (January 22) with a 12-hour, non-stop clock. Picks not made in the 12-hour window will be skipped and next team is free to pick. Skipped team may select anytime. Same rules as our normal draft.

Considerations are being made now for status of tags on players, and a full list of players with contracts or tags will be available prior to any draft. It was decided to ensure there is enough support for this draft while this is still being worked out.

[deleted- former Mets owner]

What does player pool mean? All contracts and current tags being honored?

[deleted- former Mets owner]

Why 5 rounds?

[deleted- former Mets owner]

What is the division alignment?

[Red Sox GM (Andrew)]

To answer the questions you had:

Monty’s post states at the end that tags is one thing still being worked out for this proposal. I’d say we’d like peoples’ input on it. Some ideas shared in the discussion: all players who don’t have contracts currently would be on one year contracts at their real life values, or all prospect tag eligible players would be prospect tagged and the rest would be on 1 year real life contracts, or other ideas that people have. We wondered if the league office franchising and restricted tagging people before the draft might get too messy.

5 rounds because depending on the contract situation for the impending UFA, that would make around 100 players available so we wanted the lower finishing teams to have up to five chances to add players to their rosters. If you’re done picking after round 2 you just pass for the rest of the draft.

Steve (Royals) had an idea for division alignment we can share here

[deleted- former Mets owner]

I feel what the pool entails could be a major driving factor of whether on not this proposal would pass don't you think so?

[deleted- former Mets owner]

Division alignment should be shared too IMO

[Red Sox GM (Andrew)]

We didn’t have a finalized division alignment in mind so just wanted to see if people were even down for this idea before we re did divisions.

Regardless of what we decide with the tags and free agents, the player pool is Cubs and Twins rosters.

[deleted- former Mets owner]

Player pool format matters.

[Red Sox GM (Andrew)]

Obviously but do people even want to entertain the idea of folding these teams and drafting or not? That’s mostly the point of this poll

[deleted- former Mariners owner]

What do you mean player pool format?

[Orioles GM (Larry)]

Cubs should not be contracted. Pick the next two teams without owners. Cubs will be easy to find an owner for.

[deleted- former Mets owner]

Are we honoring current contracts? Is this part of the vote or would it be a separate vote? How will that decision be made if draft 12 HRs after the vote closes theoretically.

[Marlins (Mario)]

if the player already has a contract that is the contract he gets

[deleted- former Mets owner]

So the draft is contracted players only then?

[Red Sox GM (Andrew)]

Thanks to everyone who voted