Post by Athletics GM (Jared) on Jan 15, 2022 19:06:28 GMT
All,
First, I just want to say that this is put forward solely with the intent of trying to continuously improve the league and it's rule set. It's not aimed at anyone or any tactic that has been employed here. There's been no cheating and there's nothing here that absolutely has to change. I'm putting this forward in the spirit of acknowledging that our league rule set isn't perfect and I always want to be open to making it better. As always, the league will rule on this as a group.
During the first week of January as free agency was dominated by early and high bidding on minor league free agents many of us had a productive discussion about a better way to handle minor league free agents going forward. I'm going to recap the system we talked about utilizing and add a poll here for the league to weigh in on how we proceed. I'm not a big fan of in-season rule adjustments, but I think you'll see after reading this that there's an opportunity to make an adjustment after the draft in February. We can also kick it to next offseason if that's the way most want to go. Anyway, here goes:
The Issue (or perceived issue depending on your view):
In our current system minor league free agents are subject to open bidding, which means that one manager can do all the work and the research to find a diamond in the rough only to expose that finding for 24 hours to the league and hope that no other manager is willing to spend millions to roster a prospect on their 40 man roster. This makes prospecting extremely difficult for contending teams as rebuild teams are able to simply take the player on their 40 man roster and cut them for no penalty if they don't pan out. It's not a completely broken system. We've used it here and it's not the end of the world. The discussion is that there is a better way we could do this.
The Prosposed Solution:
1. Instead of minor league free agents being available for bid during the offseason they would pass back through the draft. The draft would remain at 3 rounds length, but the player pool would be deeper.
2. At the conclusion of the draft there will still be players that teams want to add. We will implement a waiver process to address these adds:
- All minor leaguers that went undrafted will be subject to waivers for 1 week.
- Teams will submit a list of players that they wish to nominate for waivers.
- The commissioner will post all of the players as individual threads according to the order of how many teams asked for them to be nominated.
- All teams then have an opportunity to make claims and withdraw claims as much as they want for the entire week.
- At the end of the week players will be processed in the order they were posted by the commish according to the waiver order.
3. Any minor league free agent that doesn't get drafted or taken on waivers will be available first come/first served as an instant signing to the team that posts them at the standard minor league salary. This process resets at the end of the regular season when transactions lock and any unowned minor leaguer at that point would next be available in that offseason's draft.
4. Any minor leaguer released by a team between the end of the post-draft waivers and the end of season lock will be subject to a 24 hour waiver period:
- Any team can post to add the player.
- Other teams can post a claim in reply.
- After 24 hours the team with the highest waiver priority according the order carrying over from the post-draft period will win the player.
- If no one posts them in the first 24 hours after they were posted for release, they have cleared waivers and are available to the first team to post.
5. All minor leaguers going forward will have the standard salary.
6. All existing milb deals with higher values than the standard are grandfathered in. No relief for existing deals.
Poll Rules:
1. Voting either "YES after this draft" or "YES starting next offseason" will count together against "NO leave as-is" to determine if the rule passes.
2. "YES after this draft" will need 2/3 majority to pass. It's an in-season change because our season starts with the preceeding offseason. I want wide buy-in to make this change now. The argument for doing it now is to avoid undrafted players and all of the discoveries this season from having inflated contracts that are being phased out. Again, not the end of the world, but that's the thought behind making this option available.
First, I just want to say that this is put forward solely with the intent of trying to continuously improve the league and it's rule set. It's not aimed at anyone or any tactic that has been employed here. There's been no cheating and there's nothing here that absolutely has to change. I'm putting this forward in the spirit of acknowledging that our league rule set isn't perfect and I always want to be open to making it better. As always, the league will rule on this as a group.
During the first week of January as free agency was dominated by early and high bidding on minor league free agents many of us had a productive discussion about a better way to handle minor league free agents going forward. I'm going to recap the system we talked about utilizing and add a poll here for the league to weigh in on how we proceed. I'm not a big fan of in-season rule adjustments, but I think you'll see after reading this that there's an opportunity to make an adjustment after the draft in February. We can also kick it to next offseason if that's the way most want to go. Anyway, here goes:
The Issue (or perceived issue depending on your view):
In our current system minor league free agents are subject to open bidding, which means that one manager can do all the work and the research to find a diamond in the rough only to expose that finding for 24 hours to the league and hope that no other manager is willing to spend millions to roster a prospect on their 40 man roster. This makes prospecting extremely difficult for contending teams as rebuild teams are able to simply take the player on their 40 man roster and cut them for no penalty if they don't pan out. It's not a completely broken system. We've used it here and it's not the end of the world. The discussion is that there is a better way we could do this.
The Prosposed Solution:
1. Instead of minor league free agents being available for bid during the offseason they would pass back through the draft. The draft would remain at 3 rounds length, but the player pool would be deeper.
2. At the conclusion of the draft there will still be players that teams want to add. We will implement a waiver process to address these adds:
- All minor leaguers that went undrafted will be subject to waivers for 1 week.
- Teams will submit a list of players that they wish to nominate for waivers.
- The commissioner will post all of the players as individual threads according to the order of how many teams asked for them to be nominated.
- All teams then have an opportunity to make claims and withdraw claims as much as they want for the entire week.
- At the end of the week players will be processed in the order they were posted by the commish according to the waiver order.
3. Any minor league free agent that doesn't get drafted or taken on waivers will be available first come/first served as an instant signing to the team that posts them at the standard minor league salary. This process resets at the end of the regular season when transactions lock and any unowned minor leaguer at that point would next be available in that offseason's draft.
4. Any minor leaguer released by a team between the end of the post-draft waivers and the end of season lock will be subject to a 24 hour waiver period:
- Any team can post to add the player.
- Other teams can post a claim in reply.
- After 24 hours the team with the highest waiver priority according the order carrying over from the post-draft period will win the player.
- If no one posts them in the first 24 hours after they were posted for release, they have cleared waivers and are available to the first team to post.
5. All minor leaguers going forward will have the standard salary.
6. All existing milb deals with higher values than the standard are grandfathered in. No relief for existing deals.
Poll Rules:
1. Voting either "YES after this draft" or "YES starting next offseason" will count together against "NO leave as-is" to determine if the rule passes.
2. "YES after this draft" will need 2/3 majority to pass. It's an in-season change because our season starts with the preceeding offseason. I want wide buy-in to make this change now. The argument for doing it now is to avoid undrafted players and all of the discoveries this season from having inflated contracts that are being phased out. Again, not the end of the world, but that's the thought behind making this option available.
