League Rules

In the midst of the COVID-19 Pandemic I present to you the Quarantine League. This league is only coming to fruition because of the fact that I'm furloughed and finally have time to commish. I am a first time commish so please be patient as I may take longer to get certain things done or make a few mistakes here and there.

I. Rules

0. Roster expectations
5 man rotations, 11 hitter and 9 pitcher minimums and please keep 2 catchers and 2 shortstops in your majors to prevent terrible errors

1. Contracts
Max length of contracts is 10 years. There are no raises in this league.

1b) Cap Space
All teams are going to have $200 Cap.

1c) Rookie/Prospect Tags
Rookies and Prospects will be tagged as "Rookies" when created which means they won't require a contract if you keep them in your minors or at rookie ball. You can keep them tagged until they turn 25 or meet the rookie compiled stats thresholds which are 150 ab for batters, 75 ip (SP?s) and 30 ip (RP?s) or get signed to a contract. Once they have a contract it's like having a "major league contract" they won't be a minor leaguer/prospect anymore, so their tag will be removed and they won't be eligible for rookie ball anymore. Also, tagged players can be used in the post season without adding to their compiled stats since playoff stats don't get counted as compiled stats on a player card.

1d) Trading
You will have unlimited trades but cannot trade draft picks or prospect rights. Commish has final authority on overturning trades. EDIT : there seems to be confusion with some owners. Prospects once created and rookies once drafted are able to be traded like any other player. Just not intangible things like a pick or the ?rights? to a prospect like someone leagues allow.

Your players that are sent away to rookie ball are still able to be traded. However, if you trade them away you can?t replace their spot in rookie ball with another player, the buses have left as they say. Also if you acquire someone in a trade that is away at rookie ball you need to decide who stays and who comes home if it puts you over the 2 hitter and 2 pitcher limit

The trade deadline is when rookie ball ends, once I send them back to your rosters I'll turn off trading.

2. New Owners
New owners can either cut/extend 3 players for their team, in case the previous owner signed good people too short or bad people too long/for too much $$$. The extension cannot go past the total of 10 years like all other players contracts though so based on their time with the team, they can extend them to what would equal a 10 year deal max.

2a) Recruitment Bonus
If you recruit an owner and they stay for an entire season you can add 2 fire to any of your players..

3) Anti-Tanking
Building for the future and keeping your best players as rookies is understandable and acceptable.
Playing people out of position and attempting to lose is not acceptable and will lead to your removal from the league, this is 0 tolerance. With Rookie Ball and a prospect each year I've given everyone resources to keep a good team on the field and developing behind it.


II. Players & Progressions

4a) Players pool at the start of the league.
The minimum to be imported was 25 ip as a reliever 70 ip as a starter and 100 ab as a batter. All relievers below 40 ip were doubled. All starters below 100 ip were doubled and all batters below 300 AB were doubled unless they're close to 300 and old and useless. Some of the young studs near the 300 AB mark have been doubled to prevent them from getting out of control. Some players missed all or most of 2019 with injuries and those players have been added with their 2018 or 2017 seasons and have had their ages increased to match their 2019 season's age.

4b) Prospects

All prospects will be 22. No matter what their age is in real life. This also creates the fairness I'm going and they will all be SIMILAR LEVEL to each other. The age should be similar too. THIS IS IMPORTANT, don't expect prospects to make an impact right away. This is why we have rookie ball, so that you can grow from within. If you try to bring them up too early they won't be eligible for Rookie ball anymore and you're going to end up regretting it. ALSO IMPORTANT, since i'm trying to ensure no farm system is better than the others, just get it in your mind that your choice of prospect doesn't matter about their rank. The things that matter are their position, their handedness, and what style of player they are. Using those options strategically is what will help you most, don't just submit your #1 team's prospect.

If they have multiple positions listed on the prospect page you can choose which one they have as primary and which one is secondary for their defensive positions. There will not be any 2 way players imported as 2 people on your team, just so that is clear. Ohtani is only a DH in this league and someone like Brendan McKay on the Rays can be imported as one or the other but not both.

Every off season after the draft you may request a prospect. Checkout your teams farm system and find a player you want. Think ahead, about what positions you'll be in need of. It won't matter if they are a top 10 prospect or #196, they'll come out close to each other to make sure that things have stayed fair. I don't have the number ranges set in stone yet but basically all prospects will come in between 700-800 ops(subject to change). Really good defenders/speed dudes will be on the lower end of that. Offense only guys will be on the higher end of that.

However, different players have different skill sets and that will be reflected in them. Speedsters, sluggers, good defenders, strikeout pitchers with higher walk rate due to higher k rate, ground ball pitchers with better h/9 but lower k/9, those are all different examples. When you are looking at your prospects, decide who you want based on these things and their position/handedness. If you need more defense don't just look at your farm system and send me whoever is ranked #1 overall, they could be #1 from their offensive production exclusively. They may not be what your team actually needs.

4c) Progressions
All players will have C progression. Players will improve until 28 and begin to regress at 32.

4d) Retirement
Retirement will happen each year to the 5 rank and lower players who are in free agency. I may change this to 10 rank and lower players due to the player pool growing, Age will not be a factor in that some older players could still be productive and should be kept in the league.

4e) Stat limits
All RP stam caps at 25 and SP caps at 115, each season anyone who progressed higher will be brought down. There will never be a 1.000% Fielder. And there will never, ever, ever, ever be a 10 speed player. If you use your stat boosts to increase triples and SB's and they end up at 10 Speed I will put them back down to 9. 10 is so unfair, I will not allow it to happen. So keep that in mind.

4f) Slumpbuster
We will have a 10 day slumpbuster in this league

5) Draft
The draft will be 2 rounds. Estimated top 5 picks will be close to MLB ready. The 6-20 picks will be a couple years out. 21-30 will be 3-4 years out. Most 2nd round picks will be far away but with the right development they'd get there.There is no trading of draft picks in this league.

5b) Rule 5 Draft
This will not be implemented unless commish deems it necessary. If my system for rookie contracts is flawed and some people have to deep of rosters with too many future studs packed into the minors I will start having rule 5 drafts to balance the wealth.

6) Rookie Ball
In this league you will be able to send up to 4 players to Rookie Ball at the start of the MLB season, you can send 2 batters MAX and 2 pitchers MAX. This takes them off of your roster until September call ups around day 150. I will have a team that all of these players will be put on. If due to injury you need to take them out of rookie ball, simply message me and you will get them back. Players that stay in rookie ball until September call ups will get a bonus progression (they won?t age) before they go back to your team. Due to only getting 2 prospects to start the league with, for year 1 each team will only have 2 players eligible for Rookie ball. But if you choose to start your prospects, that is up to you as well, Rookie Ball is optional.

To qualify they must still have a rookie/prospect tag meaning they haven't compiled 150 AB, 75 ip (SP's) 30 ip (RP's) and are under 25 years old, and also they can't have a contract, once signed, prospect/rookies lose their tag as they are now "major leaguers". This is also to prevent people from signing someone for cheap and then sending them to 3 rookie balls for extra progressions but keeping the cost low.

There is no Rank/Stat maximum due to the fact that they will be missing almost the entire year, so if you want to risk that, that is to the owners discretion. If we end up with too many young studs I will implement one.

7) Schedule and Playoffs
Schedule will be 162 games with some days off, should take 170-175 days. All Star break will happen around day 90 and will be 3 real life days long while people get their players signed to meet the league minimum of 20 tagged/signed players. We will pause a couple days at the trade deadline to finalized deals. The trade deadline will be around day 120.
The Playoffs will be the same as MLB. Homefield for World Series goes to better record.


III Offseason Schedule

1) After the ring request is submitted, I will send out a message for the date and time that progressions will happen and rosters will be cleared. This is the time which players must be signed or you lose them. This is the owners responsibility, this is especially important if you played a tagged rookie/prospect in the majors this year and they passed the thresholds and lose their tag. Once again, this is the owners responsibility to retain their talent. In the off chance someone let's a stud youngster go due to negligence the commish has full authority to decide what to do with it. I may put them back on that team, sign them, and boot the owner. I hate when owners get lazy, miss signing their young studs, eventually quit because their team sucks and someone has to inherit a terrible team with no young guys to develop because the previous owner didn't sign them.

2) Progressions will now be ran and contracts advanced

3) Stat increases and Awards will happen now. There are a few ways to add stats to a player other than progressions. Predicting correctly in the annual "who will lead the league" predictions. If a player makes the all star team they will be given +1 Fire, all star fire increases happen during all start break, not at the end of the year. If a player breaks an MLB single season record they get to choose 4 of the stat boosts below. p.s. it is up to the owner of the player to notify commish that a record has been broken, I can't check every stat every year, but it is something that I'll keep an eye on as the reason I'm doing this boost is because I find it interesting. The record that they set is now the new mlb record so if someone gets 77 homers here, anyone who passes Bond's 73 after that season won't be eligible unless they pass the 77 record set in this league. Also, tying a record does not get you the boosts, you must set a new record. If they win MVP, CY Young, or ROY, they will get to increase in a way of their choosing by picking 2 items from below:
Batters - +4 hits, +3 2B, +2 3B, +2 HR, +5 BB, -5 SO, +3 SB +2 Fire, +2 EN, +0.3 DWar.
Pitchers - -3 hits (SP) -1 hit (RP) -4 BB (SP) -2 BB (RP) +5 K (SP) +3 K (RP) +3 Fire (SP) +2 Fire (RP) +5 Stam SP (RP Stam set at 25)




READ BELOW FOR IMPORTANT FREE AGENCY INFORMATION

There are no raises in this league and thus no raises in bids for free agency. Max contract length is 10 years. No $0/0 bids are allowed. Also if you bid so much that you go over your cap, I will not honor all of your bids and I will not let you choose which ones to keep and which ones to void. That is your fault for blanketing a bunch of bids and not respecting the cap. What will happen is your cap will be reduced by $5 mil for being irresponsible, and then I will choose which bids go through and award the other ones to the 2nd place bidder.

Bidding format goes as follows: Position First Name Last Name $$/years=$$$$
To get a real example this is what it will look like. OF Larry Walker $10/10years=$100

If you do not send me them in this format, I will not accept them. It is not hard to get this correct. I will be compiling bids in a spreadsheet and sending me them any other way is a gigantic waste of time. If you spell someone's name wrong. I will also not accept your bid and it is not my job to message you back saying that the format is wrong or the player's name is wrong. If you click on a player and open their page, look at the very top. It has the position and name right there. You can highlight them and copy paste into your bid message, it's what I've been doing for years here.
All bids are sent to me in a private message. I will be sending my bids to my vice in a message that says "do not open until bids are posted" that way I cannot cheat by changing my bids to be higher than someone else's.

4) Free Agency Group 1 - For Free Agency Group 1, the top 20 players selected by me will be all that is available to bid on. Doing this ensures that the people who don't win these bids, still have players to bid on in group 2 that are worth having on a team. Everyone will send bids to commish and commish will send bids to vice for safety. Bids will be accepted for approximately 48 hours. Once the deadline is hit, the top 3 bidders will be posted on the homepage and be allowed to rebid over a 24 hours window, then the player will be won. ALSO, if your first round bid was 1st place and you rebid, but nobody rebids higher than your original first round bid, the player will be signed to you by your first round bid since nobody beat that. Example: you bid $20/10 in round 1 and are in first place. You bid $26/10 in the rebid phase but nobody else even rebids above $20/10. I would sign the player to you for $20/10 not $26/10 as nobody had beaten your first bid.

5) Free Agency Group 2 - All other players will be available to bid on. Same bidding system as above.

6) Rookie Draft
After players are on their teams for Free Agency the Rookie Draft will happen. The draft will be 2 rounds. Estimated top 5 picks will be close to MLB ready depending on how bad the team is they join. The 6-20 picks will be a couple years out. 21-30 will be 3-4 years out. Most 2nd round picks will be far away but with the right development will get there.
You CANNOT trade draft picks in this league. The draft will start slow and with a poll for a date and time we will hold a live draft. Players drafted will be tagged as a rookie until they break the thresholds of compiled stats of 150 AB's, 75 ip (SP's) 30 ip (RP's) or turn 25. At which point they will have to be signed to a contract to be retained and will no longer be eligible for Rookie Ball

7) Prospect Requests
A Message will be sent out about prospect requests and their deadline. We do this after the draft so you know what youth needs you have. Prospects will be tagged as a rookie until they break the thresholds of compiled stats of 150 AB's, 75 ip (SP's) 30 ip (RP's). At which point they will have to be signed to a contract to be retained and will no longer have their tag. You get 1 prospect per offseason (2 before year 1)

8) Position Change Requests
During the offseason you may request to swap a player's primary and secondary stats at no cost to you. This is not allowed during the regular season. The reason for this is that offseason allows players to practice a lot at the new position so it wouldn't penalize them. During the season with short notice because of an injury someone would be considered playing "out of position" so they get the fielding penalties. Once an SP is 32 years old you can convert them to an RP. They'll go down to 25 stam, their stats will get divided until ip is between 40-79. H/9 will go down by about 1.5, bb/9 will go down by about 1 and so/9 will go up by about 2. For those still not sure, Let?s take Rich Hill. He?s at 7.4 h/9 2.8 bb/9 and 10.2 k/9. If you had a good enough rotation and wanted to make him an RP he would then have about 5.9 h/9 1.8 bb/9 and 12.2 k/9.

9) Park Dimension Changes
There is now a way to change your park dimensions. Due to it costing the team money, if you improve your record year over year or make the post season it will reduce the years you have to pay for the renovations due to increased attendance from having an improved team or a playoff team. To change one side by 1 notch (ex: no boost to mild, etc) it will cost your team $15 mil over 5 years. So you'd lose $3 in cap for 5 seasons. But each improved season or playoff season removes half a year from that. So if 2 of the first 4 years qualify for that, you pay it off in 4 years instead of 5. If you end up at a fraction such as 3.5 because you had 3 good years, at the all star break you get the cap back. You can only make requests for this during the offseason. There is no discount for bulk editing. Every "notch" is $15 mil. So to go from no boost to big boost would be $30 mil over 5 years, so on and so forth.

10. Spring Training
Spring Training will be 29 Games, playing every team once with 0 days off to test your depth as well. Injuries incurred during spring training will not carry over to the regular season.

10b. Predictions
Each Pre-Season before the start of spring training commish will elect some stats for predictions. Each GM can submit who they think will lead the lead in these stat categories by the end of the season. These predictions must be submitted before opening day or they are void. For % based stats we will follow how the MLB determines who is eligible for being a leader in a category. The reason you want to do this is because if you guess correctly, you can give some stats of that type to one of your players of your choosing. The numbers are not set in stone yet but let's say you correctly guess who leads the league in HR. Now you get to give 2 HR to the real stats of any of your players. A great way to keep vets good or grow prospects faster.

11. Opening Day
Once Spring Training wraps up, I will send a message with a deadline to have your rosters at 25 for majors and your lineups set. If they are not set on opening day you will lose cap money. But don't worry. All cap money taken by the league office will be returned once a owner leaves/is kicked to prevent future owners from having a disadvantage.

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