New League forming: The Two Team Challenge

[JOSEPHBONK]

Ever wonder what if would be like to have combined the best of the Yankees and Mets to form one team? Cubs and White Sox? Dodgers and Angels? Giants and Athletics? How about an All-Canada combination of Toronto and Montreal? How about some non-traditional combinations like the Brewers and Pirates? Now is your chance to find out-see if you can combine one American league team with a National League counterpart and lead them to victory. Sign up and get ready to test your ability to manage a 25 man roster.

Overview of concept:

Owners/managers will select two teams from the same geographic area (East, Central and West). One team will be from the American league and the other from the National league. You first selection will be your primary team which will determine your home stadium. There will also be some roster requirements based on your primary and secondary teams which will be explained in detail later in this document.

You must select players who played at least one season with the teams selected. For example, if you selected the Boston Red Sox with your first pick and the New York Mets with your second, you will play in Fenway Park. All players on your roster must have played at least one season for either the Red Sox or the Mets. You will hold exclusive rights to players who spent all 5 years with a single club. Therefore, you will have exclusive rights to players such as Roger Clemens, Wade Boggs, Darryl Strawberry and Howard Johnson. You will have the opportunity to draft players who played on your teams for at least one year. You may choose to pursue John Tudor (two years with Boston of the 5 seasons available in SOM). However, keep in mind that the owner of the St. Louis Cardinals might also have John on their radar screen. Choose your teams wisely-teams that have complimentary players will help ensure your team is as strong as possible.

Following are the gory details of the rules for the Two Team Challenge: :lol:

Teams/divisional make up:

Due to the differences in league size and the two division alignment used during the 80s, there are some slight modifications regarding team locations. This will impact the Cleveland Indians (part of the AL East for this exercise) and Houston Astros (who will move to the NL West ).

The East will be comprised of the following 9 teams:

New York Yankees
Boston Red Sox
Baltimore Orioles
Toronto Blue Jays
Cleveland Indians

New York Mets
Philadelphia Phillies
Atlanta Braves
Montreal Expos

The Central will also be comprised of 9 teams and will be:

Chicago White Sox
Detroit Tigers
Milwaukee Brewers
Kansas City Royals
Minnesota Twins

Chicago Cubs
Cincinnati Reds
Pittsburgh Pirates
St. Louis Cardinals

The West will be comprised of 8 teams and will be made up of:

California Angels
Oakland Athletics
Seattle Mariners
Texas Rangers

Houston Astros
Los Angeles Dodgers
San Diego Padres
San Francisco Giants

Division placement: When you make an excellent decision to invest your time and capital into this endeavor, please select a state with a “pick 3” lottery game. After 12 brilliant individuals have signed on, we will use the lottery results of the first pick three drawing after the league fills to determine the division you will be participating in. We will rank the results of the pick 3 lottery from high to low.

The first four owners will comprise the Eastern Division, the next 4, the Central and the final four will comprise the Western division.

Since the selection of teams is crucial, you will have 3 days to research the combinations of teams in your division. We will then hold a team draft on these boards. A Excel sheet detailing players associated with each team will be made available to assist in your research.

Draft order: Team selection will be a serpentine draft-the owners in the 4th, 8th and 12th slots will have the first pick in their respective division. This means the owner with the fourth highest lottery number will have the first choice of teams in the Eastern division. The owner with the highest lottery number will have the 4th and 5th pick of the Eastern bloc teams. In the end, the owner with the 1st pick will also have the 8th and final pick of teams from the East. The same concept applies to the other two divisions-the 8th (Central) and 12th place (West) will have the first and 8th selection of teams in their divisions.

Primary team/secondary team: Your team choice is critical-your roster and changes to it will be strongly influenced by the players associated with your primary team. The first team you select will be your primary team. You must carry between at least 5 franchise players (explained below) from your primary team at all times. Additionally, at least 13 of your players must have played for your primary team. You must carry 3 franchise players from your secondary team. At least 7 players on your roster from your secondary team at all times-remember, rosters must always be at 25 players. So, if you select the Boston Red Sox as your primary team, at least 5 of the 10 players who appeared with the Red Sox for all 5 possible years, must be on your roster at all times. In addition, at least 7 Mets, which includes the 3 franchise players must be on your roster at all times. You can have up to 12 players from your secondary team if you wish.

Franchise Players: Franchise players are defined as players who played for one team for all 5 years. You must keep at least 5 “franchise” players from your primary team and 3 franchise players from your secondary team on your roster at all times. The players can change (for example, if you control Toronto, you can drop Al Woods, but he must be replaced by another player who was a Blue Jay for all 5 seasons) but you must keep 5 franchise players from your primary team and 3 franchise players from your secondary team throughout the season.

While most teams have 6 or more franchise players, the Chicago Cubs and New York Yankees have only 3 franchise players each. Therefore, if the Cubs or Yankees are chosen as a primary team, the owner must designate two additional players with the franchise designation. These 5 franchise players must be kept on the roster all season.

In addition, three teams (the Philadelphia Phillies, Seattle Mariners and Texas Rangers) have exactly 5 franchise players. Please keep this in mind when selecting your primary team-remember, you will have to keep 5 franchise players on your roster all season long.

Stadium: You must select one of the stadium of the teams your primary team.

Team name: In order to help all managers quickly identify who they are playing, please choose the first name (city name) of your secondary team and the last name of your primary team as your teams name. In the earlier example, the team name would be the New York Red Sox.

Roster size: All teams must have rosters consisting of 25 players at all times. Rosters cannot be less or more than 25 players.

Usage restrictions: In order to prevent unrealistic scenarios, the following usage limits will be in place:

Pitchers: The number of innings pitched by any hurler will be limited to the highest number of innings pitched for the 5 available years.

Position players: Hitters will be limited to the highest number of plate appearances for the 5 available seasons.

Once a player exceeds their plate appearances or innings pitched, they must be dropped and a legal replacement player selected. Once a player has used up their allotted at bats/innings pitched, they cannot be used by anyone in the league. This rule supersedes the “franchise player” designation. If a franchise player exceeds their innings pitched or plate appearances, they must be dropped.

Waiver process: We will utilize the weighted waiver system for drafting purposes. If you are assigned any players who do not meet the qualifications of the league, you must release them prior to the start of the season.

Salary Cap: We will utilize an $80 million dollar salary cap.

Trades: Players can only be traded to teams for which they played at least one year. Therefore, franchise players cannot be traded. However, players can be traded to other teams provided that team is one of the 5 of the SOM years. For example, if Pete Rose was a member of the Reds team, he could be traded to the owner controlling the Phillies.

I have tried to think of the most common issues which may arise. However, I’m sure additional scenarios will arise which have not been addressed.. Therefore, if a question arises, the “spirit of the league” guideline will be implemented by “Da Commisioner” after consultation with appropriate parties.

8)


Signup:

1. JJB92-IL
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.

[JOSEPHBONK]

[quote:98445271b6="parkav97"]Once the player hits his IP/AB limit, will he need to be dropped? It will most likely be a 20% hit, but otherwise Hal could put him in, going over the limit.

(I don't mean to pick your theme apart, just would like to put my concerns to rest before considering spending $25 on it)[/quote:98445271b6]

Absolutely no problem with your questions-the exchange of ideas is important.

To address your earlier question, yes, if the lottery places you in the Central, your two teams must come from the 9 Central division teams.

Regarding the usage limits, a player must be dropped when they exceed their plate appearances/innings pitched.

The usage limits is meant to encourage active use of your entire roster. It is designed to avoid the scenario where a team consists of a pitcher who ends the season with no innings pitched, a common malady in the auto draft leagues. A league just completed last night where players were limited to 110% of their average use-significantly more restrictive than the proposed "limited to highest year" limit associated with this game.
There was only one player who had to be dropped in the entire league due to usage issues. The limits worked exactly as designed-it forced managers to monitor the games closely looking for the appropriate spots to give a player a day off. It prevented fringe players from performing unrealistically and encouraged good management of available resources.

Most of us are checking team results on a daily/nightly basis-that's what we like about the game, particularly the 80's/mystery card concept. In my opinion, usage limits-in this case a relatively modest one-adds some additional realism to the game.

Hope this helps and I hope you'll decide to give the idea a try. I realize $25 is a lot of money but I'm confident you will be very happy with your investment 8 to 10 weeks from now.

[LMBombers]

If you have a player that is at his max number of ABs or IPs, or it looks like he will go over very soon, can you trade him to another team in your division? What I mean is can that player start over at zero ABs or IPs for the other team or do you combine his stats for usage limits?

[JOSEPHBONK]

[quote:a5e0b2894c="LMBombers"]If you have a player that is at his max number of ABs or IPs, or it looks like he will go over very soon, can you trade him to another team in your division? What I mean is can that player start over at zero ABs or IPs for the other team or do you combine his stats for usage limits?[/quote:a5e0b2894c]

LM, stats will be combined for usage limit calculations. The usage data for a traded player will not reset.

[JOSEPHBONK]

[quote:2abab1b82e="parkav97"]My guess is only if they're eligible.

Here's what I would do. When my player was within a few AB's of hitting his limit, most likely late in the season anyways, I'd bench him until game 142. Then I couldn't cut him. Most of your 600 ab guys probably won't hit their limit until after that anyways, so they won't be dropped. I guess I really see nothing but problems with this late in the season. The players won't be able to be dropped. Hal will insert them, especially RP's.

Taking a quick glance at Catchers, if I drafted Cal and Sea in the West, and the other eligible players took 2 of my 4 catchers, I'd probably go over the AB's of the two I have left over. What happens then? There's no way I can pick up two more catchers. There's only 4 eligible, and the other two could be gone. I'm sure there's probably more than this one possibility.[/quote:2abab1b82e]

Couple a observations-first, you wouldn't choose Cal/Seattle-you need one AL/one NL team. It will be important for each owner to do research and identify potential pitfalls which should be avoided during the team selection phase. Remember, only the West division will have a team assigned to them-the owner with the first choice will also have the last remaining team. This will be balanced out on the premise that the manager with the first pick will choose the strongest team in the West division.

While researching this league/idea, I did not come across any team combinations that would pose an obvious problem. However, I did not work through every permutation of teams so if there is a team that has a legitimate problem, we would come up with a reasonable solution. There will be two teams that won't be picked-maybe we could have one of those players assigned to the team with the problem. In addition, the "spirit of the league" rule would be invovked and we would come up with a solution that all impacted parties would agree is fair. The goal is not to put anyone at a disadvantage but to have a competitive league where all playoff spots are decided on the last day of the season.

[YountFan]

I think you need to simplfy the rule and let the pick 3 select dfraft order for the teams.

[rookssa1958]

Think about Yountfan's excellent suggestion to let the Lottery results determine who you pick, I mean the first guy or first four guys may not like any of the East combo's, why not just let them pick their fav's instead of forcing into the east?

I like usage limits, but don't do well in 2 team drafts. The keeping the five franchise players seems tough also. either way, since you obviously worked so hard on thinking this up, I believe I will sign up for your league, (Doesn't look like it will fill, at least not in a hurray, but at least you will know you weren't shut out.)

Signup:

1. JJB92-IL
2. Rooks - Tx
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.

[LMBombers]

I would enter if the rules weren't so restrictive. I really like the two team theme idea.