Fri Jul 26, 2013 10:17 am
^^^ To be really honest, I hadn't thought about the penalties yet for over-useage. It really is mostly on the honor system, because any time you set penalties, it begs the question as to whether the penalties are severe enough. If not, then someone could play the system by willingly incurring the penalties. Clearly that is not the spirit of what we are trying to do, and as milleram points out, we aren't really trying to heavily penalize someone if they are over by 1 or 2 AB. However, if you hit your limit for a player, you are obligated to drop him, to be in compliance with these rules. If a player hit a limit late in the season, and you really wanted to keep him for the playoffs, maybe there could be a penalty.
If we use penalties, then we would have to use a points-based system - maybe something like this -
1 point for each win;
5 points for making the playoffs.
5 points for making the finals.
10 points for winning the championship.
The penalty for overuseage could go something like this (by the way, an ascending scale of penalties, to penalize chronic over-users more heavily):
less than 5% over useage limits - penalty - 4 points per player occurence
> 5% < 10% over useage limits - penalty - 10 points per player occurence
> 10% <20% over useage limits - penalty - 20 points per player occurence.
>20% over useage limits - penalty - disqualification from theme league victory
These penalty thresholds would be calculated by reference to the difference between the batter/pitcher's actual game useage as a percentage of his real IP or AB, minus the allowable player useage (120% of real AB/IP for most players, 140% for pure RPs and catchers).
With this points system, the theme league victor is not necessarily the league "champion".
Obviously, we would prefer to avoid the useage limits altogether, but this might be a workable way to deal with the inevitable, unintentional occurrence.
What do you think?