Issues that have come up so far during the season...

- Divisions (possible amendment to eliminate them).
- Realignment. There will be no changes for next year.
- Minimum AB's (possible amendment).

Feel free to add things as they come up. Discussion should still occur at the league site but this will become the primary discussion board in the off-season.

Confirmed Amendments

1. Eliminate divisions.

2. Minimum AB's & IP's
Notes:
AB's, not PA's (ESPN tracks the former, not the latter)
Actual AB limits TBD
Actual IP limits TBD (10 is the current minimum)

3. FAAB.

4. Change Saves to Saves/Holds
Notes:
Would take effect 2015
Ducklings would get option year on G.Perkins for 2015

5. Move keeper deadline to one week before the auction (it is currently two)

Oh yeah...

FAAB! It looks like it's set up so that only players on waivers are subject to FAAB. Free agents are acquired the usual way.

Current thoughts: Separate FAAB from acquisition limits.

Change Saves to Saves/Holds.

Probably have to be effective for 2015 given 2014 contracts on closers.

Proposed by Andrew:

Add Holds & Putout's as counting categories (6x6).

Making a note to remind myself to crunch some numbers on appropriate PA & IP minimums, based on what the league has done historically.

Playoff seeding issues?

Steve sent some ideas:
1) Seed based on record.
2) Formula based on division strength (SOS perhaps)
3) Conference play w/ 8 team playoff*

*Not one I'd likely put out there as an amendment - I don't care for 1/2 the teams earning playoff spots. But hey, you never know what I'll be thinking in January.

Another thought from Steve:
Some kind of absolute cap on contracts.

Regarding the Saves/Holds thing and current contracts. I figured a 2015 switchover would allow for closer contracts to expire but I just noted that Sweet has Perkins under contract through 2015. I suppose we'd have to add a 'Perkins clause' giving Sweet an out on that last year (if he wants out).

Playoff tie-breaker. The current tie-break is based on seedings yet with divisions that brings up the possibility of a team with an inferior regular season record to hold the advantage.

Suggestions and/or comments, with my comments from Ryan via email:

1. Would the league consider moving to a head-to-head points league? It's be a huge change and I'm not even sure I'd support it, but I'd be interested in hearing the pros (makes ties very unlikely, important for playoffs) and cons (difficult to balance, unless Todd crunches years of data).

This will not happen. However, if anyone (Ryan) starts a new experimental league, might be worth checking out.

2. Runs Created (RC) as a hitter's stat.

I don't know what it is but it is available at ESPN.

3. Replace Win (W) with Pitching Team Wins (PTW). Might be less screwy than W.

4. I already vote against any amendments to remove or realign divisions (unless moving Josh to our division, to keep the Mid-Atlantic teams together). I believe 2014 should be played under the same structure as 2013. One year is not enough data to justify another change. Also, there's enough variability with teams that it's unlikely the Junkers is so dominant again or that the Sluggers and Quaggas drag their divisions down so much again.

5. I do think we should have minimum PA and IP limits on teams. However, I think that we should consider dropping the DH spot from the lineup. Filling C, 1B, 2B, SS, 3B, 2B/SS, 1B/3B, OFx4, and DH is really difficult. That's effectively an entire MLB offense, minus a backup C. With 16 teams in the league, it really puts teams in a bind trying to put an entire lineup out there, especially since we don't have defensive statistics to account for the fact that MLB teams will absolutely play players almost exclusively for their glove.

I want to keep the 26 player team and my initial reaction was negative. Let's see what others think. It's not, of course, a DH spot - I assume it's the Utility position being referenced.

6. Speaking of defense... I'd support expanding to 5x5x5 and including some combination of:
Assists (AST)
Double Plays Turned (DPT)
Errors* (E)
Fielding Pct (FPCT)
Outfield Assists (OFAST)
Put Outs (PO)

Although, I'd definitely prefer dWAR, RF/9, and Rtot! But then again, I'm crazy

NO,NO,NO,NO!!!! This league shall not even get a whiff of defense.

1. Would the league consider moving to a head-to-head points league?

I was just thinking about this the other day myself. But if you're dead set against it, that's fine, and I certainly don't want to join another league.

Runs Created (RC) as a hitter's stat.

http://www.fangraphs.com/library/offense/wrc/

wRC+ is a rate stat based on Runs Created, so for the most part you don't see RC by themselves. But you can think of RC as roughly the hitting component of WAR, without the 'above average' and positional adjustments.

So RC would (I think) be a replacement for OBP and/or SLG, in that in gives a more accurate weighting to different events (e.g. a HR is generally not worth 4x a single). If you're familiar with the ottoneu fantasy system, it uses linear weights, which is the same concept (I'm not sure if RC uses the same weights).

Personally, I don't think it makes sense to go with a stat like this unless we want to completely overhaul what we're currently using and go full-on sabremetric ala ottoneu.

Replace Win (W) with Pitching Team Wins (PTW).

Assuming this works as I'd expect, this would overrate relievers. Any reliever coming into a game would have a baseline 50-50 shot at a W, so their accumulation would outweigh that of the starters.

However, I think that we should consider dropping the DH spot from the lineup. Filling C, 1B, 2B, SS, 3B, 2B/SS, 1B/3B, OFx4, and DH is really difficult.

Just to be contrary, I'll say we should not only keep this, we should split OF1, OF2, and OF3 into LF, CF, RF, keeping OF4 as a flex OF equivalent to CI & MI

NO,NO,NO,NO!!!! This league shall not even get a whiff of defense.

Agreed.

Sharur wrote:

Just to be contrary, I'll say we should not only keep this, we should split OF1, OF2, and OF3 into LF, CF, RF, keeping OF4 as a flex OF equivalent to CI & MI

I support this evil idea... just to piss off Ryan.

Like two years ago, we're going to have issues with opening day. They're playing two games in Australia one week before all the other games start (Sat., March 22nd & Sun., March 23rd). Per the Constitution, our league is slated to draft on the Saturday night before opening day. Choices:

1) Draft on the 29th. If we do this, I would prefer to exclude the Australia stats and I can only hope ESPN provides that option (they didn't two years ago - if you drafted a player into an active spot, you got the stats, bench slots, not). If ESPN doesn't upgrade, I'll probably have to manually re-submit the draft results, slotting D-Backs & Dodgers into bench slots. That worked two years ago but was a big pain in my *&^.

2) Draft on Saturday, March 22nd. a) Wait for the announced game time and set our draft about 4 hours before the first game starts. b) Don't worry about the game & let the chips fall where they may during our regular auction time (9 p.m. EST). We could actually be drafting during the game!

3) Draft on Friday, March 21st at our usual time (9 p.m. EST).

This whole Australia thing has me befuddled. The game times appear (though I'm not positive) to be Saturday @ 7 p.m. and Sunday @ 1 p.m. That's gotta be local time right?

What does that mean here? 4 a.m. for the Saturday game & 10 p.m. Saturday night for the Sunday game. What?

SLOTerp wrote:This whole Australia thing has me befuddled. The game times appear (though I'm not positive) to be Saturday @ 7 p.m. and Sunday @ 1 p.m. That's gotta be local time right?

What does that mean here? 4 a.m. for the Saturday game & 10 p.m. Saturday night for the Sunday game. What?

Yeah, strange. My question is why wouldn't we draft a week early and keep those stats. We got to draft some time, why not then?

Oh sure, George... go ahead and state the obvious

In my effort to have the auction as close to the real games as possible, I didn't even consider the 15th. It is an option.

I would draft normally . Everyone has the opportunity to draft people from Arizona and LA knowing what their results will be. We're talking most likely about a mild effect on one week of play and the effect is likely to be somewhat random (are you really going to draft someone based on two days of stats), and the best players on the two teams are likely protected anyway.