There have been some complaints about re-building teams.

1. Not filling an active roster.
2. Not meeting AB & IP minimums.

There have been more teams going all-in on rebuilding as it can lead to longer term success. There is certainly nothing wrong with that but it does lead to the above issues. So, what kind of changes would get us the best of both worlds (active rosters while rebuilding)?

1. Create minor league specific slots and set maximums on minor league players. (Mike)
2. Fine teams (next year's auction $'s) for not meeting minimums. (Freeman)

Right now, only Brent is not meeting the minimums. He is in a deep rebuild but may have some viable active players next year. Other rebuilders are closer to fielding full teams. Whatever we do, I don't want to punish teams that have already committed to a rebuild.

This is an interesting discussion on the future of the league and would like to hear your thoughts.

@George

We have the competitive balance part of the schedule that pits best v. best and worst v. worst. That's dependent upon previous year's standings so not perfect. I think it's probably the best we could do.

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Any other thoughts on nerfing deep rebuilds? I have some recency bias on this but I'm willing to listen. One thing I won't consider is a guillotine league (bottom team gets replaced)

I prefer an indirect approach.. Don’t tax/punish the non-competitive ones. Just nerf the strategy a little so it’s not quite as appealing.

Adding Minors slots would put a real dent in the advantage of a full rebuild strategy, because the championship-caliber teams would be competing for the scarce resource of top prospects. Put another way - the prospect talent would get spread thinner across the league.

Another possibility: limit Rookie contract renewals. You get one Rookie deal - +1 for 1 year or +1/2 for two years (total of $3). After that, it’s +5/8/9, even if they haven’t reached the majors.

Brent's comments on Corey's proposals

On Corey’s proposal. I would say that his A might need a grandfather clause. B would be interesting. C might be a 2 year lead time but require all positions to be filled with active (non IL) MLB player in every spot everyday with an increase to 5 DL and 30 total players to grant more flexibility for injuries, demotions and a stash or two. To avoid too much streaming of pitchers, I would suggest a weekly IP max of some sort that is reasonable.

I wish we could enforce active players to be in every slot but it would HAVE to be automated and I don't think Fantrax has that kind of functionality. I will not be doing manual checks on rosters.

Weekly IP maxes can be automated.

So... maybe FT can do the above. Here is a setting on rosters:

Set the minimum # of active players allowed on the entire roster for each position. This only includes players who are ACTIVE and are thus accumulating points. This option makes it more difficult to successfully execute transactions (claims/drops, lineup changes, trades). It is recommended that you do not use this unless your league specifically needs to enforce such a minimum, such as if you are coming from a site that had this and you want to continue with the exact same rule.

* This is an advanced constraint and is generally not used, as it can make the league more difficult to use for some managers.

If an illegal roster leads to the inability to claim players, it might be self-enforcing. Otherwise, there would have to be draconian penalties like removal of ownership for running illegal rosters.

I was not the commish so I do not know options but FT recorded illegal roster if a minor leaguer was in an active spot for example. So I believe it can monitor if slots are empty or inappropriately filled. We could also retroactively correct if say a trade was accepted just prior to lineup sets and a team was illegal. The more restrictive you get, the more situations like trades or IL moves can catch people out unintentionally.

Personally, I like our rebuild flexibility even when I won a few years ago. But if folks want to raise the bar, adding a couple minor leaguer slots is not a deterrent and may make it worse. You can rebuild and stay minimally competitive but going all in is much more interesting to me. Again, I would vote for no changes but if the group wants changes, I would suggest stronger changes. In g for an ounce, in for a pound as they say.