After giving it some thought, we’ve decided that staggering rule change discussion and voting is likely to be the clearest, most efficient way of doing this. Dedicating a couple days to discuss, debate, and then vote on each rule allows the league to stay focused on one thing at a time and not get sidetracked.
Rules to discuss and proposals to vote on are listed below.
Results will be published here as they are determined.
As a reminder, it is NOT majority vote. In order for a new rule to be voted into policy, it must receive at least 10 votes.
One vote per team.
Expand postseason championship bracket from four teams to six.
- Goal: increases odds of teams to make playoffs, thus incentivizing buying, de-incentivizing selling, etc. More playoff spots also keeps teams in the playoff race longer, i.e. wildcard spots in real life.
- Proposal: expand championship bracket to six teams, where the top two teams that qualified for the bracket based on W/L receive a bye.
- Follow up: Changes to payouts for post-season would be rewritten and voted upon.
RESULT: Vote passes. Championship bracket will be expanded to six teams.
Adjust payouts based on playoff expansion.
- Because of the change of the playoffs, there needs to be a chance in payouts, two options came from the discussion.
RESULT:
Regular Season:
Most Points Scored: $150
Best H2H Record: $150
Post Season:
1st $850
2nd $400
3rd $250
4th $175
5th $150
6th $150
7th $75
Push trade deadline to mid-week.
- Goal: Having the trade deadline on a Sunday kinda sucks, because people have shit to do and aren’t necessarily around on the weekend.
- Proposal: Instead of the end of Week 17 (Sunday), move the deadline up to Thursday of Week 17 at 11:59 PM/EST.
RESULT: Vote passes. The trade deadline will be moved to Thursday of Week 17 at 11:59 PM/EST.
Enforce a minimum number of starts per week.
- Goal: We had a couple instances where teams only used four or five of seven starts, but ideally teams are using all or almost all of their allotment to compete.
- Proposal: Minimum of six (6) starts per week, with a -15 applied to each start that goes unusued below that number. Setting it to six sets a baseline for competitiveness but also frees managers up to “protect” big leads over the weekend by not risking using a seventh start that could go haywire.
RESULT: Vote cancelled. No start minimums will be enforced at this time.
Simultaneous Schedule
Goal: Create a balanced schedule atmosphere and further removing variance of luck involved in a week to week world.Proposal: Creating a schedule where each roster faces off vs three other teams in the league per week. Each team would play each other team four times in a season. Each team would only manage the one lineup.
RESULT: Vote cancelled/proposal retracted.
Replace free agency with FAAB.
- Goal: Make it tougher to stream players, add strategy, eliminate the first come/first serve aspect.
- Proposal: Each team gets $150 worth of free agent budget. This is separate from a team’s auction budget. Use a blind bid system where highest bid wins. You pay what you bid (not $1 more than next highest bid). Minimum bid is $0. Winning bid does not become salary (you may keep a player you add next year for $5, plus they are eligible for greed — same FA system as 2016). Tie bids will be broken based on current standings. Bids process daily at 11 AM/EST (a single processing time makes it so that owners cannot simply wait for lineups, then poach available players who are playing that day). FAAB budget is not available for trade.
RESULT: Vote passes. A FAAB waiver system will used beginning with the 2017 season.
Prohibit adding free agents directly to the disabled list.
- Goal: It is conceivable that a valuable player is unowned, gets added to their MLB team’s disabled list, then picked up by a team and immediately placed to the DL without a corresponding drop/penalty. Probably doesn’t matter but can’t hurt to vote on.
RESULT: Vote cancelled. No one seemed to care about this. There’s an easy option in Fantrax that prevents it, so we may just flip it on.
Draft order decided by consolation playoff outcome.
- Goal: To make the playoffs have meaning for more teams, to encourage year long roster management, to disincentivize bottoming out for a better pick.
- Proposal: TBD pending possible playoff format change
RESULT: Vote cancelled. There was not enough support to move forward to a vote.
Lift the rule prohibiting minor leaguers (green flags) from being held on the 30-man major league roster.
- Fantrax does not have anything built in that will police prospects being on the major league roster as “invalid roster.” Last year, we manually enforced a rule by spot checking rosters for prospects that had been held up for a week (one week was treated as a buffer for when a player gets unexpectedly sent down by his MLB team).
RESULT: Vote does not pass. The manually enforced rule lives on.