Post by Buffalo Bats on Feb 12, 2016 13:18:19 GMT -7
League Rules
Mission Statement: The purpose of this league is to create the ultimate fantasy baseball league that is as similar to being a real MLB GM as possible. We want all the members to be active and participating. We will also take votes every offseason for changes to the league, majority rules… this is no dictatorship.
1) ROSTERS:
Each team will have a starting lineup that consists of 22 players with 13 hitters and 9 pitchers as shown below:
1 Catcher
1 First Baseman
1 Second Baseman
1 Shortstop
1 Third Baseman
1 Middle Infielder (2B/SS)
1 Corner Infielder (1B/3B)
5 Outfielders
1 Utility (DH)
6 Starting Pitchers
3 Relief Pitchers
As well as:
6 Bench Slots
4 Injured Reserves
20 Player Minor League Roster
Pitching Notes
Eligibility Notes
2) SCORING SYSTEM:
We will be competing in head to head, weekly matchups. You are allowed to set your lineups daily. Players will lock at the beginning of their game that day. The scoring period will run Monday through Sunday, with the exception of the All-Star break, which will be a 2 week scoring period.
We will be using the following scoring system:
Note: The only scoring item different than past versions of this league will be holds (3 to 5) and saves (5 to 6.5) to try and weigh RP more heavily.
3) INITIAL FRANCHISE DRAFT:
The initial draft will be a slow style 48 round snake draft on Fantrax. Both major and minor league players will be eligible to be drafted.
Major league players will have a predetermined salary that is equivalent to real money in which the owners will be on the hook. (Example: $16,000,000 = $16.00) Minor league players will not cost owners anything until owners call them up to the majors.
Players not eligible of note include:
High school players who haven’t signed with an MLB team
International players who haven’t signed with an MLB team
You are able to trade draft picks while the initial draft is going on but you may not make an uneven trade in a way that would give you more or less than 48 picks. (We want every team to fill out their roster while also allowing teams the opportunity to trade down if they’d like)
Example:
Team A trades pick 1.1 and 6.1 to Team B for picks 1.10 and 2.3
4) CONTRACTS:
After the initial draft, owners will then decide the length of contracts based on the following criteria:
Two players with 5-year contracts
Four players with 4-year contracts
Six players with 3-year contracts
Six players with 2-year contracts
Owners do not have to hand out all these contracts, however, they may not exceed the limits shown above.
Example:
If an owner wants to sign just one player to a 5-year contract, then he may hand out five 4-year contracts rather than the allotted four.
For the first year, players will be paid the dollar value in which they were drafted at. For each additional year contracts will increase by $2.
Example:
Mike Trout was drafted at $20M and signed to a five year deal. The deal is as follows:
Year 1: $20
Year 2: $22
Year 3: $24
Year 4: $26
Year 5: $28
Contracts will be 50% guaranteed each year. If an owner chooses to drop a player under a multi-year contract, they will still be responsible for 50% of the salary remaining in the player’s contract years.
When you call a rookie up you have 24 hours to announce(on the forums) the length of their contract. You may sign a rookie you call up to up to a 5 year contract, and their salary starts at $1.
Example:
I’m calling Carlos Correa up to a 5 year deal, starting at $1. 1, 3, 5, 7, 9
5) SALARY CAP:
We will have a soft salary cap that will change year to year based on average team payroll. You are allowed to go over the salary cap, but will face luxury taxes on dollars spent over the cap and be ineligible for League Revenue Sharing (covered below).
The salary for the first year will be calculated after the initial draft, and adjusted each year after ( average team salary x 125%).
There are two dates in the season where payroll will count towards the team's salary cap.
These 2 numbers will add to be your actual salary. This is important to keep in mind as the season progresses.
Example:
The salary cap is $100. On opening day your team payroll is $90 ($45 goes towards salary) On the trade deadline your payroll must be at or below $110($55 towards the cap, adding to $100) to qualify for league revenue sharing. This is to prevent teams from operating at different costs throughout the season to avoid salary cap restrictions.
Luxury tax for going over the cap will be as follows:
0.5:1 Luxury Tax Threshold = 125%(salary cap) -- 145% of average league pre-season payroll
(Total Pre Season Salaries/12) x 1.
(This means for every dollar an owner goes over the cap into the 0.5:1 threshold, he will pay an additional .50 dollars in Luxury taxes. If an owner goes $10 over, he will pay $5 in taxes. the rest of the Luxury Tax levels are formatted in the same way.) Which ever luxury tax threshold you fall in will be the amount you pay for every dollar over.
Example:
Salary Cap is 200,000,000 (average salary of 160,000,000). Buffalo Bats salary is 296,000,000 (Which would mean you're spending almost twice the average, shame on you!). This puts them into the 2:1 tax threshold (296,000,000/160,000,000 = 185%). Therefore Bats pays 2:1 on 96,000,000 or $192 luxury tax. Note: Not 0.5:1 on the $40 over, 1:1 on the $88 over, and then 2:1 on the rest, but 2:1 on the total amount over.
0.5:1 Luxury Tax Threshold = 125%-150% of average pre season payroll (Example tax range : 125%-150% @160mil salary = $0--$20 tax) probable tax range Total Salary + Tax = $260
1:1 Luxury Tax Threshold = 151%-180% of average pre season payroll (Example tax range : 151%-180% @160mil salary = $41--$88 tax) probable tax range Total Salary + Tax = $376
2:1 Luxury Tax Threshold = 181%-195% of average pre season payroll (Example tax range : 181%-195% @160mil salary = $178--$224 tax) unlikely tax range Total Salary + Tax = $536
3:1 Luxury Tax Threshold = 196%-200+% of average pre season payroll (Example tax range : 196%-200+% @160mil salary = $339--infinity tax) highly unlikely tax range Total Salary + Tax = $652>>
It is extremely unlikely that anyone will ever go into some of these higher tax thresholds, it is necessary however to have these safeguards in place for the long term health of the league. Without these tax thresholds player contracts will become over-inflated during free agency periods to the point of driving the cost of every team upwards to very unnecessary totals.
Only your team payroll, which is your player contract deals, will count toward the salary cap. Transaction fees, waiver wire bids, and free agent money will NOT go toward your payroll, but you will be responsible for these fees at the end of the season.
6) LEAGUE REVENUE SHARING:
To reward players that stay under the salary cap, all funds from the waiver wire, transaction fees, international free agents, regular free agents, luxury tax, in-season spending, basically any money that does not go toward your team payroll will be put into the League Revenue Sharing system and distributed evenly among all eligible teams at the end of each season.
To be eligible for League Revenue Sharing you must:
Be under the league salary cap ( which will be determined shortly after our initial draft) at the end of the trade deadline. This will incorporate half of a team's salary on opening day with the other half coming at the end of the trade deadline.
example: If the salary cap is $150 and your team starts with a salary on opening day of $170, you then need to have a salary of $130 to be under the salary cap
That’s it. As long as your team payroll at the 2 dates adds to at or below the salary cap, you qualify for league revenue sharing. This is a huge part of the league: since we have a soft salary cap, you are able to go over it, but will miss out on a large part of money coming back in league revenue sharing.
7) WAIVERS AND IN-SEASON ACQUISITIONS:
The waiver wire deadline will be 10:00 AM MST every Monday. Any player dropped will go to waivers and be able to be claimed the following Monday by any team except the team that dropped them. A team may claim a player they have dropped after 1 waiver wire deadline has passed.
Teams will place bids on players and the player will go to the team with the highest bid, with ties giving the player to the team with the worst record at the time. The winning bid amount will become the players salary, and the player will join the team on a 1 year contract. If this player is acquired BEFORE the trade deadline, the winning team has 24 hours to announce a 2 year contract. To clarify, if you pick up a player after the trade deadline, you’ll only pay his transaction fee to pick him up, but you will only have him till the end of that year. If you pick him up before the deadline, you have the option to keep him the next year, but will pay his transaction fee and his salary will count toward your team payroll.
Your Fantrax team page will give you a “budget”, which we will use to track your transaction fees. This budget will be used to make bids on players, and at the end of the year will be factored into your total team cost (note: not your team payroll). This money will be put back into league revenue sharing. Only the players who you keep and have on your team at the trade deadline will count towards your team payroll.
Only players with 130 major league at bats or 50 innings pitched will be able to be picked up via waivers. Players not eligible of note include:
Minor leaguers
International Players
8) FREE AGENCY:
Every offseason(dates TBD) any player that is not eligible for the Rookie draft ( covered below), International draft(same), or on another team will be eligible to be bidded on in Free Agency. Only 10 players will be able to be bidded on at the same time. After 24 hours with no higher bid, the player will go to the highest bidding team. To start bidding on a free agent, create a thread with his name as the title and your bid as the subject.
To keep bids from being made just to run up prices on free agents, every starting bid on a new free agent will cost $1, every other bid will cost $.25.
Money spent on bids will not increase the price of a player’s contract, instead those fees will go into league revenue sharing.
9) ROOKIE DRAFT:
Any player signed to a MLB team who has not had 130 major league at bats or 50 major leagues pitched will be eligible for the 5 round rookie draft. This draft is not a snake draft. (Date TBD)
Players not eligible of note include:
High school players who haven’t signed with an MLB team
International players who haven’t signed with an MLB team
Initial Draft Order - Reverse order from Initial snake draft 12>>>1
All drafts after the initial will be ordered from current rankings at the time of the draft.
10) INTERNATIONAL SIGNING:
Just as the MLB separates the rookie draft and international signings, the same will be implemented in our league. However, the following rules apply in signing international prospects:
- Bids must come within a week of the player signing to a MLB team
- Bids also must be posted for a week on the forum before it is processed
- Each team has a $50 FA Budget, however, a team may spend more than that but can only spend $10 in the following years International signing period. Also. the team will be taxed as following:
.50 cents per dollar above $0,
$1 for 1$ tax above $50,
$2 for $1 tax above $75.
All winning bids for international players will not count towards a team’s payroll but instead go directly into league revenue sharing.
11) TRADING:
Trading will be allowed at all times except between the trade deadline ( date tbd) and the day the championship match ends. You are allowed to trade any major or minor league player and picks for each year’s rookie draft, up to 3 years in the future. Trading may not involve cash. All trades will be under review for 3 days and any trade vetoed by at least 6 teams will be cancelled.
12) PLAYOFFS:
The top 6 teams will earn playoff spots with the top 2 earning first round byes. The playoffs will be 2 week matchups and we will have the final championship week be 1 week before the MLB regular season ends, to avoid players not playing due to real baseball circumstances.
Ties in playoffs will be decided by regular season record, then total points scored, then head to head record if somehow those are all a tie.
13) PAYOUT
Payout will only consist of the money spent on team payrolls. All other funds go into league revenue sharing. Payout will go as follows:
(Payout subject to change due to cheating)
Winner: 55%
Runner Up: 20%
3rd Place: 10%
MVP (Player with most offensive points): 5%
Cy Young: (Player with most pitching points): 5%
Gold Glove: (Team with highest defensive WAR, according to Baseball Reference ): 5%
Mission Statement: The purpose of this league is to create the ultimate fantasy baseball league that is as similar to being a real MLB GM as possible. We want all the members to be active and participating. We will also take votes every offseason for changes to the league, majority rules… this is no dictatorship.
1) ROSTERS:
Each team will have a starting lineup that consists of 22 players with 13 hitters and 9 pitchers as shown below:
1 Catcher
1 First Baseman
1 Second Baseman
1 Shortstop
1 Third Baseman
1 Middle Infielder (2B/SS)
1 Corner Infielder (1B/3B)
5 Outfielders
1 Utility (DH)
6 Starting Pitchers
3 Relief Pitchers
As well as:
6 Bench Slots
4 Injured Reserves
20 Player Minor League Roster
Pitching Notes
- There is a strict 10 limit SP starts each team is allowed to have every week. If a team goes over the 10 allowed starts, the first 10 will be the ones counted for the week. NO EXCEPTIONS!
- Only 4 RP are allowed to be used in any given week.
Eligibility Notes
- An offensive player must have 5 games the prior season or 3 games the current season at a position to qualify.
- RP must have 5 appearances the prior season or 3 appearances the current season to qualify.
2) SCORING SYSTEM:
We will be competing in head to head, weekly matchups. You are allowed to set your lineups daily. Players will lock at the beginning of their game that day. The scoring period will run Monday through Sunday, with the exception of the All-Star break, which will be a 2 week scoring period.
We will be using the following scoring system:
Hitting | At Bats (AB) | Default | -1.5 |
Hitting | Doubles (2B) | Default | 1 |
Hitting | Hit by Pitch (HPB) | Default | 3.5 |
Hitting | Hits (H) | Default | 5 |
Hitting | Home Runs (HR) | Default | 4 |
Hitting | Runs Batted In (RBI) | Default | 2 |
Hitting | Runs Scored (R) | Default | 2 |
Hitting | Sacrifice Flies (SF) | Default | 2.5 |
Hitting | Sacrifice Hits (SH) | Default | 2.5 |
Hitting | Stolen Bases (SB) | Default | 2 |
Hitting | Strikeouts (SO) | Default | -0.5 |
Hitting | Triples (3B) | Default | 2 |
Hitting | Walks (BB) | Default | 3.5 |
Pitching | Earned Runs Allowed (ER) | Default | -6 |
Pitching | Hits Batsmen (HB) | Default | -1 |
Pitching | Hits Allowed (H) | Default | -1 |
Pitching | Holds (Hld) | Default | 5 |
Pitching | Innings Pitched (IP) | Default | 5 |
Pitching | Saves (Sv) | Default | 6.5 |
Pitching | Strikeouts Pitched (K) | Default | 1 |
Pitching | Walks Allowed (BB) | Default | -1 |
Note: The only scoring item different than past versions of this league will be holds (3 to 5) and saves (5 to 6.5) to try and weigh RP more heavily.
3) INITIAL FRANCHISE DRAFT:
The initial draft will be a slow style 48 round snake draft on Fantrax. Both major and minor league players will be eligible to be drafted.
Major league players will have a predetermined salary that is equivalent to real money in which the owners will be on the hook. (Example: $16,000,000 = $16.00) Minor league players will not cost owners anything until owners call them up to the majors.
Players not eligible of note include:
High school players who haven’t signed with an MLB team
International players who haven’t signed with an MLB team
You are able to trade draft picks while the initial draft is going on but you may not make an uneven trade in a way that would give you more or less than 48 picks. (We want every team to fill out their roster while also allowing teams the opportunity to trade down if they’d like)
Example:
Team A trades pick 1.1 and 6.1 to Team B for picks 1.10 and 2.3
4) CONTRACTS:
After the initial draft, owners will then decide the length of contracts based on the following criteria:
Two players with 5-year contracts
Four players with 4-year contracts
Six players with 3-year contracts
Six players with 2-year contracts
Owners do not have to hand out all these contracts, however, they may not exceed the limits shown above.
Example:
If an owner wants to sign just one player to a 5-year contract, then he may hand out five 4-year contracts rather than the allotted four.
For the first year, players will be paid the dollar value in which they were drafted at. For each additional year contracts will increase by $2.
Example:
Mike Trout was drafted at $20M and signed to a five year deal. The deal is as follows:
Year 1: $20
Year 2: $22
Year 3: $24
Year 4: $26
Year 5: $28
Contracts will be 50% guaranteed each year. If an owner chooses to drop a player under a multi-year contract, they will still be responsible for 50% of the salary remaining in the player’s contract years.
When you call a rookie up you have 24 hours to announce(on the forums) the length of their contract. You may sign a rookie you call up to up to a 5 year contract, and their salary starts at $1.
Example:
I’m calling Carlos Correa up to a 5 year deal, starting at $1. 1, 3, 5, 7, 9
5) SALARY CAP:
We will have a soft salary cap that will change year to year based on average team payroll. You are allowed to go over the salary cap, but will face luxury taxes on dollars spent over the cap and be ineligible for League Revenue Sharing (covered below).
The salary for the first year will be calculated after the initial draft, and adjusted each year after ( average team salary x 125%).
There are two dates in the season where payroll will count towards the team's salary cap.
- Opening Day: 50% of the total salary on a team’s roster will be counted towards his end year salary.
- The Trade Deadline (Aug 8th?): 50% of the total salary of a team’s roster will again be counted towards his end year salary
These 2 numbers will add to be your actual salary. This is important to keep in mind as the season progresses.
Example:
The salary cap is $100. On opening day your team payroll is $90 ($45 goes towards salary) On the trade deadline your payroll must be at or below $110($55 towards the cap, adding to $100) to qualify for league revenue sharing. This is to prevent teams from operating at different costs throughout the season to avoid salary cap restrictions.
Luxury tax for going over the cap will be as follows:
0.5:1 Luxury Tax Threshold = 125%(salary cap) -- 145% of average league pre-season payroll
(Total Pre Season Salaries/12) x 1.
(This means for every dollar an owner goes over the cap into the 0.5:1 threshold, he will pay an additional .50 dollars in Luxury taxes. If an owner goes $10 over, he will pay $5 in taxes. the rest of the Luxury Tax levels are formatted in the same way.) Which ever luxury tax threshold you fall in will be the amount you pay for every dollar over.
Example:
Salary Cap is 200,000,000 (average salary of 160,000,000). Buffalo Bats salary is 296,000,000 (Which would mean you're spending almost twice the average, shame on you!). This puts them into the 2:1 tax threshold (296,000,000/160,000,000 = 185%). Therefore Bats pays 2:1 on 96,000,000 or $192 luxury tax. Note: Not 0.5:1 on the $40 over, 1:1 on the $88 over, and then 2:1 on the rest, but 2:1 on the total amount over.
0.5:1 Luxury Tax Threshold = 125%-150% of average pre season payroll (Example tax range : 125%-150% @160mil salary = $0--$20 tax) probable tax range Total Salary + Tax = $260
1:1 Luxury Tax Threshold = 151%-180% of average pre season payroll (Example tax range : 151%-180% @160mil salary = $41--$88 tax) probable tax range Total Salary + Tax = $376
2:1 Luxury Tax Threshold = 181%-195% of average pre season payroll (Example tax range : 181%-195% @160mil salary = $178--$224 tax) unlikely tax range Total Salary + Tax = $536
3:1 Luxury Tax Threshold = 196%-200+% of average pre season payroll (Example tax range : 196%-200+% @160mil salary = $339--infinity tax) highly unlikely tax range Total Salary + Tax = $652>>
It is extremely unlikely that anyone will ever go into some of these higher tax thresholds, it is necessary however to have these safeguards in place for the long term health of the league. Without these tax thresholds player contracts will become over-inflated during free agency periods to the point of driving the cost of every team upwards to very unnecessary totals.
Only your team payroll, which is your player contract deals, will count toward the salary cap. Transaction fees, waiver wire bids, and free agent money will NOT go toward your payroll, but you will be responsible for these fees at the end of the season.
6) LEAGUE REVENUE SHARING:
To reward players that stay under the salary cap, all funds from the waiver wire, transaction fees, international free agents, regular free agents, luxury tax, in-season spending, basically any money that does not go toward your team payroll will be put into the League Revenue Sharing system and distributed evenly among all eligible teams at the end of each season.
To be eligible for League Revenue Sharing you must:
Be under the league salary cap ( which will be determined shortly after our initial draft) at the end of the trade deadline. This will incorporate half of a team's salary on opening day with the other half coming at the end of the trade deadline.
example: If the salary cap is $150 and your team starts with a salary on opening day of $170, you then need to have a salary of $130 to be under the salary cap
That’s it. As long as your team payroll at the 2 dates adds to at or below the salary cap, you qualify for league revenue sharing. This is a huge part of the league: since we have a soft salary cap, you are able to go over it, but will miss out on a large part of money coming back in league revenue sharing.
7) WAIVERS AND IN-SEASON ACQUISITIONS:
The waiver wire deadline will be 10:00 AM MST every Monday. Any player dropped will go to waivers and be able to be claimed the following Monday by any team except the team that dropped them. A team may claim a player they have dropped after 1 waiver wire deadline has passed.
Teams will place bids on players and the player will go to the team with the highest bid, with ties giving the player to the team with the worst record at the time. The winning bid amount will become the players salary, and the player will join the team on a 1 year contract. If this player is acquired BEFORE the trade deadline, the winning team has 24 hours to announce a 2 year contract. To clarify, if you pick up a player after the trade deadline, you’ll only pay his transaction fee to pick him up, but you will only have him till the end of that year. If you pick him up before the deadline, you have the option to keep him the next year, but will pay his transaction fee and his salary will count toward your team payroll.
Your Fantrax team page will give you a “budget”, which we will use to track your transaction fees. This budget will be used to make bids on players, and at the end of the year will be factored into your total team cost (note: not your team payroll). This money will be put back into league revenue sharing. Only the players who you keep and have on your team at the trade deadline will count towards your team payroll.
Only players with 130 major league at bats or 50 innings pitched will be able to be picked up via waivers. Players not eligible of note include:
Minor leaguers
International Players
8) FREE AGENCY:
Every offseason(dates TBD) any player that is not eligible for the Rookie draft ( covered below), International draft(same), or on another team will be eligible to be bidded on in Free Agency. Only 10 players will be able to be bidded on at the same time. After 24 hours with no higher bid, the player will go to the highest bidding team. To start bidding on a free agent, create a thread with his name as the title and your bid as the subject.
To keep bids from being made just to run up prices on free agents, every starting bid on a new free agent will cost $1, every other bid will cost $.25.
Money spent on bids will not increase the price of a player’s contract, instead those fees will go into league revenue sharing.
9) ROOKIE DRAFT:
Any player signed to a MLB team who has not had 130 major league at bats or 50 major leagues pitched will be eligible for the 5 round rookie draft. This draft is not a snake draft. (Date TBD)
Players not eligible of note include:
High school players who haven’t signed with an MLB team
International players who haven’t signed with an MLB team
Initial Draft Order - Reverse order from Initial snake draft 12>>>1
All drafts after the initial will be ordered from current rankings at the time of the draft.
10) INTERNATIONAL SIGNING:
Just as the MLB separates the rookie draft and international signings, the same will be implemented in our league. However, the following rules apply in signing international prospects:
- Bids must come within a week of the player signing to a MLB team
- Bids also must be posted for a week on the forum before it is processed
- Each team has a $50 FA Budget, however, a team may spend more than that but can only spend $10 in the following years International signing period. Also. the team will be taxed as following:
.50 cents per dollar above $0,
$1 for 1$ tax above $50,
$2 for $1 tax above $75.
All winning bids for international players will not count towards a team’s payroll but instead go directly into league revenue sharing.
11) TRADING:
Trading will be allowed at all times except between the trade deadline ( date tbd) and the day the championship match ends. You are allowed to trade any major or minor league player and picks for each year’s rookie draft, up to 3 years in the future. Trading may not involve cash. All trades will be under review for 3 days and any trade vetoed by at least 6 teams will be cancelled.
12) PLAYOFFS:
The top 6 teams will earn playoff spots with the top 2 earning first round byes. The playoffs will be 2 week matchups and we will have the final championship week be 1 week before the MLB regular season ends, to avoid players not playing due to real baseball circumstances.
Ties in playoffs will be decided by regular season record, then total points scored, then head to head record if somehow those are all a tie.
13) PAYOUT
Payout will only consist of the money spent on team payrolls. All other funds go into league revenue sharing. Payout will go as follows:
(Payout subject to change due to cheating)
Winner: 55%
Runner Up: 20%
3rd Place: 10%
MVP (Player with most offensive points): 5%
Cy Young: (Player with most pitching points): 5%
Gold Glove: (Team with highest defensive WAR, according to Baseball Reference ): 5%