How to create your 2021 Rosters

[Brian (Blue Jays GM)]

Hi All,

Just wanted to provide a guide for how to roll over your rosters from 2020 to 2021 and also get a thread for people to publicly ask questions. The most important thing I can remind you of in this thread is that the 2020 season was only played out on Yahoo for fun and did not count towards our dynasty league (apologies to 2020 yahoo league champions the Orioles and Braves, you guys did an awesome job). The thread for posting 2021 rosters will be opened later this week. 

• Before posting your 2021 roster, please be sure to complete your post-draft additions and make a decision on shortening a veteran contract by 1 year. If you choose to do either of these, they must be completed in their respective threads before posting your 2021 roster. Submissions to either thread after your 2021 roster is posted will be denied
• Cost control players do not gain service time. All cost control players should be at the same salary and year of control that they were at when 2020 rosters were posted.
• Minor leaguers do not need to be called up based on 2020 playing time. You only need to call them up if they gained a year of service in 2019 or earlier and you failed to previously call them up
• Most free agent contracts should be extended by 1 calendar year. Contracts that were supposed to end in 2020 should now end in 2021, 2021 contracts should end in 2022, etc.
  There are 2 exceptions to this:
  
  1. We allowed each team to shorten 1 contract by 1 season. If you posted a player in that thread in baseball operations, do not extend their contract year. (Reminder: shortening a contract must be posted in the baseball operations thread before posting your roster for 2021)
  2. If you signed a player to a 1 year contract in 2020 Secondary Free Agency (NOT Primary, they are separate threads), that contract was for 2020 only and that player is now a free agent
• All salary coverage of veteran contracts should follow the same process as the contract itself. If the coverage was for 2020, it is now extended to 2021. If the coverage was for 2020 and 2021, it is now for 2021 and 2022. If the contract was shortened by a year, so is the coverage. Etc.
• Make sure your roster is complete. Do not forget to include your draft picks and post-draft additions from 2019 and 2020, include any primary free agents signed by your franchise for 2020, etc. (Reminder: Post-Draft additions must be posted before posting your roster for 2021)
• The salary cap for 2021 is $155 million and the roster limit remains at 80 players for 2021. If you are over either of these limits, you must fix it before posting your 2021 roster. You may do any of the following to fix it:
  
  1. Cut Minor Leaguers (clears a roster spot AND their salary)
  2. Non-Tender Cost Control Players (clears a roster spot AND their salary)
  3. Buy Out Veteran Contracts (clears a roster spot BUT you are responsible for their salary)

Please post in this thread if you have any further questions and a commissioner will provide clarification ASAP.

[Brian (Blue Jays GM)]

A good question came up in a PM that I want to publicly address here: Can you shorten salary coverage on a contract you traded but are still paying part of?

After discussing with the other commissioners, we've decided that salary coverage should follow the contract and only the team that owns the contract can choose to shorten it. If the team that owns the contract chooses not to shorten it, then you can't shorten your coverage of it. If the team that owns the contract chooses to shorten it by a year, then the salary coverage gets automatically shortened by a year. This does not count as your team's choice for shortening a contract so you may still shorten one of your own contracts.

I also need to point out that when a contract is shortened, it is the LAST year of the contract that comes off. If you're covering salary on that contract, you do not get out of any/all frontloaded dollars, just any coverage towards the last year of the contract.

[Brian (Blue Jays GM)]

Hi all,

Please get your 2021 rosters finished and posted in the official thread by 12/31 (10 days from now). We want to run the rule 5 draft in January, but in order to do that we need rosters posted and the commissioners need time to review and approve them.