Potential League Changes

[Brian (Blue Jays GM)]

Hi All,

After the last couple polls, I wanted to give a quick update on where the league is headed and what the commissioners are thinking based on your feedback. As of now, the plan is for the league to continue as is (no re-boot) with 30 teams (no contraction), but we need your help to fill the 2 vacancies in order to make this continue as a 30 team league. Please reach out to whoever you can to help us fill those 2 spots. If the 2 spots can not be filled, we will have to re-consider contraction alternatives.

With the goal of continuing with 30 teams, the commissioners are mainly focusing on changes for the 2021 season. Here are a few things we have in mind:

1) As Jon mentioned in the 2020 yahoo rosters thread, we are not counting 2020 in calculating player service times. All rosters will roll forward into 2021, and all contracts will be extended by 1 year. We will offer the option to GMs to shorten 1 veteran contract with multiple years remaining by 1 year. Players with 1 year remaining will not be eligible to have their contracts shortened.

2) We are still looking into possible solutions to promote competitive balance and possibly talent re-distribution. If you have a proposed solution, please PM these to both Jon and myself.

3) We are exploring the option of migrating from Yahoo to Fantrax, which can accommodate deep minor league rosters, draft pick ownership, eliminate the need for maintaining official rosters outside of our scoring system, and allow for 1 30-team league with some AL vs NL matchups (adding to the realism factor of a 30 team league). Pulling this off does include premium features that cost $80 per season to host the league. We will not enforce mandatory contribution towards this fee, but if anyone would like to voluntarily contribute, it would be greatly appreciated. Please reach out to me privately for details.

4) As I'm sure many people have noticed, chatango has become less accessible and is even being deprecated from several common web browsers. While it's always been great to have a chat box on our forum, technological evolution seems to be pushing us away from this platform going forward. One solution I'd like to encourage is the use of our league facebook group, which many of you are not currently a part of. Having the facebook group will facilitate continued public and private chat functionality going forward. If you are not currently a member, please join us in the group. You can access it here: www.facebook.com/groups/193185361114296

5) For 2020, we are running the Yahoo leagues with one change, the roster limit is now 30 players instead of 25 to reduce the weekly work of processing yahoo moves on the commissioners.

Speaking of commissioners...

6) With Ben stepping down from his role, the AL had a co-commissioner vacancy that needed to be filled. I am thrilled to announce that Nick (Orioles GM) has accepted a promotion to AL Co-Commissioner! Since joining us in 2013, Nick has proven himself to be a very detail oriented GM, a great recruiter of new GMs for the league, and a huge help in administering the draft every summer. Please join me in congratulating him on this well-deserved promotion.

[Oren (Diamondbacks GM)]

I would explore different chat boxes other than chatango rather than just the FB!

[Brian (Blue Jays GM)]

Jul 14, 2020 9:27:11 GMT -5 Oren (Diamondbacks GM) said:

I would explore different chat boxes other than chatango rather than just the FB!

Any particular one you'd suggest? The problem with chatango seems to be that it's based in Flash and browsers like chrome and firefox don't support the Flash plugin anymore so if you have a solution that isn't Flash based, I'm all ears.

[Oren (Diamondbacks GM)]

I can do a bit of research sometime in the next couple of weeks!

[Charlie (Red Sox GM)]

Have you guys ever heard of the Discord app? You can get it on your phone or any PC and it's amazing for fantasy leagues. You can DM on there to talk trade, have multiple channels to talk and give custom roles.

[Oren (Diamondbacks GM)]

Discord is amazing! Takes some getting used to, though.

[Toy (Braves GM)]

Could create a Slack thread.

[Micah (White Sox GM)]

There is also GroupMe

[Jon (Astros GM)]

Hello all. An update to the filling of the two teams. We would like to have our amateur draft in August or September. Ideally we would like to have both teams filled before that draft. If we set a draft date and have no gotten those teams filled, we will look at contraction again. The league spoke and although it was close, the majority wants to continue as a 30 team league. But reality is if we cannot find a way to fill them, we will most likely need to contract anyway.

The AL East and West would have an advantage with having “dead” teams to play. Each team that got to play them twice would also get an advantage. Obviously I am taking about next season in terms of schedule. But the point is that it isn’t fair that some teams will be getting potentially two extra wins per season. Which is why contraction was brought up initially. We have had an inability to recruit and have a full league for many years. I know many fellow GM’s that have brought people in and have worked out. So what I’m asking is, if you want to keep this league full at 30, try and find some people to join. We could definitely use the help in find a couple quality GM’s.

Thanks everyone!

[Toy (Braves GM)]

Putting out some feelers. Fingers crossed.