I'd like to start minor league rosters in my league

[cards05]

I am the commissioner of a keeper league and we have always discussed having minor league rosters. Could you guys describe to me how your minor league rosters work, or even better, PM me a copy of your by-laws. Any help/advice you could give would be much appreciated. Thanks.

[kbarre]

I'll give you a rundown of our league and our system. I'm sure we have minor flaws, but it's worked out perfectly. We use Yahoo for the MLB league.

Yahoo, weekly head to head, 14 categories, etc, 12 team league, super competitive. 28 roster spots, and that includes a whole bunch of bench players...teams do not need to carry a full 28 man roster.

1. We have our normal Yahoo team of MLB players. We have our draft and we have two "open" spots on our major league roster.

2. We are allowed to keep AS MANY MLB players as we want each season. A player classifies as a MLB player the second he gets a single AB at the MLB level. If you keep 16, then you start "really" drafting in round 17...

3. We do a minor league 10 round draft BEFORE the MLB draft each year. 10 Rounds, and teams can choose to keep as many of their previous minor leaguers as they want. For example, if I liked 5 of my minor leaguers from last year, I would start my drafting in round 6 of the draft because I decided to use my first 5 picks on the guys I chose to keep. T his year, I kept 4 minor league guys from last season. I began drafting in round 5. Make sense? Needless to say, I didn't get DiceK (he classified as a minor leaguer because he had not thrown a big league pitch yet). Somebody got a nice one there, but they had to drop all of their previous minor leaguers to go and get him. It was also "discussed" that Roger Clemens could be a minor league guy because he had not been in the majors last season. That didn't fly.

4. So here we are with a minor league 10 man system and a 26 man with 2 open spot MLB team. We don't compile minor league stats, but instead use it as a feeder for our MLB squad.

5. When a Minor League guy gets the call, and yahoo finally freakin' gets them into the database, we use gentlemen's ettiquette and ask that the owner pick up their guy within a reasonable amount of time (within a week). The owner uses one of their 2 "open" slots to put them on their team. Make sense?

6. If that minor leaguer is only up for 2 weeks, and then gets sent back down, the owner is allowed to send them BACK to their minor league system. A player can only be DRAFTED in the minor league draft if he has no MLB experience. However, players can be moved back and forth once they are drafted and on someone's roster....but they can't be sitting down in your minor league system if they are up at the big show....I can't have Matt Stairs down there when he's raking 2B's and eating donuts at the major league level.

7. This year I picked up Scott Baker off the waiver wire of my major league team. Once Minnesota sends him back down, I can move him down there even though I didn't draft him outta the minors OR majors.

8. The most Minor League guys you can have in your system at any given time is 12. 10 draftees, and 2 guys you may have picked up along the way throughout the major league season. An owner may NOT pick up a minor leaguer that's hot in the Arizona league. They must wait until next year's minor league draft to get that player. In other words, once the draft is done, no dropping and picking up of minor leaguers, unless it's a guy who was at the MLB level and you get him off the WW and then he gets sent back down by the parent club.

9. An owner may not pick up someone at the MLB level with the only goal of putting him on their minor league roster (this is super filled with loopholes though, and I don't like it). That same guy who complained about clemens simply drafted him in the major league draft and then put him down in his minor league system. He had a legitimate reason to do that, but I didn't agree. The Rocket ain't no minor leaguer.

10. Minor League guys can be included in trades at both levels. I just traded Ben Sheets, Carlos Gomez, and Matt Garza for Alfonso Soriano, for example. Garza is on my minor league team, but now he just moves over to the other guys' minor league team....provided he's under 12.

11. We have a separate minor league commissioner. He makes a spreadsheet with all of the rosters. When an owner makes any movement of guys on his minor league squad to his major league squad and vice-versa, he must notify that commish via email and by a post on the yahoo league site.

12. If an owner has a whole bunch of minor leaguers start making it the bigs, then that owner has some serious decisions to make. Our major league rosters don't expand to make room. If that owner wants to keep all of his prospects, then he's going to have start dropping major league guys to make room for them. This is cool because it promotes minor league draft strategy. If you know you have a stacked MLB roster with no room for prospects, well then you better draft minor leaguers that have a few years to make it to the show...otherwise when they all start getting the call, you're dropping quality players to make room for them. Make sense?


I'm sure there are much better systems out there, but ours works great, and I'm in a highly competitive league with high stakes. We did it on the fly, honestly, and we were all gentlemen about it. Whenever a question or problem arose, we voted as a league on new resolutions.

If you need to see a copy of some of our rules, instant message me at KTB5050 on AIM.

Thanks!
KEvin

[Savoy Special]

We just added minors to our keeper league. We are a regular Yahoo league that had 8 keepers. When we decided to add minor leaguers, we changed it to 10 keepers per year.
Our minors roster we made pretty simple: 4 man minors roster and you could only draft players with NO MLB experience. You are not allowed more than 4 minor leaguers at any one time. If you promote one MiL player up, then you cannot add another player (unless trade) until the following pre season when we do our draft again. We run the draft each year in March.
Owners must promote minor leaguers to their active roster once they exceed the rookie status (50 IP or 130 AB).
We wanted to keep it very simple as it was our first year doing it.
Hopefully this helps.

[cards05]

Wow. I couldn't have imagined two better replies. This sort of gives two options at the end of the spectrum and should allow us to customize as our interests dictate. Thanks very much.

[raiders_umpire]

VIII. Minor Leagues
A “minor league” player is any player that has not exceeded his MLB rookie eligibility limits (meaning a player with less than 130 at-bats or 50 innings pitched in the Major Leagues—we do not track players against the 45 day “service time” limit, only the AB and IP limits). Each team may have 7 players on their minor league roster.
Following each year’s Twincoasts major league draft, a seven-round minor league draft will be held. Each team’s minor league keepers from the prior season will be drafted in the first rounds of the minor league draft. Owners who end the season with less than the allotted number of minor league keepers will not be able to pick up additional minor leaguers until after the following year’s minor league draft is completed.
Unclaimed minor leaguers can be claimed during the regular season by contacting the league commissioner or posting on the Yahoo message board. Transactions will be posted by the commissioner, and released minor leaguers may be claimed by posting to the league site or contacting the commissioner after a 24 hour waiver period following the posting. Minor leaguers claimed by multiple owners will be awarded to the owner with the highest waiver priority, but the moves will not affect the owner’s waiver position.
Owners are responsible for checking the minor league roster list (usually maintained as the commissioner’s note on the Yahoo league website) before they make any pickup, major league or minor league. If an owner claims (either for their major league roster or their minor league roster) a player who is on another team’s minor league roster, the player they have dropped to do so will be officially dropped, available to any owner off of waivers like a normal major or minor league free agent. No reinstatements will be made.
If called up to the majors, players on a team’s minor league roster may be picked up only by their designated owner. They can be shuttled between that owner’s major and minor league roster provided there is space on those rosters.
Minor league players who are called up and use their MLB rookie designation can be considered minor leaguers for the duration of that season but will not be available to be kept as one of the 3 minor league keepers at the end of the season.
Players selected in the ongoing season’s amateur draft, or playing overseas during the current season, may not be picked up by an owner until the following season’s Twincoasts minor league draft (or thereafter)

[speedy27]

Here's how we do ours. We play in a 7x7 H2H keeper (keep 10 players including all minor leaguers). We can pick up any player (minor leaguer, college, high school) at any time during the season with no limits to add/drops for our minor league players. Hope this helps!


Minor League Roster
Each team may have up to 15 Minor League Players on their roster
Minor League Batters must have less than 400 Career At Bats for Batters
Minor League Starting Pitchers must have less than 200 IP to be eligible
Minor League Relief Pitchers must have less than 100 IP or less than 20 saves to be eligible
Minor League Swingmen (eligible at SP and RP) lose their eligibility at 100 IP
Once a player exceeds the eligibility for Minor League status, that player must be either brought up to the Major League Roster, be cut from the teams roster or be traded. This must be accomplished by the beginning of the next scoring period once their Minor League eligibility has expired.

[Philly_05]

This is how we do ours... 12 team Fantsy Point league with 25 man rosters with 10 team minor league rosters and 5 DL spots. Keep 10 major league keepers each year and 5 minor league guys..

Minor League Roster of 10 players, who must satisfy the Farm requirements given in Section 2.

# Players qualify for the minor league (or farm) roster as follows:

*

If a hitter, the player must not have more than 500 MLB appearances or more than 1000 MLB at-bats.
*

If a pitcher, the player must not have more than 100 MLB appearances or more than 50 MLB starts.

#

During the season, managers may adjust their active/reserve/farm rosters as often as they like so long as the roster does not violate the limits described above. All rosters are tracked by Sandbox. In order for a player to receive points for a game, the player must be in the official SBX Lineup by the deadline set by Sandbox (start time for first game of the day).
#

During the off-season, rosters must be cut down to 25 players on November 1 of each year and all keepers must be named by February 15 in accordance with Article VII. The commissioner shall track rosters during the off-season.
#

Managers suspecting a roster eligibility violation should notify the league commissioner or his designee, who will apply article IX.

Players kept as minor league keepers must satisfy the farm roster requirements. Additionally, two of these must satisfy the MLB Rookie requirements (less than 130 AB and less than 50 IP).

[stealthdevil]

This is the Baseball Constitution we go by.
We set teams up in Yahoo, but keep up with our rosters on another site.

League Settings:
16 Teams
2 Leagues(NL and AL)
4 Divisions (AL West, AL East, NL West, NL East)

Minor League rosters will have no personell limit, but will have a special
salary cap stipulation, explained below.

Salary Cap

The MLB will use a soft $100 cap, meaning that cash can be used in trade. However, at the end of each season a Salary Cap rollover will be implemented. The rollover works thusly:

Each season, all salary caps will be reverted back to the original cap of $100. If any given team(s) has traded for cap, giving them a salary cap above the original $100, they will recieve rollover.
Rollover= Half of total amount that exceeds $100 from
previous season.
This means that if Team A trades for $6 from Team B, Team A will have a salary cap of $106 and Team B will have a cap of $94. At the end of the season, Team B's salary cap will revert back to the original $100 to begin the next season, and Team A's salary cap will be $103 to begin the next season:
$106(end of the year salar ycap)-$100(original salary cap)=$6; $6 divided by 2=$3; $3(rollover from previous season)+$100(original salary cap)=$103

There is no minor league roster limit and no minor league salary cap, however, there is a Minor Leauge Luxury Tax Limit. You may spend $37 in minor league money with no penalty, but for every 3 additional dollars spent over the $37, you will pay $1 of MLB salary.

Drafts

The MLB draft will consist of 23 rounds. In order to determine the salay of drafted players, a scale based on actual MLB salaries will be used:

0-.49 Million = $1
.5-1 Million = $2
2-3 Million = $3
4-5 Million = $4
6-7 Million = $5
8-9 Million = $6
10-11 Million = $7
12-13 Million = $8
14-15 Million = $9
16-17 Million = $10
18-19 Million = $11
20+ Million = $12

If a player has a real MLB salary of $3,500,000, round up to make their salary $4. If a player has a real MLB salary of $3,499,999, round down to make their salary $3.

This link will be used to determine player salaries:
http://asp.usatoday.com/sports/baseball ... &year=2005

If a player is not listed, their salary will be $1.

After the Draft you will get to assign your players contract lengths. You have a certain amount of Multiple Year deals to assign:

Contract lengths(all are maximums, not minimums):
3 five year contracts
4 four year contracts
5 three year contracts
6 two year contracts
Unlimited 1 year contracts

The Minor draft is 15 rounds and the salary scaling will be:

Rounds 1-3= $3
Rounds 4-7= $2
Rounds 8-15= $1
=$25

You will also get to assign your minor league players to certain contract lengths. Those will be:

7 five year contracts
6 four year contracts
5 three year contracts
Unlimited 2 year contracts
Unimited 1 year contracts

A minor leaguer will be defined as any player with less than 200 MLB AB's and 100 IP and 45 Games Pitched for RP's.