It seems that most leagues I'm seeing now have a limit on the number of DL spots. Why? It seems that injuries are enough of a penalty to a team, if a team suffers multiple injuries at one time (which a couple of my teams did last year) then the limit increases the penalty. MLB doesn't limit the DL. Depending on the league the talent pool of replacements generally isn't that great so there isn't much to gain.
Teams will stash guys on the DL if they have open spots. If a player had to come of the DL once he was off the DL in real life it would be different but the way Yahoo is set you can't do any transactions with a non-DL player on the DL. Nothing else is forcing you to take him off the DL.
fewer or no DL spots just adds talent to the FA pool; managers have to decide to keep an injured player stashed or drop him or another bench player. Years ago CBS had a problem where once guys came off the DL you could continue to leave them on the DL; maybe it is still that way. We decided to add a bench spot and eliminate the DL spots altogether. I was against the idea in the beginning, but everyone adjusted and it forces you to make tough decisions who to hold and who to cut loose.When you do have an injury, at least there are options in the FA pool for replacements and not sitting onh some other teams bench.I was totally against the no DL spots in our league at first, but it has worked out ok and helped add some options in the FA pool when you need to add a replacement
I guess all the leagues I've been in have had commissioners that will drop the player coming off the DL if you don't activate him after a set period of time.
get a good commish who will monitor it so you can have unlimited DL spots. My league allows you to keep a player on the DL for one full calendar week after he was activated before being automatically dropped.
From my view the more DL spots the weaker the free agent pool. The league that I commission has 5 bench spaces and 2 DL spots, so it can be pretty slim pickings in the free agent pool, which really sucks if one of your starters has a season ending injury. I've lobbied to decrease the size without success! If I could do it over, I would reduce the roster size to keep good free agents out there, as I think it gives hope to more teams.
Ragoczy wrote:It seems that most leagues I'm seeing now have a limit on the number of DL spots. Why? It seems that injuries are enough of a penalty to a team, if a team suffers multiple injuries at one time (which a couple of my teams did last year) then the limit increases the penalty. MLB doesn't limit the DL. Depending on the league the talent pool of replacements generally isn't that great so there isn't much to gain.
Thanks for your input!
Actually there is a DL limit in MLB. Guys on the 15-day DL count towards the 40 man roster. That is why you see guys transferred to the 60-day DL who do not count towards the 40 man roster. The DL's aren't entirely unlimited in MLB.
In ESPN, once you put a DL-eligible player on the DL, you can keep him there as long as you want, but you won't be able to use him on your roster, and more importantly, you won't be able to add/drop or make trades as long as a now-healthy player is still on the DL.
Two DL players seems to be the number I see on my other leagues and it really does add another layer to the strategy, especially of you have a limited bench as well (3-5 each guys). It's pretty fun actually, to see who bites first, lol.
DL spots are for storing guys with injury. Unfortunately, if there are too many DL spots, my experience has been that managers will use them like bench spots to store DL guys currently on waivers/free agency. That somewhat defeats the purpose of DL spots.
Strategically, I prefer less bench and DL spots. It should be just enough for management but not so many that it forces the managers to manage their teams strategically.
My league allows unlimited DL slots, but add a concept of "attachment": a DL player is "attached" to a replacement, so when the DL player comes back, the owner has until the 2nd move deadline after the player returns to activate the DL player or he becomes a free agent.
Without some sort of limit for how long people can stay on the DL, it effectively becomes just another bench spot, and thus dilutes the free agent pool.
Heck, the old IR list in the NBA was used as exactly that, so the league got rid of it. And then in my basketball league, we did the same: we added another bench spot, but then you had no more IR status.
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by Ragoczy » Thu Jan 24, 2013 1:02 pm 
