Disable the DL slot in Fantasy!

[bleach168]

I still don't understand why people even bother with the DL spot.

1) Sometimes one of your players gets a minor injury and are day-to-day. They aren't put on the DL, but in order to replace him you need to drop someone from your roster.

2) Sometimes one of your players gets a major injury and his team takes their time putting him on the DL because it's doesn't hurt his mlb team to rush things. But that will hurt your fantasy team in the meantime.

3) Sometimes one of your players gets injured and his team cannot immediately put him on the DL because they have reached their allowed limit.

4) When a player comes back from the DL, an astute fantasy owner doesn't have to activate him. He could leave him on the DL when the player isn't even on the DL in real life.

How many posts are we going to see this year asking "when is so-and-so going to be put on the DL so I can replace him?" I find these posts unacceptable because there is a solution to all these problems in fantasy baseball. All a commissioner has to do is eliminate the DL spot and replace it with a regular roster spot. I've done this the last two years in my leagues and have had no complaints.

[Nat Uralice]

So a player just rots on your bench for 2 weeks (or more)? Or a team may be forced to drop them? Injuries are part of the game and managing them is part as well, considering they are one of the few aspects beyond your managerial control. Also, in response to #3, how is it astute to let stats accumulate on your DL spot (i.e. worthless)? Plus, you can't make new roster changes if you leave him on the DL when he isn't eligible. Getting rid of the DL is ridiculous.

[Mordraken]

We have a DL slot, and have just increased it to two to help teams that are hit by the injury bug remain competitive.

The four examples you give are generally rare. Most of those cases are dealt with by using a bench slot to replace the injured player. But for those of us in career league, where we may not want to drop a Kerry Wood because he's out for half the year, a DL slot allows teams to maintain competitveness without waiving the rights to players.

It is also important for leagues that have relativley few bench slots where almost every player on a team is required to contribute. If you have an injured player, then your choices are to drop them and make them available to other teams in your league or keep him and be less competitve. The DL allows you to remain somewhat competitive (because you know that a waiver wire pickup isn't going to be as good as your drafted starter... ) without releasing good players to your competition.

The annoyance of seeing "when's this player going to be put on the DL" certainly isn't a reason to change that rule...

PS - Yahoo used to restrict daily transactions if you had someone on the DL who was not injured.... too bad they removed that restriction. As the Commish for my league, I striclty enfoce that by restricting daily transactions until the player is activated.

[CubsFan7724]

What about people who had Mark Prior in a keeper last year? No one is going to drop him because its a keeper, but if theres no DL they have to let him rot on the bench for a month or two and get no chance to replace him. Real Major League teams don't need to leave a roster spot open for their injured players, so why should fantasy teams? And true, you don't have to activate him, but you cant pick up anyone while he is DLed but not DLed in real life.

[EricF]

I think the DL is needed, just as it is in real baseball to allow an additional player on the active roster. In real baseball, when a team delays sending someone to the DL, the team is effectively operating with 24 players and it's a real hardship at times. In my league, I enabled 2 DL slots to help teams get by in tough times. In 2004 I drafted Larry Walker and Jose Reyes so that I would have them after their DL stints. Walker paid off, but Reyes strung me along for months. I only had one DL slot, so I could use it for one of them, but other players who went on the DL had nowhere to go.

[Nat Uralice]

One other quick point involving Prior was that he was on many "Can't Cut" lists last year (namely Yahoo's). Then having no DL spots would make a whole lot of sense...

[slomo007]

I think you guys are ignoring this part of his logic:

All a commissioner has to do is eliminate the DL spot and replace it with a regular roster spot. I've done this the last two years in my leagues and have had no complaints.

[Nat Uralice]

I think you guys are ignoring this part of his logic:

All a commissioner has to do is eliminate the DL spot and replace it with a regular roster spot. I've done this the last two years in my leagues and have had no complaints.

Then what's the difference?

[bleach168]

So a player just rots on your bench for 2 weeks (or more)? Or a team may be forced to drop them? Injuries are part of the game and managing them is part as well, considering they are one of the few aspects beyond your managerial control. Also, in response to #3, how is it astute to let stats accumulate on your DL spot (i.e. worthless)? Plus, you can't make new roster changes if you leave him on the DL when he isn't eligible. Getting rid of the DL is ridiculous.

#4 is astute because it allows a team which otherwise cannot carry an extra player to do so. The idea of having DL spots is to help teams that are hit by injuries. But teams that are healthy abuse the system often by picking up injured players just to stash them for future use.

And you can make lineup changes with healthy players on the DL. That's the abuse I'm talking about.

I'm advocating replacing the DL spot with a regular spot.

[slomo007]

I think you guys are ignoring this part of his logic:

All a commissioner has to do is eliminate the DL spot and replace it with a regular roster spot. I've done this the last two years in my leagues and have had no complaints.

Then what's the difference?

Adding an EXTRA roster spot in its place. It's actually not a bad idea.