Possible Rule Change

[Demreb]

Gentlemen of the CFCL -

In a recent dicussion with the DoorMatts, the subject of Minor Leaguers and their activation requirements came up. This conversation has been going on between us for the last year or so. Upon completion of the phone call, Matt sent me an e-mail where he laid out his proposal for activating Minor Leaguers.

Before I paste it below, I have to point out that anyone who thinks the DoorMatt front office is technologically challenged, should think again. The following was part of a FOUR PARAGRAPH e-mail. It arrived well before midnight the night of our dicussion so it didn't even take him that long to type.

I'd be careful everyone. I think Matt's playing possum on his computer literacy and doing MASSIVE amounts of research, statistical logorithms and multi-color spreadsheets for the new year.

[glow=red,2,300]If a team has a minor league player on his roster on opening day, and that player
is called up to the majors, the team can bring him up any time after May 15, without the
players contract converting to a D status untill the start the next season. The team will
still have the same X contract benefit after two seasons that we now have under the current
rule.The extra service time is only available to the team that drafted the player, and is
cancelled if the player is waived or traded.[/glow]

I like his idea, for what it's worth. The only question/issue I have is why the privelege is lost if a minor leaguer is traded or waived. First of all I think it would be almost impossible to track since we keep our minor leaguers for years on end (since we draft them out of the womb at times).

Secondly I think a team should be equally rewarded whether they scour the minor leagues to actually pick the player in the rotation draft or if they insist on a blue-chip prospect being included in a trade that might improve the CFCL team in years to come.

What are your thoughts?

[redhots]

I like Matt's idea as well but would agree with Rich in that I think the priveledge should not be lost if traded.

Short and sweet .02 as I change a diaper and get two other rugrats ready for bed.

[davidsruffins (archived)]

Hmmmm. Usually I'm all for rules that allow us to hang onto minor leaguers in perpetuity, but let me play Devil's Advocate for a moment. I think our rules strike a pretty good balance between owners hanging onto guys neither too long, nor not long enough. On the one hand, I'm sympathetic to Matt's point. An M guy gets promoted in July and the first year of the contract gets burned. On the other hand, the great and powerful David Wright (all hail, Wright) debuted with the Mets in mid-2004; he got his X year from me in 2006; I'll sign him long-term this year. Say I sign him for three more years. This means Wright is a Ruffin through 2009. Under our current rules, I control Wright for his first six years in the bigs. Under the new rules, six becomes seven, assuming I don't sign Wright for longer, like the CFCL-record 18-year contract I'm contemplating. (This would make David's our first 100V contract, pending what the Matts decide to do about Brad Hawpe.)

Now, I'm all for rewarding the scouting genius that led the Ruffin Director of Player Development to take a chance on a scrawny, 11-year old Dimitry Wrightinski, toiling away on his uncle's asparagus farm outside Tblisi, bringing him into the loving embrace of the nurturing Ruffin baseball academy while providing a steady diet of steroi...er, health supplements, Tom Emanski videos, and the finest the adult entertainment industry has to offer. But is giving an owner control of such star-type players -- since those are the only types of players we're talking about here -- for the first six-plus years of their careers something we want to do?

[Copperfields]

I'd like to offer an addendum to this rule: If adopted this spring, it should apply only to those minor leaguers drafted in 2007 and beyond. This potentially adds significant value to drafting and cultivating minor leaguers, and we currently have a wide disparity in the number and quality of minor leaguers currently owned (some teams have only 1, others have as many as 7). That means a few years down the road a team might have a quarter of his roster be filled with these bonus year players. That in itself might not be bad, but not all teams will have had the same opportunity.

[Demreb]

The Professor, as always, makes a sage argument. And David's addendum is well taken also. The one point I disagree with the Ruffins on is, it's not the David Wrights of the world that this rule would apply to (Wright would benefit, or more accurately, his CFCL team would benefit). Since Matt was the author of this, I will use my team as the example.

Let's use Corey Hart as the example. Corey tripped over 130 ABs this year (having had limited playing time in the majors the previous two seasons). At the end of this year I still don't know if he's a stud or a wannabe (and let's hope it's a wannabe since I just traded him and his cleats). I realize that if he was still mine I wouldn't have to worry about the X year for a while, but it's possible that after two more years of 250-300 ABs I still may not be sure what is going on. Matt's proposal would allow me an extra year to see if he's worth a long-term deal.

It just occured to me that we use ABs for activating a contract and not "years in the majors". So if this rule, or something like it, were adopted we may need to amend how we determine when a clock starts ticking.

[davidsruffins (archived)]

Good point, Rich. And I could still be convinced to make a change. However, when I suggested that the rule applies to guys like Wright, I meant that these are the types of players we're going to tie to one team for the first third of their careers. Yes, this gives you more time to decide on a guy like Hart. If he tanks, he goes back into the pool after the X contract year at the latest. If he hits it big, you lock him down with a long-term contract and a young stud, presumably, is controlled by one team for an even lengthier time than our rules already permit.

I'm not saying this is a bad thing, necessarily, but it is food for thought.

And, of course, if we decide to make this kind of change, Dave's suggestion of not allowing the rule to apply retroactively to minor leagueers selected before this April is a must.

[MGrage]

Chad Billingsley, Anibal Sanchez, Steven Drew, Lastings Milledge, Brian McCann, Ian Snell. In just the past two years, I lost a year of eligibility for each of them because they eeked over the minimum ABs/IP. I always hated that rule but last year was particularly brutal for me. My suggestion for a fix (if it's really needed) is to raise the minimums. Say something like 100 IP and 250 ABs. And eliminate the cumulative portion of the rule. I hate that rule. Mahalo

Matt

[Copperfields]

mgrage said:

My suggestion for a fix (if it's really needed) is to raise the minimums. Say something like 100 IP and 250 ABs. And eliminate the cumulative portion of the rule. I hate that rule.

It's worth pointing out that we've already given significant leeway in this area vs standard Rotisserie Ultra rules. Under the original constitution, you must activate a minor leaguer within two weeks of his call-up to the majors or waive him. I'm fairly certain the ability to leave the player on Reserve with an M contract until he loses Rookie status is a CFCL-specific modification. We can debate whether that it goes far enough, but it's important to note that we've already made fairly large concessions in freezing the clock for minor leaguers.

Many more comments coming later...

[stones]

In an effort to be succinct for once, I would not be in favor of changing this rule. I think our current rule is more than generous to the team owner and allows enough flexibility with contract status as it is.

If we do offer a further reward for the few speculative picks that turn out to be the next David Wright type player, then I feel that we should also add some sort of penalty for the picks that don't pan out and are cut later or waived in the winter.

[davidsruffins (archived)]

stones said:

If we do offer a further reward for the few speculative picks that turn out to be the next David Wright type player, then I feel that we should also add some sort of penalty for the picks that don't pan out and are cut later or waived in the winter.

Derrick Gibson, Earl Cunningham, Choo Freeman, Mike Bielecki...I could go on and on and on if I hadn't purged the vast majority of them from memory. The mind boggles at the magnitude of the penalties the Ruffins would have endured had we implemented such a system.

[Copperfields]

stones said:

I think our current rule is more than generous to the team owner and allows enough flexibility with contract status as it is.

I think Steve is right. In addition to doing away with the "activate within two weeks or waive him" rule that I metioned above, there are a number of other modifications we've made to make the CFCL more minor league friendly:

• In an "official" Ultra League, a minor leaguer's contract clock starts ticking on the day he is drafted in the Rotation Draft - just like any other player. There is no such thing as an M contract ... he receives a D contract on Draft Day and two years down the road his owner has to sign him long term or release him - whether he's played a single day in the majors or not. What d'ya think of that, Matt G?
  
• Not only did we create the M contract status so a minor leaguer's clock wouldn't start ticking until he came to the majors, but we also created the concession that states as long as his CFCL team doesn't activate him, he can keep the M status even while in the majors - as long as he still has rookie status.
  
• We created the X-contract to delay the long-term decision for a full year for former M contract players.
  
• In an "official" Ultra League, teams are permitted to keep 3 players on Reserve who still have Rookie status and have not been active on a Rotisserie League roster. However, even though these players are on Reserve, their contract advances a year. We on the other hand allow 4 M contract keepers on Reserve (or more than 4, at the expense of major league keepers). They retain M contract status, which keeps their clock frozen.
  

We've already made so many adjustments to enhance the minor league portion of the game. Do we really need to go yet one step farther?

[Copperfields]

Following on my post from a few minutes ago, I have a couple issues with this proposal.

First and foremost, I'm really against having a player on your active roster and still on an M contract. The way I read the proposed rule, you can have the player on your active roster and producing stats for 120 games and he'd still be on an M contract? That seems a bit excessive. Sure, it might not seem like much when you're talking about a Corey Hart who came up in mid-2005 for 57 not-so-hot ABs. But what about Ryan Howard who also got called up mid-2005 and proceeded to hit 22 HR and drive in over 60 runs? It's one thing if a player is producing in the major leagues, but his CFCL owner leaves him on the Reserve List in order to retain M contract status. That's a trade-off the CFCL owner is making of this year vs the future. But in my mind, once a guy starts contributing to his CFCL team's stats, his contract clock should be ticking.

I think we really need some clarification on what the intent behind this rule is - what it's trying to achieve.

Maybe it's just because Rich chose the Corey Hart example to illustrate the benefits of this proposal, but at first it appeared that it was to give owners a longer time to decide about long-term contracts. But isn't this what the X-contract rule already does?

Adding this extra 4-1/2 "free" months (May 15 thru the end of the season) on the front end of minor leaguer's CFCL career would mean the player could potentially have 440 major league games in the book before his CFCL owner needs to even think about an X-contract. For sake of illustration, Jose Reyes hasn't reached that point yet. Then, say his owner uses the X-contract option -- that could run the games played total up to 600 before a long-term contract has to be considered. Despite all he's accomplished, Miguel Cabrera still hasn't reached 600 games played in the majors yet. Can you imagine having Miguel Cabrera for his entire career to this point and still not have to decide about a long-term contract until 2008?

These are extreme examples - they assume the player is activated on May 15 and plays every game from then through the next 2 or 3 seasons, and certainly I cherry-picked players to emphasize my point - but I think that the current set of rules gives a reasonable amount of time before the long-term decision needs to be made. Is it always going to be clear-cut? No. But this game has never been about the automatic, clear-cut decisions. It's in those fuzzy gray areas where seasons are won and lost and that separate the boys from the older boys.

I'm not sure if the whole delaying of the LTC decision is the motiviation behind the rule though, because what it really does is allow teams to keep players they drafted as minor leaguers for a longer period of time, thereby getting more of their production in the majors (as the Professor points out). I'm not sure how I feel about that. As I posted previously, I think we've already gone a long, long way down the road toward extending the time teams can hang onto their minor leaguers and I'm wary of going further.

[MGrage]

copperfields said:

stones said:

I think our current rule is more than generous to the team owner and allows enough flexibility with contract status as it is.

I think Steve is right. In addition to doing away with the "activate within two weeks or waive him" rule that I metioned above, there are a number of other modifications we've made to make the CFCL more minor league friendly:

• In an "official" Ultra League, a minor leaguer's contract clock starts ticking on the day he is drafted in the Rotation Draft - just like any other player. There is no such thing as an M contract ... he receives a D contract on Draft Day and two years down the road his owner has to sign him long term or release him - whether he's played a single day in the majors or not. What d'ya think of that, Matt G?

To quote Private John Winger, "I think it sucks." Well, not really, but I really love that movie. Kudos to anyone who gets that reference.

I'm not sure the argument that if it's not an official Ultra rule, it's not good, really applies to our league. I'm too lazy to look it up but I'm sure there many other rules in our league that are different from the "official" Ultra rules. So I think that argument is a little disingenuous.

I was going to write a separate reply to Dave's next message, but I'll just add it here. I agree with most of what you say in your next post dude. I felt the original proposition went a little too far as well. That's why I suggested an alternative in my original post. I'm also not 100% sure that we need to make a change which is why I added that little parenthesis "(if it's really needed)" as well. I agree that having someone with an M contract accruing stats goes against the spirit of the league too. I'd be much more in favor of my addendum than the original.

Besides being George Brett's and Josh Beckett's birthday, May 15 is my birthday as well so I have a fondness for that date. Is that why you guys picked that date Rich? If so, I'm touched ...

Looking back on my last post, I probably shouldn't have said I hated that rule. It's very annoying sure, but I don't cry myself asleep ruing that rule. Sure, I'd like to see it modified, but it's not that terribly important. It sucks losing that year of eligibility and having to make a decision on a LTC a bit prematurely in some cases though.

So to sum up, I think the rookie limits are a little too low. I think the Bentel's new rule goes a little too far. I love Stripes. Mahalo

Matt

[Copperfields]

Matt,
Thanks for the comments/clarifications.

To add a clarification of my own - I wasn't trying to be disingenuous or to make the argument that if a rule isn't in the official Ultra Constitution it's no good - I don't think I ever suggested that. No one has championed more changes to the "official" rules than I have.

My only point was that we've already made significant and far-reaching changes to the "official" rules in order to make it easier to keep/evaluate minor leaguers and I'm not convinced that what we've already done isn't sufficient.

I may have some thoughts on an alternative to Matt B.'s suggestion, but would like to get clarification about the intent behind it before I post.

PS - I got the Stripes reference...

David

[Nick's Picts (archived)]

My own feeling is that we already do a lot in this league that minimizes owners' risks. Comparatively, there just isn't a whole lot of roster churn in the CFCL. I am all for rewarding owners who spend time researching young talent and for assembling rosters with a brace of under-valued players but, honestly, being able to hold on to 65% of one's roster year over year has some far-reaching consequences. Add in the concessions we already make for bringing along minor leaguers and it becomes clear why CFCL drafts experience inflation comparable to the Wiemar Republic fercryinoutloud.

Personally, I find David's arguments against this proposal compelling.