Need for owners?

[Giants GM (Ron)]

Red Sox for sure. Mariners? They have two trades from November one with the Braves and one with the Twins that have not been processed on Fantrax. I have asked the Twins and Braves to post the trade on Fantrax for the Mariners acceptance. The Braves indicated they would tonight. Do we have someone who can accept these trades for the Mariners?

[Giants GM (Ron)]

Mariners also need to pick up prospects Sam Travis 2nd rd 2014/2015 and Justin Twine 3rd rd 2014/2015 on Fantrax.

[Deleted]

I hate to break it to you Ron but there's a million players in the wrong places on fantrax

[Giants GM (Ron)]

Grant holmes too. Yes I know Seth and I have gone through 26 of the 30 teams and let them know what has to be done. You can lead a horse to water but... I'm not sure what your comment was intended to mean but if there were a million I am asking that that number be reduced by the above three. Or should I just mind my own team and not worry about it? I thought the idea was to split the work among many to reduce the load.

[Deleted]

I'm sorry if that came off rude, all I'm saying is fantrax isn't that hard of a fix, there's still a ton of free agents to sign, I think if players are still displaced after free agency is over and there's a week until opening day then we can be concerned. I just don't think it's that big of a deal right now.

[Giants GM (Ron)]

I agree. But I just want it out there that there are some FA out there that need to be picked up or trades that need to be processed. Since I am unable to do it I just want everyone to know so that whoever has those capabilities can take care of it when they get the time.

On another note, In going through the teams I have found that most teams are pretty good at keeping their active roster up on Proboards, not quite as good as Fantrax and the team roster on the spreadsheet and non-existent when it comes to updating the spreadsheet Master List tab. It is my feeling that this tab was created because CBS did not have a complete database of players. I have to this point updated each as of the date reflected. There have been changes since those dates that have not been reflected. Since Fantrax does I would suggest we no longer need to update that tab sine it only duplicates what Fantrax shows. We still should update the individual team roster tabs since these flow to the Salaries tab and give us a snapshot of cap and player counts. I have used this to find errors in my own Proboards roster versus the spreadsheet roster.

[Angels GM (Jason)]

I have no issues with ridding the spreadsheet of the master list because of fantrax's deep player pool. I know in the past we have Iimplemented a rule stating any player not picked up by a team that has an owner by opening day becomes a FA, should this be done again?

[Deleted]

Well, considering the rules state 72 hours, not 72 days...

I'm just saying, if you have 72 hours written in the rules for picking up your players, it needs to be enforced. If you don't enforce it, what's the use of having the rule? In my humble opinion, either the commissioners need to come down hard on this by the beginning of the season and continue to enforce it or change the rules to allow one week or two weeks or whatever. Yes, this is a casual league to a certain degree, and the commissioners don't want to look like hard-asses, but there needs to be some sort of enforcement. Otherwise you get to where we are now, where managers feel comfortable saying "ah, I'll do it later."

In other words, don't make me a commissioner; no one would like me.

[Giants GM (Ron)]

I agree with Shawn about enforcing the rules. If we can get Fantrax up to date then every player not on a team is fair game. Lose a player that way and it will wake you up. I learned the hard way, but the right way. LOL I would say opening day to enforce the rule to give me enough time to get caught up.

[Deleted]

But how do you enforce that? Say a team signs a player to a large contract in free agency, doesn't pick him up by the deadline we decide...do we still make him pay for that contract or do we wipe it entirely off the books? Couldn't teams use this as a loophole to get out of bad contracts if a player gets hurt a few days after he signed him?

[Deleted]

Mar 2, 2015 15:45:04 GMT -5 @seth said:

But how do you enforce that? Say a team signs a player to a large contract in free agency, doesn't pick him up by the deadline we decide...do we still make him pay for that contract or do we wipe it entirely off the books? Couldn't teams use this as a loophole to get out of bad contracts if a player gets hurt a few days after he signed him?

Well, here is the unmodified text (prior to my changes), from this rules post:

Be careful to not exceed your salary cap. If this occurs, the commissioner’s office will send you an email mandating that your team make arrangements to waive players in order to bring the current salary within your team’s salary cap. You will have only 72-hours to do this. If you fail to comply, the League Office will automatically drop your most recently signed player to free agency in order to bring your team under the required salary cap maximum. Or if you sign someone and you don't place him on your 45 man roster within 72 hours he becomes a free agent again. At this point the League Office will notify the league of the player who has recently become a free agent and list them under the area title “Player Releases”.

It's old (note the mention of a 45-man roster), but as it's currently written, the intention seems to be the player is lost but the team isn't on the hook for the contract. That is not explicitly stated.

1. Should the team also be on the hook for the contract, or is losing the player enough enforcement? I can't help but lean towards the latter.

2. Is there room for this to be abused? As you mention, there is. But in the scenario you propose, a newly-signed player would have to get injured in three days and the franchise owner would then have to use the "loophole" to not be responsible for the player. Or perhaps the franchise owner has a change of heart and wants to go after another player. I suppose this gives an owner three days to renege on their contract obligation. It seems low-risk, but it could happen. I suppose then the constitution would then need to be revised to make clear what would happen. For example:

"If you acquire a player and you don't place him on your Fantrax roster within 72 hours after the transaction has been approved or confirmed, the player becomes a free agent again, and you will be held responsible for X amount of the contract."

Responsible for half the contract total? Less than half? The AAS of the contract for one year? I think the middle ground is the last one. So if you sign A.B. Smith to a three-year contract with an AAS of $12.0M, and you don't pick up the player in time, you lose the player and are responsible for $12.0M for the year, with no further obligation later. This works in case someone backloads their contract and makes the front light.

[Deleted]

I personally think we should extend the picking up window to at least 5 days to a week...sometimes people have too much going on during the weekend.

What if, to try to prevent people from having a change of heart on a contract signing, we made it that if after the period to pick up a player expires, they cannot bid on the next week of free agent signings? I don't know if it really matters much in season since there isn't consistent week to week bidding but if starting next offseason we are stricked with offseason fantrax...this could be a punishment. I personally don't think enforcing fantrax during the offseason should be a requirement but if that's the route you want to take, maybe this would work.

[Deleted]

We should notify the team/s of the player/s that need to be picked up, then set a 72 hour clock from the next time they sign on after the pm was sent.