We are now recruiting owners for Season 2 of the "Devious Weasel League." This league is a tribute to biglenr, who built some of the most creative themes while he was active on this site. He ran a theme like this several years ago, it was a ton of fun, and I resurrected it this year. We're just finishing up season 1, and I am making a few tweaks to the rules to keep things interesting for season 2.
If you’ve come this far, please keep reading…this will be a theme league adventure like no other.
But read carefully.... This is a difficult league to understand. It's INTENSELY fun to draft, and a lot of fun to play.
The most important concept is: You will get screwed over.
The corollary to that concept is: You will screw over others.
If you can accept those conditions, you are in business. If not, there's probably an open league or a $255m league you can play where you won't have to make tough choices.
Now that you know you will be hosed, and that you will hose others....The big question is how?
24 owners will sign up in the forums. Upon signup, owners will nominate one position player and one pitcher.
The position player must:
-- Have at least 10 WIS-eligible seasons (seasons means seasons, not versions. 1989 Rickey Henderson is 1 season, not 4)
-- Have at least 1 season with a salary of $6M or greater
The pitcher must:
-- Have at least 10 WIS-eligible seasons
-- Have at least 1 season with a salary of $7M or greater
All exclusive players from season 1 will be blacklisted (these players will be listed in the next post). This blacklist only applies for the purposes of selecting the 24 exclusive position players and 24 exclusive pitchers for season 2. Once all players have been chosen, and franchise-decades have been assigned, owners CAN use any season 1 blacklist player on their rosters. Owners CAN NOT use anyone else's season 2 exclusive players on their rosters. So for example, since Kirby Puckett was an exclusive player in season 1, he may not be nominated as an exclusive player in season 2. However, if someone is assigned the 1976-1985 Twins as their franchise decade in round 5 of the draft (described below), they MAY use Puckett if they so choose.
Once 24 owners are in and all exclusive players have been nominated, we will have a 6 round serpentine draft, with random order generated from random.org (I will ask a well known HOF owner who is not in the league to generate the draft order.)
The draft will proceed as follows:
Round 1 (1-24) Select your exclusive position player from the list of 24. Exclusive means exclusive. No one else can have any version of this player on their team.
Round 2 (24-1) In this round you will do two things. You will select your exclusive pitcher, and you will assign a season for the exclusive position player for the owner who drafts after you. So owner 24, drafting first in this round, will assign a season for the exclusive position player chosen by owner 23 in round 1. Owner 1, drafting last in this round, will assign a season for the exclusive position player chosen by owner 24 in round 1. As with the position player, your exclusive pitcher is exclusive to you. No one else can have any version of that pitcher on their team.
Round 3 (1-24) In this round, you will assign a season for the exclusive pitcher for the owner who drafts after you. So owner 1, drafting first in this round, will assign a season for the exclusive pitcher chosen by owner 2 in round 2. Owner 24, drafting last in this round, will assign a season for the exclusive pitcher chosen by owner 1 in round 2.
Round 4 (24-1) Assign an exclusive park (from the list posted below) to the owner who drafts 12 slots after you. So owner 24, drafting first in this round, will assign an exclusive park to owner 12. Owner 23 will assign a park to owner 11, etc. Owner 12 will assign a park to owner 24, owner 11 will assign to owner 23, etc.
At this point we will have done four rounds, and each owner will have screwed 2 other owners, and been screwed by them in return.
Round 5 (1-24) Assign an exclusive franchise-decade to an owner of your choice. Obviously each owner can only be assigned 1 franchise-decade. So owner 1, drafting first in this round, will assign an exclusive franchise-decade to any owner he chooses. Owner 2 will pick another owner and do the same, etc.
For this round we will allow owners to choose any 10-consecutive-year period (from 1885-2014) for the franchise they assign. The franchise must have been active for all 10 of those seasons. We will use www.baseball-reference.com as the definitive source for franchise lineage. Again, franchise-decades are exclusive; there can be no overlap with any other franchise-decade.
But choose carefully, because in round 6 turnabout once again becomes fair play.
Round 6 (order does not matter). The owner to which you have assigned a franchise-decade may choose any player-season from that franchise-decade and assign it back to you. You must roster this player, and he must get at least as many PA/162 (or IP/162 if a pitcher) as he had in real life.
So for example, if in round 5 an owner assigns me the 1976-85 Twins, I can choose in round 6 to assign him 1985 Kirby Puckett in return. He must then use '85 Puckett, and Kirby must get 744 PA for him, or else his team is ineligible for the playoffs.
After that, rules will be the same as season 1:
- No AAA, No WW, No trades, No DH, No Clones, no live play
- injuries on (be sure you draft enough PA/IP, especially if you get dealt one of those nasty offense-heavy parks)
- Random realignment
- $80m cap
- Your roster must include THREE players (the exclusive position player you chose in round 1, the pitcher you chose in round 2, and the player who was assigned to you in round 6). ALL 3 of those players must meet or exceed their real-life PA/162 or IP/162 totals. (EDIT: Up to a maximum of 750PA or 500IP...I don't want anyone completely doomed to fail right out of the gate by getting saddled with, say, Billy Hamilton's 1894 season where he has 860 PA/162. If you get assigned such a season, you need to "only" get 750PA for your player.). If any of the three fail to do so, your team is ineligible for the playoffs. In the event a team wins enough games to make the playoffs, but any of their three players fail to match/exceed their required PA/162 or IP/162, the forfeited playoff spot will go to the team with the next-best record from the same league (most wins not already in the playoffs). Tiebreaker will be Expected Winning Percentage as found in the advanced standings…so a small but important incentive for no one to play silly games with fatigued players. In the extremely unlikely event that we still have a tie, we will use random.org to decide the winner.
-- Other than those 3 players, your ENTIRE roster must be made up of players from the franchise-decade assigned to you in round 5. You MAY use a version of the player you assigned back in round 6, but not that exact season. So continuing with my example from above, if I am assigned the 1976-85 Twins in round 5, and choose 1985 Puckett to give back in round 6, then my entire roster (other than the 3 exclusive players) must come from the 1976-85 Twins. I can use 1984 Puckett, but not the 1985 version, on my team. IMPORTANT NOTE: Exclusive player trumps franchise-decade. For example, if I have the 1976-85 Twins and someone has (hypothetically) chosen Rod Carew as their exclusive player in round 1, I may not use ANY version of Carew on my team.
- Although this is unlikely, it is possible that in round 5 we could come down to the final slot and have an owner needing to self-assign a franchise-decade. Obviously this cannot be allowed, so if necessary I may require the owner picking 23rd in that round to assign a franchise-decade to a specific owner, in order to avoid this possibility
- Lastly, although this is also unlikely, we do need a rule to prevent collusion, or in case someone just doesn’t get the concept. The idea of this theme is to make things difficult for other owners. So no one should be assigning (in round 5) a great franchise-decade, or (in round 6) giving out a player-season that will be dominant at an 80M cap. If 3 or more owners object to any of the choices made, we will put those selections to a league-wide vote (majority rules). Hopefully this will be unnecessary.
7/8/2015 1:11 PM (edited)