This thread is intended for owners to discuss any simple changes to the rules for the new Franchise Progressive With Farm System.  Nothing that will fundamentally alter the theme concept, but potential tweaks to the details.

Concept:  Start with 24 20 of the real franchises and their 1977 rosters.  In subsequent seasons, each franchise gets the rookies who really came up with that team.  For example, Oakland gets Dwayne Murphy and others in 1978, Rickey Henderson and others in 1979, etc, eventually getting McGwire and Canseco...  The rookies are assigned based on their first team during their first WIS-eligible season.  This is a WIS version of mimicking the real-life farm systems for each franchise.  

Contraction Draft and Rookie Drafts: For the two six franchises that are not claimed in 1977, their players are all eligible for an initial draft - sort of a "contraction draft" compared to the real-life 1977.  In subsequent seasons, their rookies are draft eligible.  So for example if no one selects the Detroit Tigers franchise, then Lou Whitaker, Alan Trammell, and Lance Parrish will all be draft-eligible in 1978.  The contraction draft will go in reverse order of the franchises' real-life 1977 winning percentages, or maybe a composite 1977-1981 winning percentage - that can be discussed after we get enough owners signed up. Edit: Reverse order (worst to first) of a franchise's total wins, 1977-1981, with 1977 double counted.

Obviously the rookie draft will never be very deep, since the rookies will only come from two six franchises until the expansions of 1993 and beyond.  Rookie draft order will be set by your franchise's sim winning percentage compared to its real-life winning percentage.  If your team over-performs compared to real-life, it gets rewarded with better draft position.  This should discourage tanking.  

Keepers / Waivers:  I'm thinking let everyone keep up to 35 25 players, using real players for AAA.  The catch is that any player who is not on injured reserve (missing from the WIS database for that season) has to appear in at least 5 of your games, or he will be waived and put into the draft pool.   So if a good prospect has a lousy season, you can't just park him in AAA the entire season… he has to at least make a few appearances.   But it is up to individual owners to police this - if it is your turn to draft and you see that Cincinnati didn't let that crappy young 1970's Mario Soto into 5 or more games, go ahead and draft him!  You get rewarded for doing your homework and finding a steal. Edit: The 25 keeper limit includes rookies for the following season. If you are too late posting keepers, they will be assigned based on your player usage in the previous season, so we can get on with the draft. In that case, your keepers will be all your franchise's new rookies, and your returning players with the most (PA+IP) in the current (or recently concluded) sim season.

Since there are not many quality players to choose from in each year's draft, the off-season should move very quickly… if you miss your time slot for the draft, we'll move on to the next owner, and you probably won't be missing out on a player who is worth complaining about anyway.  The idea for this league came partly from frustration waiting for a normal progressive to move from season to season, and partly from realizing that sometimes life just gets in the way of doing these drafts.

Extra Pitching:  One quirk I would like to include, but other owners can vote this down if it is too unpopular… each team will get one additional pitcher per season, randomly drawn from a pool of moderate-quality pre-1960 pitchers with around 100 IP and around $2.5-3.0 M salaries.  The purpose is to bolster the balance of pitching versus offense, since all progressives I've been in have had ridiculous offensive stats.  This gives every team one more competent pitcher for the bullpen, or a spot starter, but not someone you would build a team around.  

Hall of Fame: If enough owners are interested, we'll cast Hall of Fame ballots for players whose WIS careers have recently ended.  I'll try to post career stats for candidates, merging pre-1977 real-life with the progressive's stats. But anyone can nominate a player.

Miscellaneous (mostly from questions posted below, or settings in theme league wizard; most of these details can be voted down if enough owners object):
- Standard WIS format (three 4-team divisions per league, with wildcard and interleague play) Four 5-team divisions, aligned similar to real life as much as possible.
- No salary cap
- No moving teams / ballparks until after 5 seasons (1981).  After that, you can use your 1st round rookie draft pick to move to an available ballpark.  But that only changes your ballpark, not your franchise name and available rookies.  For example, if no one takes the NY Yankees when the league gets started, then someone can eventually move their franchise to Yankee Stadium.  The Boston Red Sox could become the New York Red Sox (imagine that!), with Boggs, Clemens, etc coming up in the farm system. A team that has moved cannot move again for at least 5 seasons.
- DH in AL only
- Trades are mostly unrestricted, but subject to veto by 6 owners.  Limit on trading draft picks or rookies too far out in the future (see my posts below).
- Transaction Deadline / Deadline for Keepers at 120 game mark.
- No injuries (I'm open to suggestions on that - I've never seen them used in WIS) Edit: I incorrectly thought WIS had finally implemented multi-game injuries.  I'm fine with using in-game injuries.
- For players who missed 1977 in WIS, but were not rookies when they returned later, they go into the rookie draft pool when they return. They do not belong to a team first.

Owners:

1. Seattle Mariners - dannyjoe; will choose a second franchise later 
2. Los Angeles Dodgers - coled 
3. Detroit Tigers - eman7400 
4. Montreal Expos - nockahoma 
5. St. Louis Cardinals - Dn3524 
6. New York Mets - ljemd 
7. Minnesota Twins - cardsfan 
8. Pittsburgh Pirates - cccp1014 
9. New York Yankees - yatagon 
10. Oakland Athletics - blacknmild76 
11. Chicago White Sox - coachgreat1 
12. Kansas City Royals - blues322 
13. Boston Red Sox - edsortails 
14. Cincinnati Reds - crazyjoe02 
15. Baltimore Orioles - coled
16. Philadelphia Phillies - yatagon
17. TBD - dannyjoe
18. Toronto Blue Jays - mlent

Current Alignment, subject to change depending on last 3 signups:
NL East: Montreal Expos, St. Louis Cardinals, NY Mets, Pittsburgh Pirates, Philadelphia Phillies
NL West: LA Dodgers, Cincinnati Reds
AL East: Detroit Tigers, NY Yankees, Boston Red Sox, Baltimore Orioles, Toronto Blue Jays
AL West: Seattle Mariners, Minnesota Twins, Oakland A's, Chicago White Sox, Kansas City Royals

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If we can have 25 players + 10 in AAA, when we do our keepers for 1978, do we have to drop 10 players, or can we list 35?

Posted by cardsfan on 9/4/2015 8:16:00 AM (view original):
If we can have 25 players + 10 in AAA, when we do our keepers for 1978, do we have to drop 10 players, or can we list 35?

My idea (and I'm very open to others) is that you post 25 keepers going into 1978, including the 1978 rookies from your franchise that you want to keep.  Then in the 1978 draft, you can add more players to spread between your regular and AAA rosters.  You can put draft picks on your opening day roster and keepers in AAA if you want, that doesn't matter.  If you wind up with 35 (or whatever number) after the draft, any of them are eligible to be among your 25 keepers going into 1979, etc.

Posted by dannyjoe on 9/4/2015 11:30:00 AM (view original):

Posted by cardsfan on 9/4/2015 8:16:00 AM (view original):
If we can have 25 players + 10 in AAA, when we do our keepers for 1978, do we have to drop 10 players, or can we list 35?

My idea (and I'm very open to others) is that you post 25 keepers going into 1978, including the 1978 rookies from your franchise that you want to keep.  Then in the 1978 draft, you can add more players to spread between your regular and AAA rosters.  You can put draft picks on your opening day roster and keepers in AAA if you want, that doesn't matter.  If you wind up with 35 (or whatever number) after the draft, any of them are eligible to be among your 25 keepers going into 1979, etc.

So if I have, say, 23 that I would like to keep and four rookies, I would need to drop two players & they would go into the draft pool?

Right

So what about the "Pitching Help" idea? I don't think it's necessary.

I'm not saying it's a deal breaker or anything close to that for me, but I do want to go on record saying I don't love worst to first for EVERY round of the initial draft, that seems like a harsh penalty for some teams that might have done well in RL but not with a team that translates to WIS very well.

A modified W-F, W-F, F-W, W-F, F-W seems like it still gives the lower franchises chances to keep the see-saw level without letting it get to far the other way.

The "Pitching Help" isn't necessary with this limited to 20 teams, but unless a lot more owners object, we'll keep it.  The purpose is to swing the balance a little more toward the pitching, since these leagues tend to have over-the-top offensive numbers.  

For the most part there is a huge disparity between the bad teams and the good teams, so I think worst-to-first throughout the draft is reasonable.  But if several more owners object, we'll figure something out.

We should go with either a random draft or salary-I have got players who helped our record that we didn't have to start season-I can think of 40+hr and 240 inn and 17 wins I wont get to start league-might be even more

Posted by dannyjoe on 9/8/2015 10:34:00 PM (view original):
The "Pitching Help" isn't necessary with this limited to 20 teams, but unless a lot more owners object, we'll keep it.  The purpose is to swing the balance a little more toward the pitching, since these leagues tend to have over-the-top offensive numbers.  

For the most part there is a huge disparity between the bad teams and the good teams, so I think worst-to-first throughout the draft is reasonable.  But if several more owners object, we'll figure something out.

I really dislike this option. I think it breaks the continuity of the era to allow players from other years to participate. This is why I only participate in Single Season Progressives.

I'm going to use this space to compile responses to the query about switching to 16 teams in 1962:

ljemd:  Stay, with a different team (freeing up those marvelous '62 Mets!)
coachgreat1:  Stay, reluctantly (much preferring 1977)
crazyjoe02 tedcogswell: Stay, maybe keeping the Reds but checking other teams for 1977
coled: Stay, keeping the Dodgers, unsure about a second team, prefers 1977
dannyjoe: Stay, new team since the Mariners weren't around, much prefer 1977
cardsfan:  Maybe stay, if there is a draft by lottery for choosing franchises instead of first-come, first-served
eman7400: Probably leave, also suggests drafting franchises instead of first-come, first-served
dn3524: Stay, keeping the Cardinals
cccp1014: Stay, keeping the Pirates
Edsortails: stay
Yatagon: leave, 2 teams open

I'll also say that I would be in favor of drafting our franchises instead of first come/first serve. Create a random draft order, everyone picks their teams, and then flip the order and do a straight draft (1-20, 1-20,...) after that. 

I'm fine leaving it as is, but if that would be an option I'd vote yes on it.