I've been toying with this idea for a while now and am curious to get some feedback on it. (And of course, if such a league already exists, I'm not interested reinventing the wheel, but I would like to join one in progress.)

The idea combines progressives, twists, and franchise leagues. Basically, each owner (I'm thinking 24, but could be persuaded otherwise) drafts an exclusive franchise (only one version of the Yankees in the league at any one time, etc).

Once the draft is completed, each owner chooses an initial year. So one owner may start with the 1920 Yankees, another may start with the 1915 Red Sox, a third with the 1991 Braves, etc. The owner then twists any player on that roster to make his year one team.

In year 2, the pre-twisted rosters advance by one year. So the 1920 Yankees become the 1921 Yankees. Again, the owner can twist the roster in order to make his team. Players could be twisted to the same version each season - so if the Yankees owner wants to use the 1927 Ruth, he can do so for any Yankees season from 1920-34. I've thought about blacklisting specific player-seasons once they are used, but I believe it's a lot of work for minimal benefit.

In order to make the league competitive, there would be a salary cap. I'm thinking 80M. There could also be below average AAA (6/2 or 6/4) to round out rosters in lean years. I think 80M should allow all 24 owners to field competitive teams in most years. Some teams will have a down year occasionally, but that makes your choice of team/year more strategic. Frankly the mid-20s Yankees probably look a lot less attractive because you can't load up on the best seasons of Babe and Lou each year.

After any season, an owner could choose to discard his team. Any owners who have done so would be able to draft a new franchise (and then pick a new starting season.) BUT - two huge caveats - franchises are still exclusive, and any previously used "franchise years" are blacklisted. So in the above example, if the Yankees owner were to discard his team after 1922, a new owner could choose the Yankees, but would have to start with a season that had not been used yet.

Thoughts on this idea? If I were to get it started, would you be interested in participating?

Sounds like a lot of fun, I would use the Cardinals

Thanks bud4875. This is not yet a league signup page....but if I get enough interest I'll post it in the league classifieds and send you a sitemail.

Also, the initial team allocation would be done through a random draft order.

i like the idea. i generally don't like capped progressives, but i can't think of a way around it in this setup off the top of my head. i might join something like this.

I would probably give it a shot.

I may be interested but I think 80m is not enough for this theme with a twist.

ESchwartz did something very similar a while back, though he made it a bit different...

1..you couldn't use the same seasons back to back for a player...Steve Carlton's 1972 season could only be used every other time

2..the weaker teams got to use a few players from the previous season to bulk up their roster...i.e. the 1982 Phillies could use Ryne Sandberg

3...the cap was 120M


It was pretty good, though it petered out after 4 seasons.

Contrarian...like the idea...like the idea of a cap to make all franchises more usable. I'd be in.

Sounds like a really fun idea. I've never joined a progressive due to my general lack of baseball knowledge, but this is an idea that even a dolt like me would have a chance at.

Thanks for the input guys; I'm going to investigate the cap issue this weekend and then hopefully launch this thing.

I think 80M is right, in order to ensure 24 competitive teams each season. At 120M, you eliminate a lot of historical teams that can't twist to that cap level (hence the need for rules 1 and 2 in mudbone's post...at 80M you wouldn't need either provision).

Still...I'm going to check some random seasons from some of the less successful historical franchises - if I can routinely twist the rosters to 100M or more, I may consider raising the cap to 90M.

I might have interest, probably more so with a cap in the 90-100m range. Definately has me intrigued enough.

I've looked at this pretty carefully, and I'm pretty convinced the cap has to be 80M. At 100M, or even 90M, there are too many teams that can't be twisted to a competitive roster.

I really want this league to work with 24 teams, with owners having an incentive to stay for several seasons...80M allows that, higher caps do not.

For those interested, I have posted a thread in the classifieds to get this league started.

Progressive Franchise Twist.