Hoping to get some advice from some experienced progressive owners.

I'm in the Genesis League, a great progressive run by footballmm11.  We started in 1885 and are now in 1895.  With the 1900 and 1901 seasons on the horizon, there are going to be some interesting challenges, and I'd like to know how others have handled (or would handle...) them.

This is a 12 team league, and we use 12/8 AAA to fill in the gaps because there just aren't enough players in the 1890s to fill 12 teams.

Question 1: In 1900, there are only 8 MLB teams.  We obviously don't want to contract our league, but there will be an extreme shortage of players.  Has anyone played 1900 in a progressive?  How did you deal with it?  We could add more AAA, we could combine 1900 and 1901 (I'm less fond of this idea), or there may be other alternatives.

Question 2: In 1901, MLB has 16 teams.  We are debating right now whether to expand.  Has anyone run a very successful expansion draft in a progressive, and if so, how did you do it?  What's the best way to give new expansion owners a fighting chance without being overly unfair to owners who have done a good job building teams?

I know there are lots of experienced progressive owners and commissioners here - any advice would be greatly appreciated.  And even if you haven't had direct experience in either area, if you have thoughts, please post them.

In the ATP (All Time Progressive) league, which started in 1885 and is now playing 1908, we ended up combining the 1899/1900 seasons.  No clones were allowed, so each owner had to pick either 1899 or 1900 for each individual player.  Your team did not need to be all 1899 or all 1900, but only one version of each player allowed.  Nobody was thrilled with the prospect of combining the seasons, but it was the least distasteful option.

The ATP is a 20-team league, but has from the beginning been a dual league, meaning that the AL and NL each use separate, but complete, player pools (no interleague trading, separate drafts for each league,etc.).  Thus, it is in effect two parallel 10-team leagues playing the same seasons.  The league started as a full 24-team league (or two 12-team leagues), with some below average AAA to fill out rosters.  But in contrast to what you are contemplating, we actually contracted to a 20-team league (10-10 format) and eliminated the AAA before the 1898 season.  The contraction decision was made at about the same time that we decided to combine 1899/1900.  Since the 1903 season we have been in a 5-5-5-5 division format (still keeping AL and NL separate/parallel), which everybody seems to prefer to the 10-10 format we used from 1898-1902.  Ideally, we would be able to keep the NL and AL completely separate until the World Series, but unfortunately every useable format requires some measure of interleague play.

Also, although it isn't in response to any of your questions, we have used a draft formula for the last 8-9 seasons, which seems to have worked out alright, although it has taken some getting used to.  (I place blame for the concept on bagchucker, because it is fun to blame bagchucker for things.)  I think the ATP still has more than half of its original owners after 23 seasons, and it has been remarkably stable even through some major changes.

Hope that helps.

I'm also in the ATP, with a team in each league. What we did to address the player shortage AND eliminate the AAA players was determine how many players had to be left "in the pool" to serve as common players. So everyone might draft to 21 and we had a pool of community players that everyone could use to fill out the roster. The other idea, as ctorkelson alluded to, is that we have a draft formula which takes salary and wins into account. This served to discourage stockpiling of players that you were not going to use for several years in the future (especially pitching in those years when pitching is scarce). I think this has worked remarkably well and adds a bit of strategy to roster design and drafting. For the last few years there have been enough players that there is no need for the pool any more. To get a high draft pick in our league you have to win (or lose) efficiently. An under-performing team with a lot of salary = low draft pick.

Thanks to everyone who responded either here or via sitemail.  Really appreciate it guys.