I will take a 2nd team-I guess I need NL so the Phillies

Thanks Yatagon and coled, I've put myself down for the Seattle Mariners (a monumental building job), and will choose a second later. That will make 17.  

Enough good reasons for limiting it to 20 teams have been raised, we'll do that. I'll start a separate forum for the owners before long.

Gorman Thomas of the Brewers has no season for 1977, has one for 76 & 78, If I take the brewers do I have him???

No, he would be in the 1978 draft pool.  Thanks for asking that, it came up on an earlier page and I forgot to update the front page with the answer.

For players who missed 1977 in WIS, but were not rookies when they returned later, they can go into the rookie draft pool when they return. Hopefully no one already selected a franchise counting on a player who missed 1977.

Has a decision been made as to the draft order of the players from unclaimed franchises?

I would probably do it by lowest salary in 1977 and so on. So lowest salary gets 1st pick? 

No final decision yet.  Lowest salary over the first few seasons would make a lot of sense, but that is tedious to compute and easy to make simple mistakes. I want to check a ranking based on wins, and see if that looks reasonable compared to the rosters. More to follow.  In the meantime, we need three more sign-ups.

Draft order for 1977, from worst to best in every round, based on total wins from 1977-1981, with 1977 double-counted since that is the basis for the rosters. With 1981 being a strike season, it essentially gets under-weighted by using the win totals.  The tiebreaker goes to the team with the most 1977 wins (they get the better draft position), since that season is already double-counted.

1. Toronto Blue Jays 2*54+59+53+67+37=324
2. Seattle Mariners 2*64+56+67+59+44=354
3. New York Mets 2*64+66+63+67+41=365
4. Atlanta Braves 2*61+69+66+81+50=388 AVAILABLE
5. Oakland A's 2*63+69+54+83+64=396
6. San Diego Padres 2*69+84+68+73+41=404 AVAILABLE
7. Chicago Cubs 2*81+79+80+64+38=423 AVAILABLE
8. Cleveland Indians 2*71+69+81+79+52=423 AVAILABLE
9. California Angels 2*74+87+88+65+51=439 AVAILABLE
10. Minnesota Twins 2*84+73+82+77+41=441
11. San Francisco Giants 2*75+89+71+75+56=441 AVAILABLE
12. Chicago White Sox 2*90+71+73+70+54=448
13. St. Louis Cardinals 2*83+69+86+74+59=454
14. Detroit Tigers 2*74+86+85+84+60=463
15. Milwaukee Brewers 2*67+93+95+86+62=470 AVAILABLE
16. Montreal Expos 2*75+76+95+90+60=471
17. Houston Astros 2*81+74+89+93+61=479 AVAILABLE
18. Texas Rangers 2*94+87+83+76+57=491 AVAILABLE
19. Pittsburgh Pirates 2*96+88+98+83+46=507
20. Cincinnati Reds 2*88+92+90+89+66=513
21. Los Angeles Dodgers 2*98+95+79+92+63=525
22. Philadelphia Phillies 2*101+90+84+91+59=526
23. Boston Red Sox 2*97+99+91+83+59=526
24. Kansas City Royals 2*102+92+85+97+50=528
25. Baltimore Orioles 2*97+90+102+100+59=545
26. New York Yankees 2*100+100+89+103+59=551

I'll take the Bluejays

Welcome aboard!  Those Blue Jays are intriguing.  Terrible for a few years (at least in real life), but a great farm system and the #1 pick in the initial draft.

I love the the Reds' Total is 513, since that's the Area Code for Cincinnati.

Posted by crazyjoe02 on 9/3/2015 9:29:00 PM (view original):
I love the the Reds' Total is 513, since that's the Area Code for Cincinnati.

You don't know how hard I had to work to find a formula that would do that!  ;-)

I've started a thread in the Theme Leagues forum for rules discussion, if anyone wants to suggest changes to the details.
Franchise Prog w/ Farm System - Rules Discussion
https://www.whatifsports.com/forums/Posts.aspx?TopicID=488227&TopicsTimeframe=30

So ideally we need three NL West teams. Who wants to beat me up for awhile??

I'll play in the NL West if needed, but I think I would like to try the Cubs