We are coming up on the end of the 1968 season soon, so we will be having an expansion draft soon in preparation for the 1969 season. We will be adding four new teams, and Oakland needs a new owner. So we are looking for five new owners overall. UPDATE: one expansion team and Oakland have been taken. We need three new owners as of 11/21

The cities available are: Milwaukee, Seattle, Kansas City, Washington DC, Texas (Arlington), Atlanta, Minnesota, Detroit, San Diego

League Rules (scroll down for expansion rules)
The general idea is simple: you are not allowed to have more than 60M worth of keepers on your roster prior to the draft. This will prevent teams from hoarding ABs and IP. This is a rough approximation of free agency. Once the draft begins, you may choose any players you want, but keep in mind that you need to reduce your payroll to under 60M prior to the next season's draft. In most cases, teams will have to drop players that they would have ordinarily kept in other progressives.

The league will start with 1962 (first year of 20 teams) with a 16-team league. The extra four players worth of teams will make it viable for everyone to pick up enough free agents via the draft to fill positional holes and to have enough innings.

The future plan would be to go to 20 teams in 1969, and 24 in 1977, then 26 in 1993 and 28 in 1998. That way there would always be some extra players lying around while still requiring some strategy and planning to draft.

Other rules are pretty standard:

Draft order - Serpentine for the 1962 inaugural draft, worst-to-first after that. No lottery. Ties for draft order will be resolved in this order: Head to Head (worse team picks first), Division Record (worse team picks first), Home Wins (fewer home wins pick first). There will be a wins floor of 54 wins. Failure to meet the wins floor will result in that owner choosing 6th in the Round 1 of the Draft. If multiple teams fail to meet the wins floor, the team that came closest will pick 6th, with each team picking after that team in reverse order of wins. eg if three teams win 53, 51, and 49 games respectively, the 53 win team will pick 6th, 51 win team 7th, and 49 win team 8th. Failure to meet the wins floor has no effect on Rounds 2 and successive rounds.

Keepers - No maximum, just keep it under 60M

IR - Allowed, and no maximum amount. Any player bought back from the IR will count towards the 60M keeper maximum upon their return.

Stadium - Must match the team you pick

Team City - If your team moves, you can move or stay. If you stay, the team will remain in its original stadium. The team may later move to the new city, but once they do, they cannot move back.

Team Names - Name your team whatever you want as long as it is not racist or otherwise gross. "Indians" will not be considered racist for the purposes of this league due to the historical existence of said name, but only Cleveland may choose this name.

Divisional Alignment - Will be as close as possible, but if out of the 16 original teams, we have more AL or NL teams, we will get creative. I'd rather let people have the team they want then shoehorn the league. I will pick my team last, so maybe I can balance things out.

AAA - Below average, 6 hitters and 4 pitchers.

DH - After the 1972 season but before the 1973 draft, teams in the American League only will vote on whether or not to add the DH. Given that there will be ten teams in the AL at that point, a 5-5 tie is possible. If 6 or more owners in the AL choose to add the DH, it will be added. Otherwise, it will not. Adding or not adding the DH will not affect the 60M cap. It will remain in place regardless.

If the DH is added by the AL in 1973 - After the 2021 season but before the 2022 draft, teams in the National League will vote on whether or not to add the DH. Given that there will be fourteen teams in the NL at that point, a 7-7 tie is possible. If eight or more owners in the NL choose to add the DH, it will be added. Otherwise, it will not.

If the DH is NOT added by the AL in 1973 - After the 2021 season but before the 2022 draft, teams in both leagues will vote on whether or not to add the DH, with each league determining results separately. Once again, eight or more owners in each league must vote yes to add the DH. This does create the possibility of the MMBL having the DH in the NL but not the AL.

Trades - Allowed both in-season and out. A trade may be vetoed by league vote within WIS rules in either case (in-season via the "veto" function, out-of-season by forum post). Draft picks may be traded up to two drafts ahead (EG you may trade 1965 draft picks starting Day 1 of the 1963 season)

Roster/Team Management: You may play players at any position you choose. For example, if you need to play a SS at 2B due to fatigue issues, go for it. If you have four good outfielders and a crappy first baseman, play the 4th outfield at first if you prefer. However, playing players out of position for no discernible reason in an attempt to tank will not be tolerated. Just use good judgement.

The same goes for rotation management. You can pitch anyone you want, but if you pitch someone to death when your team has fresh arms that could be used instead, you're trying to lose to jockey for draft position. None of the above will be super-strict, but simply don't be a jerk. We all know what you are trying to do when your roster has 1400 IP and you're pitching someone every five games who is at 60% fatigue. On that same note, people go out of town or get busy and can't check for a few days. That's fine. What's not fine is doing the above for an entire season. Sorry if this is long-winded but I want owners who are not going to go to low tactics in an attempt to win.

Rules Changes - Can be proposed by anyone and passed with a majority of owners' approval. Note that the vote will be tallied out of the entire number of owners, so an absentee vote counts as "no" for the purposes of any proposed rule changes.

Note about what being in this league means: If you are going to join, try to win and compete fairly.

Additional Rules:

1. Keepers

When posting keepers, owners must indicate, as to any players who have splits, which version of that player is being kept. When entering rosters, owners must enter the version of the player indicated in the keeper post.

After the last team to post keepers does so, a site mail will be sent to everyone in the league informing them of the start of a 48-hour clock for revising keeper lists. After the expiration of 48 hours from the time set forth in the notification site mail, keeper lists are final and may not be revised, and all rights to players not kept are terminated. (added 04/06/2024)


2. Draft Order

The determination of whether a team has reached the wins floor of 54 shall be made at the end of the 162-game regular season.

The Draft Board will be posted after all teams have submitted keepers and after expiration of the 48-hour clock described in Section 1 above. Draft pick slots will be assigned to each team based on its number of keepers, with each team getting only the number of slots that results in each team having 25 players at the end of the Draft.

If a team makes one or more trades after the Draft Board is posted, whereby that team's number of keepers plus the number of picks owned is less than 25, then that team may select one or more players in a supplemental draft (at the conclusion of the regular Draft) made up of all teams so situated, with the order to be determined in the same manner as the order of the regular Draft.

As to tie-breaking, if two teams tie for the division lead and play a play-in game, the winner of the play-in game will pick after the loser, but beyond that the play-in game will have no significance. E,g., In Year 19X1, division rivals Team A and Team B finish with 94 wins to tie for 1st place in the division, and Team A wins the play-in game. Team C, in a different division, finishes with 95 wins. Team A picks after Team B in 19X2, but before Team C, without application of tie-breaker rules.

3. Transaction Deadline and Trade Deadline

Transactions involving moving players up and down from AAA may be entered through Game 159 ("transaction deadline") - this will be governed by the web site based on settings entered by the commissioner.

The deadline for posting an in-season trade ("the Trade Deadline") is prior to Game 118, such that the trade goes into effect on the web site (i.e., after the web site imposed 3-game waiting period after acceptance of the offer is posted on the web site) before Game 121.

To date, the web site does not allow the commissioner to enter the settings such that the trade deadline and transaction deadline can be at different times. Until the web site allows this, the Trade Deadline will have to be self-imposed, i.e., the web site will not enforce it.

Renaming of AAA Players
AAA players may be renamed, provided they are not renamed to a player that is active in the current league season. There is no penalty for failure to rename an AAA player that is active in the league for that season, but owners are encouraged to do so.

Expansion Rules

Incumbent Teams Process:

1. Each Incumbent Team will post its 1969 Keeper list by Game 120 of the 1968 season. Each team will list a full roster of their 1968 team, minus players for whom 1968 is their final season, including all players on IR. Owners will not list cuts or need to be under $60m at THIS point.

2. In its 1969 Keeper post, each team will indicate 8 players to be protected from the Expansion Draft

Expansion Draft Procedure:

1. The Expansion Teams will have a 16 round snake draft: ABCD, DCBA, ABCD, DCBA, etc. The Expansion Teams will have 3 days to review the AP list before the draft begins - there will be no clock for the expansion draft.

2. The order of the first 4 picks will be determined randomly by the Commissioner or his proxy. A random four number sequence will be generated on random.org, the owner who receives the 1st pick will determine if he wants to have the 1st pick in the expansion draft or the 1st pick (out of the expansion teams) in the rookie draft). The expansion owner who picks 1st in the expansion draft will pick 4th (out of the expansion teams) in the regular draft. More on that below.

3. Expansion Teams may only draft a maximum of 4 players from each incumbent roster. Once 4 players are selected from any Incumbent Team roster, that teams players will be removed from the expansion draft player pool.

Trades during the expansion draft:

1. Expansion and incumbent owners may trade between their teams, and may include expansion draft picks, rookie draft picks, players protected by incumbent owners, or players selected by expansion owners.

2. Incumbent owners MAY NOT trade players that have not been protected. Rosters for incumbent owners will be locked as of Game 120 of the 1968 season, and only protected players may be traded until the completion of the 1969 Expansion draft, with the exception below:

3. Once an incumbent team has lost 4 players and they retain the rights to the remaining players, they will be able to trade additional players to an expansion team before the expansion draft concludes.

Final Keepers and Regular Draft procedure:

1. After the conclusion of the Expansion Draft, all teams will post adjusted keepers in a new thread. Incumbent teams must now adhere to the $60m cap rules set forth within the league.

2. The 4 expansion owners will have a one year pass on the $60m keepers cap.

3. The expansion owners will be put into a lottery with the bottom 2 teams of the 1968 season to determine placement. The order of the expansion teams will be determined based off the inverse of the expansion draft. (EX: If expansion draft went ABDC, the Rookie draft will go CDBA for all rounds, with no snake.

Example of draft lottery with bottom two teams:

There were 6 items in your list. Here they are in random order:

1. EXP
2. INC1
3. INC2
4. EXP
5. EXP
6. EXP

IP: 71.223.100.226
Timestamp: 2024-02-29 17:35:45 UTC

In this example, it would be C, INC1, INC2, D, B, A for the rookie draft.

As mentioned above, we are looking for four new owners for an expansion team. We also need a replacement owner as the owner of Oakland is leaving. Here is their roster (with keepers, but the new owner is welcome to adjust the keepers if they so choose)

1969 Oakland A's

Entire Roster:
C - Randy Hundley
1B - Nate Colbert, Mike Epstein
2B - Sandy Alomar
3B - Aurelio Rodriguez, Don Wert
SS - Ed Brinkman, Hector Torres
OF - Ken Berry, Ollie Brown, Reggie Jackson, Dave May, Norm Miller, Bill Robinson, Ed Stroud

P - Ray Culp, Wayne Granger, Catfish Hunter, Al Jackson, Juan Marichal, Denny McLain, Don Sutton, Cecil Upshaw

Keepers (Pending ownership change, consider this a placeholder for now.) Reminder that for the expansion draft, keepers are limited to 8. Any players above that are not keepers and not taken in the expansion draft may be re-added to the roster for 1969 so long as the team salary stays below 60M
C - Randy Hundley
1B - Mike Epstein
3B - Aurelio Rodriguez
OF - Reggie Jackson
P - Catfish Hunter, Juan Marichal, Denny McLain, Don Sutton

I’d be interested in taking an expansion team

Posted by Peekay on 11/20/2024 5:51:00 PM (view original):
I’d be interested in taking an expansion team

Great, we'd be glad to have you. Please choose one of the cities from the first post in the thread.

Posted by sinatra on 11/21/2024 12:01:00 AM (view original):

Posted by Peekay on 11/20/2024 5:51:00 PM (view original):
I’d be interested in taking an expansion team

Great, we'd be glad to have you. Please choose one of the cities from the first post in the thread.

I’ll take Montreal

Sounds good. Oakland also now has a new owner so we need three expansion owners