Since the board is dead I thought now would be the time to bring up something which I dont think has been addressed. I think it needs to be before the C/FA draft and people start to plan their roster out( I may have missed it as I have been busy but did do a cursory search and didnt see it). Now that we have adopted the one game play-in rule, what are the player useage rules going to be for the one game playoff? Can someone with 10 starts start that one game (regular playoff rules)? Will there be any useage restrictions on regular players? ( Can a player with 50 at bats play the whole game in a one-game playoff?) Not a huge deal but it could affect who I pick up on my roster for a team I think could make the playoffs. Thoughts?
I think you could simply have the 1 game play-in count as post season stats. You may have a guy who can only start one game. There's a strategy in play as to whether you start him in the play-in, or have him ride the pine for the potential of another day.
"This would be a post-season game and thus would occur after the full rest reset that follows the regular season and there would be 1 day of rest following the game before the start of the LCS. (i.e. a SP could start the last game of the regular season and then the WC game but would need at least 3 additional days of rest (4 if not an * pitcher) before starting again)."
Warren raises additional important issues, however.
The GS is, I think, easy - the Rules require that a pitcher have at least 10 GS to start a game in the playoffs, and that seems like a reasonable requirement for starting the play-in game.
I do think that we need a new rule for batter usage, however, as using the existing PA requirements would essentially make every batter unlimited.
My thought would be to allow 1 PA in the game for every 100 PA in MLB, with anyone getting 400+ MLB PA being unlimited, but I'm happy to discuss. Let me know what you think.
First of all thanks Warren for raising the issue- when I was voting I just assumed that game would be a series unto itself for usage purposes, but I hadn't thought about how silly the PA rules would be in that scenario.
Tom's suggestion of one PA for every 100 MLB PA seems broadly reasonable, but we need to make it unambiguous- is it 1 for every full 100 PA, or are we rounding?
My thought would be:
50-149 real life PA = 1 PA in the playoff
150-249 = 2 PA
250-349 = 3 PA
350-449 = 4 PA
450+ = unlimited
You can quibble with the numbers but I think we need that kind of format for the rule.
