So, MLB actually gave us a 60(ish)-game season! Here is my proposal for how to transform the MLB stats and season into a 2020 ARBA season. All thoughts / input / suggestions / ad hominem attacks welcome!
Given that the ARBA offseason is imminent, I am looking to make these final by next Saturday so please comment, argue, etc ASAP! These rules would ONLY apply to the 2020 ARBA season.
(1) No structural changes to the ARBA Season. We'll play 162 games, the usual split of games among teams, no 7-inning doubleheaders, same ARBA playoff structure, no 16-team playoffs, etc. Adoption of the "runner on second to start extra innings" and 3-batter-minimum will be considered when Strat announces what they're doing. I note that our default rule is to follow all Strat defaults unless we specifically reject them. If people want, I'm fine to have a vote on whether or not to adopt those rules now but I view that as different from the rest of these 2020-only proposals.
(2) All PA and IP will be multiplied by 3.25. This is slightly over the 2.97 that would be the 10% overage on a straight conversion of 60 games to a 162-game season. My rationale for going over that is that this is going to be a crazy year with a partial season being converted to a 162-game season and I would prefer to have some extra leniency. This also addresses PA and IP lost in all the 7-inning MLB doubleheaders.
(3) To try to avoid ridiculous small-sample cards, a player needs a minimum of 20 actual 2020 MLB PA or 10 actual 2020 MLB IP to get a card. Hopefully this solves the issue of having someone who dominated for a tiny amount of time being too valuable.
(4) Similarly, no pitcher can start more than 35 games. In a few instances, some SP will have enough IP/GS once prorated to make 40+ starts due to our schedule not carrying rest over between series, which would not be realistic.
(5) As with MLB, players who opted out of the season will have their contracts advanced a year but will not be paid. This will apply only to players who opted out of the entire season and not those who missed the season due to injury or who played part of the season and then opted out (or who opted out and then opted back in and played).
(6) Carded rosters stay at 32 until the end of the season (as before) but teams will be allowed to have up to 35 carded players. Each team can decide which 32 of their 35 players are carded each series. This allows for more roster flexibility given odd usage patterns in MLB this year, especially with relievers. The "little a" rule would be dropped for this season.
(7) Roster cap of 60 is expanded to 65 for this year only to allow space for the extra major leaguers and to allow for the fact that no minor league season leaves less information about which minor leaguers to cut. This also accounts for low-PA guys taking up roster spots that would have been September call-ups in a normal MLB season. For clarity, these roster spots can be used for major or minor leaguers.
(8) A Contracts will be calculated as normal, with a 2.7 multiplier (162/60) applied to 2020 MLB stats for this purpose.
When you talk about a player who opted out for the season "having his contract advance but not being paid," does that apply only to people who are in the middle of long term guaranteed contracts in our league, or does that also apply to someone who's just on a regular renewable B contract? IE- I have a player on B3. If he opted out of the season, he's an unpaid B4 this year, and a B5 in 2022. If he missed the 2020 MLB season for any other reason, then in our league he's an E player in 2021 and a B1 in 2022.
I assume if a guy played in 2020 but fell short of the 20 PA/10 IP needed to get a card, that player is considered an E player this season?
All contracts would be advanced. So if a guy was a B4 and opted out of the MLB season, he would be a B5 with a salary of $0. Then the following year he'd be a B6 (unless he went A or turned into an E). I think that's analogous to what MLB did by advancing service time.
Exactly so on players under 20 PA / 10 IP - those would be E players.
With the proposed expansion of rosters from 60 to 65 and an influx of newly carded rookies, thus increasing salaries, would it also make sense to increase the base money of $7,000 for this season only?
My only question is how do we resolve questions about whether a player "opted out" as opposed to just did not play because of injury or some other undisclosed reason Example: Yasiel Puig. He was going to sign a contract, then tested positive and never played this year. Did he opt out or have an opt out forced upon him? Anther Example: Jordan Hicks. It is kinda ambiguous about whether he opted out due to covid, or just because his TJ recovery was a bit slow.
Is it easier to just consider all MLB players who did not play this season to be in this category, with the understanding that this will be over-inclusive in the interest of simplicity?
Also, how are we going to deal with error ratings? The error ratings by Strat will be based on a 60 game season, so an e11 is designed to commit approximately 11 errors over 60 games. But in a 162 game season, that player would still be designed to commit just 11 errors, so the error rating needs to be adjusted to a higher number. To my knowledge, multiplying stats by 3.25 will not adjust the player's error rating.
Hello all! Of course Tom and I have already been debating some of this stuff. I still think the 3.25 multiplier is a little larger than necessary, but its fine. However, I still dont see the need for special contract rules to handle players who opted out. As others have noted, the individual situations can be rather murky. Using our current contract rules, teams can put players on E contracts if they miss enough time to be ineligible for whatever reason. Toms follow up suggests that this is still true, but maybe we dont even have to pay them $40K? That implies eligible players who opted out can be stashed for free and miss our entire season. I feel like this brings more complications with little benefit. For example, when do teams make that decision and can it be changed? I really hate the idea that we might not even know whether players are eligible for part of the offseason. The main rationale of trying to emulate how MLB is handling service time for players who opted out? Why does that matter? Our salary structure bears very little resemblance to the real thing, so that seems like a bogus justification. I just dont get this one at all.
Jumping over to Ricks statement about error ratings, I am almost certain thats not true. Although the interpretation of Strat e ratings does correspond to # of errors in a full season, they are translated into X-charts based on the games dice rolls. i dont see how Strat could realistically change that since they need to simulate error chance on any single x-play. Its the same logic applied to players who spend limited time at a position. I suppose they might label them differently to align with interpretation for 60-game season, but the rstings should still work the same way regardless of # of games
My plan was to use the Baseball America list: https://www.baseballamerica.com/stories/full-list-of-mlb-players-opting-out-of-2020-season/
I thought I was clear about this before, but I guess not - only "I opted out for the full season and didn't opt back in" players would be eligible for this treatment. So there is no weird "in or out" situation. I know that there were a small number of players who opted out after a few games - I could see making those players eligible for this also in which case I think we clearly say you have to make the designation at roster time and obviously they wouldn't be available at all during our season.
This is intended to follow MLB's approach which, as Eric notes, isn't sacred sctipture or something, but I always figured we would follow MLB unless there was a good reason not to do so. Here we're talking about what to do with players who missed the whole season not because they were hurt but because of a global pandemic. Seems kind of rude to say nope to that. FWIW, the other salary-based Strat league I'm in is also taking this approach.
For what it's worth, if more people want to declare this a free year for anyone missing the season on the basis that some FA might have found a club but decided not to or decided to take extra time with their injury recovery, I'm fine with that too - simplicity is good. I'm fine with a $40K salary instead of $0 too although I'm not sure why we would do that.
The issue isn't solved with the E contract because that ignores anyone on a long-term contract. Our rule is that players on contracts get their contract salary regardless of whether they play or not. And if we say that those players can go on E's anyway, that's a potential windfall for a guy that was an A3 1x4 who then goes on an E and could be a B1 next year.
In the interest of full disclosure, one of the players opting out - Marcus Stroman - is on SFE. I have managed to not actually look at his contract so I don't know whether or not he's on a contract because I'd rather not let that influence my proposal, but to be fair I should mention it.
More $$$
I was originally going to include bonus money as part of my proposals, but was convinced by Eric and a couple others that it would be unnecessary as we're not trying to encourage people to pick up a bunch more B1s but effectively fill out with W players. I'm open to something here if the majority of the league wants it, as long as it's not a big chunk of money.
Error Ratings
I believe Eric is right about how Strat calculates error ratings - it's effectively calculated on a per game basis. And even if that's wrong I'm extremely opposed to actually adjusting ratings unless Strat has clearly done something very very wrong.
I guess I would personally be against expanding the rosters to 65 since this would continue to affect next year by taking some potentially useful draftable players out of the pool (assuming everyone keeps the players who show some value during the 2021 season - there will be one, right?). Not a huge deal, but just my 2 cents.
When Somworld first issued its end-of-the-season stat file, it included two different e-ratings for each player...a 60 game e-rating and a 162 game e-rating...and for most players, they were different. Donovan Solano had an e11 for a 60 game season and an e28 for a 162 game season. Now their latest file posted yesterday, only has a "some162" rating. This confirms that players would have 2 different e-ratings...one for a 60 game replay, and another for a 162 "forecasted" season. Currently Strat is contemplating offering these two different baseball products for next year.
I am generally not opposed to Tom's proposals, although I do agree with Eric in that I don't see a big need for the contract changes for "opt out" players. For many players, they would just become E contracts at $40, which is fine. For players that have been signed to long term contracts (of the "B" variety), this is just a risk of long term contracts and we shouldn't offset that risk. However, A contracts are a bit different, since the owner is "motivated" to sign the player to a multi-year contract with the $100k discount. So in that case, I'd be okay with an opt out A player not being paid for this season.
In regards to the expanded rosters from 60 to 65, I think it would be justified to also increase our base salary to account for the increased roster. We currently have a base of $7,000, so with a max roster of 60, that averages out to $116 per roster spot. If we increase the roster to 65, the additional 5 spots multiplied by the average of $116 is equal to $580. So I would propose that our base be increased to $7,580.
