What the heck, I'll try making some proposals this year and we'll see what happens.
#1: Update Tiebreaker Rules: I'm very open to the earlier playoff proposal but whether that changes or not, I think we need to clarify the tiebreaker rules. These can apply with two or more teams. I propose starting with head-to-head, then road records, and finally coin-flips.
#2: Remove Cap on $10K per Win: My teams have lost a LOT of money over the years to this rule. I don't expect sympathy, but perhaps enough of you will agree that every win should count. As a reminder, the current rule caps the $10K per win at $950K for 95+ wins. Why aren't we rewarding teams for trying and spending their cash to win?
#3: Free Ballpark Changes Every Year: 2026 is a free change year anyway but I'll propose this now while I'm thinking about it. Given how many weird changes there are in ballpark numbers year to year, I think teams should be able to make changes if they want. Whether this passes or not, I also recommend that ballparks are chosen earlier in the offseason, perhaps in March between the auction and IOD instead of early April right before the season.
#4: Adopt Current MLB Rules: This one may be controversial and I hate to propose it, but feel like we shouldn't remain stuck in the past forever. Therefore, I propose switching to current MLB rules, including the accursed ghost runner and the batter minimum for pitchers. In the latest Strat game, that option is labeled as "2023 and Beyond Rules".
My two biggest dislikes about this league are the relative lack of competitive balance and the difficulty of winning games on the road (or conversely the ease of winning home games).
To Eric's second proposal, I'm WAY less interested in incentivizing someone to try to go from 95 wins to 120 than I am trying to convince people to try to go from 70 wins to 95 (or even better from 45 to 70). Increasing the rewards for the most successful teams doesn't really help with competitive balance part of my airing of grievances. It's already the case that teams feeling on the bubble are incentivized to just go ahead and tank, and it feels like extending the rewards for creating superteams might just encourage tanking even more. I personally might like to see a bell-shaped rewards curve where wins are rewarded on an increasing scale up to a point and then the rewards taper back off. I haven't thought of a specific proposal for that, just the general idea.
Eric's fourth proposal gets at my second gripe. With 30 man rosters, home teams can already play match-up/platoon baseball all day long, and it feels like making relievers face the 3 batter minimum would just make that worse. If we want to go to the 3-batter rule, I would also advocate for playing with only 26 man rosters (as per the MLB rules you know and love). Otherwise, profoundly ignorant CMs will just have a harder time than they do now.
OK, happy to be convinced that I'm wrong about these things. (But I'm not :) )
I concur with moving to MLB rules. I think this will help road teams, as the three batter minimum for relief pitchers means managers won't be able to match each batter with a bespoke pitcher.
I would probably support 26 player rosters for each series, too, but don't have strong feelings, TBH, on this one, and could be convinced.
1. I'd like to see that if possible we don't eliminate a team on a coin flip. However, in the case of who wins the division and who gets a wild card, a coin flip is fine by me.
2. I'll vote to remove the $950K cap if we couple it with the removal of the 40-win threshold.
3. I'm fine with allowing owners to change their ballpark yearly. Also (I think we chatted about this in the other league one year), are there any other ballparks in the game outside of the current MLB ones that perhaps we can allow owners to expand to?
4. I am fine with the MLB rules proposal. Frankly, I thought most of those rules were already being used anyway (outside of the ghost runner and 26 man rosters). I'm indifferent if we want to set our roster size to 26 or 30.
I fully support the MLB rules for our league. It had been mentioned that we would go to a 26 player roster. I would like to see us adopt that with a caveat, propose that for our 8 or 9 game blocks we adopt a 27 man roster, making those series/blocks equivalent to MLB doubleheader rosters.
