Tweaks for 2018

(This isn’t a league update. But I HAD to categorize it as one because no one read it when it was only in the “rules” category. That’s the problem with this league: I seem to be the only one who LIKES to read rules. Tsk. It is no great honor to be hard to please.)

Here are some possible tweaks for 2018 in very rough form. They NEED improving, so please please please suggest improvements/deletions/additions in the comments.

1. Put cleaned-up rules on the website.
2. Draft Dates:
   1. At each Winter Meeting the league will adopt a calendar for the year’s drafts.  Unless approved otherwise, the dates will be:
      1. Winter Meeting/Rule 5:  First Saturday after New Year’s Day
      2. Rookie Draft:  Second Saturday in February.
      3. Free Agent Draft:  Second Saturday in March.
      4. Monthly Manager’s Meetings (May – Sept): First Saturday after the first of the month (i.e. 2d – 8th, depending) with rosters AND allocations due by midnight Sunday evening. (NOTE: The League will try to approve earlier midweek meeting times when the regular Saturday meeting would be more than 1/5 of the way through the month.)
   2. Once approved the calendar can only be changed if no owner objects.
   3. To maximize attendance meetings can start at a civilized (e.g., 9 am) or a bohallian (e.g., 7 am or earlier) hour.
   4. Draft lists will close no later than 5 days before the draft.
   5. Owner is responsible to “attend” or give instructions. (Will need debugged and simplified instruction form?)
3. Give expansion teams 5 roster moves per month their first year and 4 their second year.
4. Make roster moves tradeable (in the current season only).
5. Cut Rule 5 protected list to 18 players.
6. Limit rosters to 20 players after the Winter Meeting.
7. Explore making roster moves self-service? (This will require some clever database work.)
8. Require the reigning champ to be responsible for updates and commentary one week (of his choice) every month. Ask all other non-expansion owners to sign up for at least one week of updates and commentary each season. (Possibly exempt expansion teams and the IT guy?) This would leave the Commissioner responsible for no more than half of the updates/commentary. (This doesn’t require 7-days-a-week updates. Everyone would need to subscribe to Baseball Prospectus.) Probably would want the Commish to do the first and last week of each month the first season to clear up any glitches.
9. (If we adopt #2 and #8): Invite the last two expansion teams to join us. For fun and temporary competitive rebalancing with MLB and within EFL.