The VILlage of the Damned – The Official EFL Web Site

Dear Mr. EFL Answer Man:

Can we add discussion of the Injured List policy to the agenda?

– Feeling Ill-prepared for the IL

Dear Feeling Ill:

Of course. And here’s a head start.

Friday, May 3, 2019, is a red-letter day in the EFL and in health care policy everywhere. It will be the first time anyone uses the new, innovative VotawmaCare plan.

Your team has a VDL — the Virtual Disabled List. (We should probably update our terminology to match the MLB’s switch to calling it an Injured List. There will be benefits, as you will soon see. So let me start over.)

Your team has a VIL — the Virtual Injured List. No one is on it right now. But you can put your players on it before (or realistically, during) a monthly draft if at the time of the draft the player is on the MLB IL.

Players on the VIL still count toward the team’s salary cap, but do not count toward the 30-man roster limit. Putting a player on the VIL adds a slot to your roster but saves you no money.

To put a player on the VIL, you need to alert the league. You can courteously do this by posting an announcement to our transaction page, where it has about a 95% chance of attracting the Commissioner’s attention and about a 100% chance of attracting Mark Johnson’s attention. And it gives us a clear and permanent record. You should probably also alert the league verbally during the draft, for those who are not actively monitoring the transaction page.

Players can only be put on or taken off the VIL during the pause between the end of one month and the draft. (If we draft before the end of a month, which is possible, they can only go on during the draft or just before it.) But no matter when you move the player on or off the VIL, the move takes effect on the first of the month.

Players who are no longer on the MLB IL at the end of the month must be taken off the VIL, unless they’ve gone back on the MLB IL in the time between the end of the month and the start of the draft. If the player coming off the VIL puts his EFL team over the roster limit, someone must either go on the VIL or be DFA’d.

There is no limit to the population of your VotawmaCare VILlage. (See, I told you there’d be benefits to calling it the VIL.) HOWEVER, we have cleverly (if inadvertently) prevented you from soaking players up into your VILlage as a strategic stockpile by barring anyone from your VIL who hasn’t been on your active list for at least one month.

Case studies!

Case Study #1: Andrew Heaney / Eloy Jimenez. These guys are on the MLB IL. They are expected to come off sometime in May. The Wolverines could put them on their VIL. (We’ll call it the WIL in OD. They’ll be WIL’d Wolverines!!) But we aren’t going to because we are pretty sure we will need Heaney’s innings and Eloy’s OF plate appearances in May, and want to be able to use anything they can give us. So they will stay on the Old Detroit active roster.

Case Study #2: Lewis Brinson/Mallex Smith: Two thirds of the remaining Old Detroit outfield was sent to the minors on the same day from different cities. They are both broken. Mallex can’t hit fat fastballs down the middle of the plate. He can’t catch routine fly balls, as likely to boost them over the fence for homers. (I guess the official scorer didn’t have a place to record a four-base error.) Brinson is just as bad. But no matter how broken they are, they aren’t technically “injured’ so they aren’t on MLB’s IL, so I can’t banish them to the WILd.

Case Study #3: Josh James. It’s hard to keep track of who is on the MLB IL. You can inspect the MLB transaction page, but it’s so crowded with stuff and offers no commentary. You can look at your individual players. The only place with a list of just IL status I know about is on Baseball Reference. There I learned this evening that Josh James has a sore back and sat out a game, and might sit out some more. However, sitting out games is NOT the same as being on the MLB IL. Josh James is not as of right now eligible for my VIL.

Case Study #4: Corey Kluber. Corey Kluber’s arm almost fell off the other day. He has a non-displaced fracture on his pitching arm. He is clearly going to be out for an extended period. But as of Thursday evening he has not been officially placed on the MLB IL. Until he does, he cannot be placed on Canberra’s VIL. If he isn’t in Canberra’s VILlage of the Damned by draft time Friday evening, the Kangaroos are up a billabong without a paddle for the rest of the month.

Case Study $5: Michael Fulmer. He’s out for the season. I’m sorry if you hadn’t heard — it’s all over the Baseball Reference IL list. Perhaps it would be less traumatic if we switched to Dinelson Lamet’s lamentable TJ surgery? AJ Pollock? Aaron Judge? These guys are all on the MLB IL and eligible for the Kaline IL, too. The KILn, maybe, or just to be KIL’d. “KIL me now, coach!” (Switching to IL is the gift that never stops giving.)

Case Study #6: Tyson Ross. He’s on paternity leave. That’s not the IL. He can’t go on an EFL IL, either. Oh, yeah, he’s not even on an EFL roster. Well, he can’t be drafted and immediately stuck on the IL because A) he’s on paternity leave, not IL, and b) he has to be active for a month before he can go on an EFL IL.

New Case Study #6: Erik Skoglund is on an 80-day suspension. He’s not eligible for our IL. No one has him, so it’s no big deal.