EFL RULES

Expansion Fantasy League (EFL)  (AS OF AUGUST 1, 2017)

 

  1. GAME SUMMARY: Fantasy managers compete with each other, and with major league general managers, using runs created per game, ERA, and defense to generate win-loss records.

 

  1. LEAGUE ALIGNMENT: Each fantasy team is a hypothetical MLB expansion team assigned to a particular MLB division. At no time is any EFL Division more than one team larger than any other division. Each fantasy team is located in a city that would “fit” its division.

 

III. HOW PLAYERS ARE OBTAINED: Just as in MLB, there are five ways for any team to acquire players: expansion draft, minor league development, Rule 5 draft, free agents, and trades. Plus we can acquire players during their debut year, but only for that one season.

 

  1. Rosters:
  2. 1. Salary Cap: The Opening Day salary cap is set at 75 percent of the median MLB team salary from the most recent MLB Opening Day salary list, except that the EFL salary cap may not decline by more than 6% in any year. The salary of a player not on an EFL fantasy roster is the salary listed on the most recent MLB Opening Day salary list. The salary of a player on a fantasy team roster is
  3. for Rookies (players acquired in the EFL Rookie Draft, or in either an MLB/EFL trade or an Expansion Draft  before their EFL Rookie Status has expired) in their first year, the amount bid for them in a draft;
  4. for Rookies in their second and third years, $500,000.
  5. for Rookies in their fourth year, $1,000,000.
  6. for Rookies in their fifth year, $2,000,000. Players cease to be Rookies if they are released by the EFL team, or upon the expiration of their fifth season in the EFL, whichever comes first Rookies become EFL free agents when they lose their rookie status.
  7. for Veterans (players who are not Rookies), the salary called for in their current EFL contract.

Beginning in 2013, the salary cap increases by $500,000 at each mid-season manager’s meeting.

 

  1. Pre-draft rosters:
  2. Existing fantasy league owners submit to the league commissioner their pre-draft rosters at a deadline set before the Preseason draft by the Commissioner, Each roster meets the following criteria:

1) shows each player’s salary.

2) includes any incumbent Veteran player who is in the middle of a multi-year EFL contract. This includes players that have been released by the EFL team to free agency, but who have not been subsequently acquired by any EFL team nor signed to a new MLB contract — such players are still on the EFL team’s payroll, but do not count toward roster limits other than the salary cap.

3) CANNOT include any player whose status as an EFL Rookie, or whose EFL veteran contract, expired during the offseason.

4) is under the current Salary Cap.

5) includes no more than 30 players.

6) if there is going to be an expansion draft, marks up to 14 players as Reserved and thereby exempt from being drafted by an expansion team.

  1. The Commissioner publishes at least one week before the Preseason Draft the following lists, with current player salaries noted on each one:

1) The pre-draft rosters of all fantasy league teams, showing each player’s salary, contract term, and position(s).

2) If there is going to be an expansion draft, the Expansion Draft List, comprising

  1. Players on the previous year’s EFL rosters who are not reserved. This list will include players cut by their EFL team from the pre-draft roster, and will list each player by his most recent EFL team.
  2. Players from MLB rosters from the end of the previous season who are not among the following:

(a) Players who debuted in MLB during the previous season;

(b) The 8 players from the MLB team with the most plate appearances;

(c) The 4 players with the most starts;

(d) The one player with the most saves;

(e) The additional player which in the Commissioner’s judgment is most valuable to that MLB team in the eyes of its management (e.g., a key player injured in the previous season, or a rookie highly touted by his MLB team);

(f) On an EFL team.

  1. Each player is listed with MLB or EFL affiliation, his status as Rookie or Veteran, the annual value of his current MLB (or EFL) contract, and the year in which his Rookie status or Veteran contract expires.

3) The Rookie List of players who debuted in the last MLB season.

4) The EFL Free Agent List comprising all available players unowned in the EFL

(1) whose EFL contracts or EFL rookie status expired since the end of the previous EFL season,

( (2) who debuted in MLB prior to the most recent Rookie Draft and were, since

the end of the previous EFL season,

(a) signed as free agents,

(b) released by their EFL or MLB team,

(c) waived,

(d) designated for assignment,or 

(e) traded only for minor leaguers, cash, and/or players to be named later by an MLB team.However, a traded player is not a free agent if his EFL team accepts the MLB trade under rule V.D.2.a.

Each player is listed along with available information about his current MLB contract. If the player is an unsigned free agent in MLB at the time of the draft, his current MLB contract is valued at less than $500,000.

5) The Traded Player List comprising players traded in MLB in the offseason, listed as packages of all the players traded in each transaction.

 

  1. Expansion Draft:
  2. Draft Date: The Expansion Draft is held before the Annual Draft.
  3. 2. Eligible Teams: The expansion draft is limited to teams joining the league. (NOTE: expansion must involve at least two teams. If there is only one expansion team, the Commissioner or his designee(s) drafts a dummy expansion team. At the end of the expansion draft, the dummy team is disbanded and its players return to their previous status, except that players drafted from EFL teams are lost to those teams.)
  4. Eligible Players: Only players on the Expansion Draft List are available.
  5. Draft Order: Expansion teams draw lots for their draft order. The draft runs in serpentine order, with adjustments made in advance by the Commissioner, if needed to avoid injustice (eg., a team having to take players from the two worst MLB teams).
  6. Drafting: Each expansion team owner, on his turn, selects an eligible player, obtaining Rookies at their current EFL Rookie salary, Veterans at the average annual salary for their current MLB contract, and EFL players on the terms of their then current EFL contract. Players who, if they had been drafted by EFL teams would be Rookies, are treated as if they were EFL Rookies in the expansion draft.
  7. Exempted teams: Once an expansion team has drafted a player, the MLB or EFL team from which that player was drafted is exempt from having any more of its players drafted until all MLB teams have had an equal number of players drafted. (The MLB team keeps the drafted player, but the fantasy team, if any, loses him. NOTE: Fantasy teams share players with MLB teams, but not with each other!).
  8. End of the expansion draft: The expansion draft ends when no expansion team is eligible to draft, or all expansion teams have passed consecutively. Expansion teams are ineligible to draft once they have acquired 14 players in the expansion draft.

 

  1. Annual Draft: The Annual Draft follows the expansion draft.
  2. Draft Order: EFL teams will be intermixed with computer dummy drafting teams as follows:
  3. a) The Commissioner sets the total number of EFL and computer teams to a total equal to the actual number of MLB teams.
  4. b) EFL expansion teams draft first.
  5. c) Computer dummy teams are each linked to an actual MLB team. Returning EFL teams and computer dummy teams draft in reverse order of their winning percentages from the previous season. A number of MLB teams are eliminated equal to the number of EFL teams. The eliminated teams are spread evenly through the draft order, although where it doesn’t make a difference to an EFL team’s draft position, the Commissioner may choose to keep an interesting MLB team and drop a boring one.

 

  1. Rookie Draft: The first phase of the Annual Draft is the Rookie Draft.
  2. a) Only players on the Rookie List are available to be drafted.
  3. b) On a computer dummy team’s turn to draft, the computer’s choice is final.
  4. c) On an EFL team’s turn to draft, the owner initiates bidding on an eligible player by bidding at least $500,000. All subsequent bidding must be in $250,000 increments — ie, a bid for $600,000 is not valid, but one for $750,000 or $1,250,000 might be – except that a team with an earlier draft position may beat a later team’s bid by matching it. Bidding proceeds among the EFL owners in draft order. Once an owner passes, he is excluded from further bidding on that player. The winning bidder obtains the player, whose first year’s salary is equal to the winning bid.
  5. d) In the first round only of the Rookie Draft, any team may claim a player outright by opening the bidding at the “claim price.”  For 2007, the claim price is as follows:

First EFL first round pick         $7,500,000

Second EFL first round pick    $7,250,000

Third EFL first round pick        $7,000,000

Fourth EFL first round pick      $6,750,000

Fifth EFL first round pick         $6,500,000

Sixth EFL first round pick        $6,250,000

Later EFL first round picks:     $6,000,000

In subsequent years the Commissioner will set the first EFL pick’s claim price at roughly 15% of the salary cap, with subsequent picks declining in price at $250,000 each.  If the opening team bids less than the claim price, the player will go to the highest bidder (with ties broken in favor of the team with the worse record in the previous season).   Beginning in 2011, the claim price for rookies in the first round of the draft will be set by the Commissioner to approximate the following:

Picks    1-6     12% of salary cap + $1,000,000

Picks   7-12    12% of salary cap + $750,000

Picks 13-18    12% of salary cap + $500,000

Picks 19-24    12% of salary cap + $250,000

Picks 25-30    12% of salary cap

Beginning in 2013, all claim prices are set at 12% of salary cap + $1,000,000.

  1. e) Beginning in the second round of the Rookie Draft, each team has one Rookie Draft Option to pre-empt a computer pick and open that player to bidding by all EFL teams.  After the computer choice is announced, each team is polled in draft order as to whether that team wishes to exercise its Rookie Draft Option. If a Rookie Draft Option is used, every team submits a sealed bid to the Commissioner or his designee.  The bid must be at least $500,000, and must be in increments of $250,000.  When all bids are in, the Commissioner or designee opens the bids. The player goes to the team which bid the highest, at the minimum salary that would beat the second-highest bid (taking into account the teams’ draft order or other matching rights). A maximum of two Rookie Draft Options may be used in the second round, a maximum of three in the third round, and a maximum of four in the fourth round, with any unused Rookie Draft Options available to be used at any time in later rounds.  Rookie Draft Options may be transferred among EFL teams.

f.) A team is no longer eligible to initiate or participate when it has 30 players on its roster, or cannot fit another player under the Salary Cap.  After the 4th round, the computer program will include a probability that each computer team will pass: 20% for round 5, 50% for round 6,70% for round 7, 0% for rounds 8 and later.

g.) The Rookie Draft is over when all human teams are ineligible or all human teams have passed consecutively. No computer team will draft after the last human team has finished drafting.

 

  1. Free Agent Draft: The second phase of the annual draft is the Free Agent Draft.
  2. a) Only players on the EFL Free Agent List are available to be drafted.
  3. b) Computer dummy teams do not draft in the Free Agent Draft.
  4. c) On his turn, an owner initiates bidding on an eligible player by stating a salary and term in years that is worth at least $250,000 more than the estimated current value of the player’s current MLB contract (but see section d, below), except that an EFL team may open the bidding at $500,000 for any free agent whose MLB contract is less than $500,000, is a minor league contract, or is unknown.  No EFL free agent contract exceeds 5 years, unless the free agent has in MLB a longer contract, in which case the EFL contract may be as long as the MLB contract.

Bidding proceeds in draft order. Each bid must state an annual salary over a term of years. Each bid must have a present value at least $250,000 more than the previous bid, except that a team with an earlier draft position may beat a later team’s bid by matching it (but see section d, below). If the EFL bid extends the number of years beyond the player’s MLB contract, the annual value of the contract can only decline by a maximum of 20%. The winning bidder obtains the player on a contract matching the terms of his winning bid.

  1. d) If the Free Agent was on an EFL team roster at the end of the previous season, that team may on its turn match the current high bid (or if making the opening bid, match the current value of the player’s MLB contract) and have its bid counted as the current high bid.  If the Free Agent was released in both the EFL and MLB in the middle of a long-term contract, bidding may begin on him at the minimum bid.
  2. e) A team is no longer eligible to initiate or participate when it has 30 players on its roster, or has no room under the Salary Cap. The Free Agent Draft is over when all teams are ineligible or all teams have passed consecutively.

 

  1. RULES GOVERNING ROSTERS
  2. Compliant Rosters:
  3. Immediately after the Annual Draft each owner submits to the Commissioner a roster showing each player, his position(s), salary, and type and term of contract, which:
  4. has at least 25 and no more than 30 players, including at least 12 hitters and at least 10 pitchers;
  5. identifies at least 5 starting pitchers, and at least 1 left handed and 1 right handed reliever;
  6. lists at least one starter and one backup for each defensive position. (NOTE: OF is considered to be 3 identical positions, requiring 3 starters and at least two backups for a minimum of 5 total).
  7. lists separately a minor league roster containing any of the 30 players not on the major league roster.
  8.  Beginning in 2013, the limit on the total number of players increases by one per month during the season – 31 for the roster at the beginning of May, 32 for the June roster, 33 for July, 34 for August, and 35 for September.
  9.  For seasons through 2009, Any player acquired without a defensive rating on the last APBA season disk will be assigned the lowest APBA defensive rating at one defensive position determined by the Commissioner to be most appropriate. If a player appears during the season at a position for which he has no defensive rating, he is given the lowest APBA rating for that position. Pitchers are eligible to be starters if they have an APBA starter rating, or start at least one game in the current MLB season.
  10.  Beginning with the 2017 season, to be eligible for a defensive rating the player must have made at least 5 appearances at a position in the previous 2 years, or have appeared at the position in the current season. For the 2010 season, the Commissioner will determine opening day defensive ratings by averaging APBA ratings for 2009 and a selection of at least three defensive metrics that determine a player’s value in terms of runs allowed or games won/lost. For seasons beginning in 2011, the APBA ratings will be dropped from these calculations.  As the season progresses, the Commissioner will periodically update defense ratings by using metrics of the players’ performance during the season. If a player has no defensive rating from the previous year at a position, he receives the replacement rating at his first appearance at that position, as follows:  C: 6.0; 1b: 2.0; 2b: 6.0; ss: 7.0; 3b: 3.0; of: 1.0.  A player with no defensive ratings at all receives a replacement rating at the position the Commissioner determines is his main defensive position.
  11. All pitchers are eligible to be relievers.

 

  1.  Releasing Players: At any time a team may announce that it is releasing a player, or designating a player for assignment. A DFA’d player must then either be traded or released before the next roster deadline.  If the player is traded in MLB after a DFA announcement but before the roster deadline, the EFL team may opt to make the same trade. If the player signs a new MLB contract after the DFAannouncement, the EFL team is released from further obligation to the player. Releases take effect at the end of the month.  A player cannot be released, whether by the team that drafted him or by another team after a trade, until one season segment (generally one month during the season) has passed after the player was drafted.

 

  1. Effect of Releasing a Player:
  2. Rookies: If a rookie is released during the season, the team is still responsible for the Rookie’s salary for the rest of the season, or until drafted by another EFL team. Otherwise the team has no further obligation to the Rookie after release.
  3. Veterans: After releasing a veteran from an EFL roster, that team continues to be responsible for the player’s salary until one of the following happens:
  4. He is drafted by an EFL team, in which case the former team may deduct from its obligations the salary being paid by the new team.
  5. He is traded in MLB, either by himself or with other player(s) also owned by the EFL team, in which case the EFL owner may elect to accept the same trade as long as none of the players thereby acquired are already owned by an EFL team, and under terms not imposing any burden on the EFL player’s new MLB team that exceed the burden the MLB team accepted in the MLB trade;;
  6. He signs a new MLB major league contract, in which case the former team may deduct from its obligations the salary being paid by the new MLB team;
  7. His contract expires or is legally terminated by his MLB team; or
  8. He is claimed off waivers in MLB and the EFL team, by the end of the next managers meeting, elects to let the player go to the claiming MLB team on the same terms as that team claimed him, in which case the EFL team is still responsible for any salary exceeding what the claiming MLB team has taken responsibility for; or
  9. f. He retires in MLB, or dies.

The EFL team keeps track of the free agents it is still paying in a special section of the team spreadsheet. The sheet adds his salary into total team payroll, including for salary cap purposes, but does not make him available for use on the team active or farm roster.

 

  1. SEASON PLAY
  2. Season Segments: Each season is broken into segments corresponding with the calendar months: April (including March games), May, June, July, August, and September (including October games). Each month the team’s record is compiled and recorded. If the Annual Draft takes place after May 1, then the teams get immediate credit for the April statistics of the players on their rosters at the end of the Annual Draft.

 

  1. Computing Team Record:
  2. Winning Percentage: Each team’s winning percentage is computed using the Bill James pythagorean formula: ((R/RA)x(R/RA))/(((R/RA)x(R/RA))+1) where R = runs and RA = runs allowed.
  3. Computing Runs: Runs are calculated on the following formula: TRCG x G, where TRCG = Team Runs Created Per Game, and G = the number of games played. TRCG is computed by adding the offensive statistics of the team’s major league roster non-pitchers (PA, AB, BB, H, 2b, 3b, HR, SB, CS), adjusted according to these rules, and applying 0.93 times the Bill James RC/G formula to the team totals.
  4. Computing Runs Allowed: Runs allowed are calculated on the following formula: ERA x G x DA, where ERA = Team Earned Run Average (total major league roster earned runs allowed x 9/total team innings pitched); G = games played; and DA = Defensive Adjustment (earned runs allowed x (1+(.1*(36/D)3)) where D equals total team defense APBA rating, weighted by plate appearances. Platooning players average their defensive ratings. Pitchers’ defense is not included in D. A team with maximum defensive ratings at every position would allow 1.0125 of their earned runs. A team with minimum defensive ratings at every position would allow 1.3375 of their earned runs. An average defensive team would allow 1.1 of their earned runs. (In 1996, the range in MLB was from 6.13% to 14.99%.) Assuming good defenses suppress ERA’s and bad ones inflate them, a wider extreme range seemed appropriate.

 

  1. Recordkeeping: A spreadsheet provided to each owner calculates all this once he enters his players’ statistics. Each owner updates his spreadsheet each month, and supplies a copy to the Commissioner who distributes a league summary sheet to each Owner.

 

  1. Midseason Roster Moves: A variety of midseason roster moves are possible, including trades, waiver-wire claims, callups, and replacements for disabled or demoted players. All roster moves except some replacements for disabled players are effective on the first day of the “month” (season segment) following the date the move was made. No roster moves except replacements for disabled players are allowed after the 1st of September.

 

  1. In Season Drafts:  
    1. The Commissioner maintains during the season a list of “Available Players” which includes all the following:
  1. Players on the preseason Rookie Draft List and Free Agent List who were not taken by any EFL team, nor by the computer, when the Rookie Draft and preseason Free Agent Draft ended (all EFL teams having passed or reached their roster or salary limits);
  2. Players who, since the closing of the EFL preseason Free Agent draft list became Free Agents; and
  • Debutants, i.e., players unowned in the EFL who debuted in MLB since Opening Day of the current season. (Players who are already owned by an EFL team when they debut are not Debutants. Instead, they become Rookies upon being activated by their EFL team, or at the next Opening Day, whichever comes first, with their Rookie status expiring at the end of their fifth season as EFL Rookies.)
    1. Each manager’s meeting during the season includes a draft of Free Agents and Debutants.  All bidding must comply with Free Agent Draft rules, with teams drafting in reverse order of their current record. No bid can leave the bidding team over the salary cap. Bidding is over when all teams but one have passed. If necessary to stay under the 30-man roster limit, the winning team can release one player acquired at a different time to make room for the new acquisition, but is still responsible for the released player’s salary.
    2. Debutants cannot be given multi-year contracts.  Their contracts expire at the end of their debut MLB season, and they will go into the following year’s Rookie Draft. A team that ends the season with a Debutant on its roster has the right to match any bid for that player in the Rookie Draft, except for first round pre-emptive bids.

 

  1. Trades: There are three types of trades: MLB/EFL Trades, EFL-Only trades, and MLB-Only trades.
  2. MLB/EFL Trades: Any time a trade is made in MLB, if an EFL team owns all the major league pieces in one side of the trade:

1.)    it has the option of making the identical trade effective immediately. However, if the deal is a trade of EFL players for EFL and non-EFL players, a team holding all the major league pieces on one side of the trade (the “trading team) may elect to accept the trade by announcing its decision to the league, after which EFL teams owning player(s) on the other side of the deal may elect to:

a.) keep their player(s), in which case the trading team gets only the non-EFL players from the other side of the MLB deal, or

b.) give up their players for nothing, in which case the trading team must take on the EFL players and their current EFL contracts along with the non-EFL players in the deal.

2.)   and the other side of the trade consists entirely of cash, the EFL team may “trade” for “cash” in the form of release from its contractual obligations to the player(s) it is trading away.

3.) and the other side of the trade includes minor league players, the EFL trading team may elect to keep those players by adding them to the payroll at the minimum wage, or to drop those players without obligation (as if they disappeared into the EFL team’s faceless minor league system, never to be seen again).  If the minor league player kept in this way has already debuted in MLB, he will be treated as a Rookie if his Rookie status would not have expired had he been drafted in the Rookie Draft; otherwise he will be treated as a veteran and will cost his actual MLB salary.  If the minor league player has not yet debuted in MLB, he can be owned in the EFL at the minimum wage until his debut.  In the season of his debut, his EFL team may play him by allocating him to a position (or as a pitcher), making that year the first of his five consecutive Rookie years in EFL, or may hold him out of play by allocating him 100% to be inactive for the remainder of the debut year, in which case the next year is perforce his first Rookie year in the EFL.

The option expires at the end of the next manager’s meeting (the Annual Free Agent Draft counting as a managers meeting for this purpose).  The option to trade a drafted player to an MLB team does not begin until that draft is over and ends at the next roster deadline.

 

  1. MLB-Only Trades: (This section is suspended until technical problems are resolved.)

 

  1. EFL-Only Trades: Trading among EFL fantasy teams is encouraged, provided:

(1) No trades for players to be named later. A trade may have multiple steps — players going both ways on one date, and then players going both ways on a later date. No player may go both ways in a multi-step trade. Teams may trade a pick in the next pre-season draft for players delivered immediately.

(2) A team may subsidize the salary of a player it trades away.

(3) In-Season trades are official and binding when announced to the league at the Managers Meeting or via e-mail, but do not take effect until the first of the next month.

(4) Off-season trades are official and binding when announced.

(5) Trades may be effective at a later date than when they become binding, but that date must be specified when the trade is announced and must either be on or before September 1, or in the offseason.

 

  1. Call-ups. An EFL team may call up a player from its minor league roster, and/or send a major league player to the minor leagues, on the first of any “month.”

 

  1. Mid-Month Roster Moves: During the month each EFL owner may make three roster moves. A single roster move can include:
  2. a) Increasing an active player’s playing time at one or more positions where he is eligible to play (with accompanying decreases in OH time, if necessary), OR

 

  1. b) Demoting a player to the minors (which means the player will accumulate no more stats for the rest of the month), and

(i) Calling up one player from the minors to replace the demoted player at one or all of his positions, and /or to play at OH; and/or

  1. ii) Increasing active players’ playing time at eligible position(s) covered by the demoted player (with accompanying decreases in OH time, if necessary).

 

The EFL team may not make any other adjustments, such as decreasing the percentage of playing time of any active player at any defensive position. The playing time added to any position (including Other Hitter or a pitching role) must be between 1% and 3% per day remaining in the calendar month counting the day the owner announces the change(s) to the league. (The normal requirement that players be activated for a minimum of 33% of their actual PA or IP for the entire month is waived for changes announced under this rule.)   No player may be moved from starting pitcher to relief pitcher, or vice versa, as a mid-month replacement. No player may be promoted to the major league roster in the same month he was demoted to the minor leagues.

 

  1. Managers Meetings: Team managers meet periodically to shoot the breeze, review results for each segment of the season, trade, amend rules, and wrap up any pending waiver or traded players drafts. Attendance may be virtual (eg, via IM), but is not mandatory. The schedule of Managers Meetings is set by the Commissioner in consultation with league members, ideally on or just before the first of the “month.” Managers may designate a proxy, and are free to communicate with their proxy via phone or e-mail during the meeting, provided they do not delay the meeting. The managers meeting is partly a social event, partly a league business meeting, and partly a swap meet.

 

  1. Winter Meetings and Rule 5 Draft:  EFL owners gather in December or January for their annual Winter Meetings, for the purposes of trading, talking shop, and watching any playoff or World Series games involving EFL teams.  At the Winter Meetings, beginning in the 2008-09 offseason, the league holds its annual Rule 5 draft, under the following rules:
  2. Each team may designate up to 20 players on its off-season roster as protected.  All the other players are eligible for the Rule 5 draft, including players dropped by teams during the fall. No trades involving unprotected players may take place between the submission of the 20-man protected list and the end of the Rule 5 draft.
  3. Drafting in reverse order of the final standings from the just-completed regular season, each EFL team may select one unprotected player to add to its roster, along with his remaining contract.  No team may add, or lose, more than 2 players in the Rule 5 draft. The draft continues until all teams have passed.
  4. A drafted Rule 5 player must be added to the drafting team’s protected list. If this would put the list over 20 players, another player must be taken off the protected list immediately, before the next team drafts or passes.
  5. A team that drafts a player in the Rule 5 draft pays the original team losing the player $250,000. Any player selected in the Rule 5 draft must be kept on the drafting team’s 25-man active roster throughout the following season, or be offered back to his original team at the Managers Meeting at the beginning of the month the player is dropped from the active roster. The original team may take the player back on his original contract terms, or any terms more favorable to it the two teams negotiate, and keeps the amount bid for the player in the Rule 5.  Once the player has been offered back to the original team, the player may be demoted to the minor league roster, either by the drafting team or the original team.

The Winter Meetings do not count as a Managers Meeting.

 

  1.  Restarts:Any EFL team may petition to abandon its entire roster and restart as an expansion team, under the following conditions:
  2.  A petition to abandon a team is made before the deadline for 20-man Rule5protected lists.
  3.  The Commissioner (or if the Commissioner is making the petition, a Special Master elected by the league) reviews all the team’s transactions for the previous 12 months.  The petition is allowed only if the Commissioner (or the Special Master) finds, by a preponderance of the evidence, that the petitioner clearly never intended to materially sacrifice the team’s future for shorter-term gain. Any owner may appeal the Commissioner’s (or Special Master’s) findings to the entire league.
  4.  The restarting team must assume any debts the expiring team owes to other teams, or to players no longer on the roster. Except as part of a Rule5and/or Expansion Draft,

the expiring team may not transfer to the restarting team any assets except:

  1.  Rights to receive payments due from other teams,
  2.  Home stadium, and
  3.  Team name and logo.
  4.  As of the date of the petition, the franchise may make no further drafts, drops, or trades. Any players who were dropped or DFA’d since the last roster deadline are restored to the expiring team’s roster.
  5. 5.   The entire expiring team’s roster is available in the next Rule5draft, subject to the Rule5 draft limit of a maximum of two players being taken. If there are more than two expansion teams participating in the Rule 5 draft, the limit on players taken from the expiring team will equal the number of expansion teams participating in the Rule 5 The drafting team must still pay the $250,000 Rule 5 draft fee, and must keep the player active for an entire season or release him.
  6. The expiring team’s entire remaining roster is available in the expansion draft, except that in determining its exemption from losing more players, the number of players it has lost in the draft is divided by the number of expansion teams drafting.
  7. A restarting team drafts in the Rookie and Free Agent drafts in the position the expiring team formerly occupied. If there is a new expansion team that year, the restarting team gets to choose whether it goes first in the Rule5or the Expansion Draft (going second in the other one of those two drafts).

 

  1. LEAGUE CHAMPIONS:
  2. End of Season: Final standings are based on the sum of the projected wins for each team for each month, using the statistics of the players on each monthly roster.
  3. If no EFL fantasy team makes the playoffs and wins the World Series under then-current MLB rules, no EFL team may claim the official EFL League Championship.
  4. If any EFL fantasy team makes the playoffs, playoffs are postponed until the relevant APBA season disk can be acquired or wizardized. Once a disk is acquired, the EFL fantasy team(s) stage postseason playoff series on the computer, following the MLB format. Games against non-fantasy MLB teams are played with computer managers v. computer managers. Games between EFL fantasy teams are played by human managers face to face.
  5. No league trophy is acquired until an EFL fantasy team wins the World Series. That team may retain the trophy until some other EFL fantasy team wins the World Series, or until the team is disbanded, in which case the trophy is relinquished to the new champion, or to the league Commissioner. The trophy is engraved with the name of the EFL Fantasy champion team, the team owner, and the year of the season.
  6. In any season in which no EFL fantasy team wins the World Series, EFL teams may have an informal playoff among themselves for the opportunity to claim the unofficial fantasy league championship.

 

  1. In computing monthly standings, the following standards are applied to Team Rosters:
  2. The starting pitchers have a total of at least 5 innings pitched per game played that month, with at least 2 more innings per game among the rest of the pitching staff. At least one non-starting pitcher appears as a left handed reliever, and at least one other as a right-handed reliever.
  3. Each of the eight defensive position has a starting player, or a platoon of two or more players, with at least 3.1 plate appearances per game played. (NOTE: OF is three identical positions.) The other hitters combined also have at least 3.1 plate appearances per game played.
  4. At least 12 hitters have at least one PA for every three games played.
  5. No more than 4.63 PA per game played are counted for each position.
  6. If during a month no pitcher appears for a team as a left-handed reliever, one-third of an inning and one-third of a run per game played that month are added to the team’s total, representing the work of a replacement-level left handed reliever. If, after adding any replacement innings for a lefty reliever, the starting pitchers, and/or the team’s total pitching staff, fall below the required standards, enough replacement innings are added to bring the team into compliance, along with an equal number of earned runs. (Thus, the team is treated as if the replacement innings were pitched by pitchers with ERA’s of 9.00.)
  7. If any defensive position, and/or the total team, is short in plate appearances, enough AB are added to the position and/or team to bring it into compliance, and a single for every 4.25 AB.
  8. In any defensive position oversupplied with PA, the players contributing to that over-supply have PA (and other statistics) reduced proportionately to cut that position back to the maximum number of PA.
  9. Games played in a month is calculated by subtracting the total games played at the end of the previous month from the total games played by the first place MLB team in the division as of the end of the month.

 

  1. Playoff Minutiae (This section of the rules is not currently in use):
  2. Games are played in APBA. Injuries are for that game only; AIM does not apply.
  3. Teams use a four man starting rotation. Teams who win a playoff in less than seven games can count the unplayed games as days of rest before the next playoff series. Extra starters can be used as relief pitchers.
  4. Relief pitchers are used in no more than 2 out of each 3 games.
  5. The starting pitcher who is next in the rotation may be used in relief in the seventh game of the World Series. Otherwise starting pitchers are benched between turns in the rotation.
  6. EFL teams use the rosters as listed for September, but may adjust playing time within those rosters. MLB non-fantasy teams use the lineups as listed on the APBA disk.
  7. No player may be sent to steal, or on a hit and run, more than once per game.

 

VII. THE COMMISSIONER

  1. The commissioner is elected by the league owners at each year’s annual draft, to serve for a term of one year. Commissioners may succeed themselves.
  2.  The commissioner may designate someone to act in her stead to perform any duty.
  3. The commissioner may alter deadline dates as necessary to accommodate owners’ schedules.
  4. The commissioner must act at all times to avoid conflicts of interest between his roles as commissioner and owner. For example, the commissioner may not look at other teams’ pre-draft rosters before compiling his own, and may not adjust his own after seeing any of the others. Also the Commissioner must share all competitively relevant information he acquires in the course of his duties as Commissioner with the other owners. (This does not apply to his own personal research into players’ abilities conducted in sources available to other EFL owners.)
  5. If an owner does not submit information in a timely manner, the Commissioner does his best to work around the problem. For example, the Commissioner will leave player allocations unchanged for any team which does not submit timely updated allocations during the season.  However, when an owner’s failure to communicate threatens to render the entire league unable to function (for example, by preventing timely scheduling of the annual draft, or not submitting a pre-season roster), the Commissioner may suspend the offending team.  If possible, the Commissioner will give the owner notice of suspension via email, with reasonable time to remedy the problem.  The Commissioner’s action to suspend an owner is reversible by the petition of any three EFL owners.  A suspended team’s roster is frozen, except that players with expiring contracts are released and the Commissioner may designate players to be left unprotected in an expansion draft.  The suspended team is removed from its MLB division, and is not tracked in EFL standings. A suspended team’s owner may re-activate the team by giving assurances of meeting deadlines and staying in touch to the satisfaction of the Commissioner or of three other EFL owners; however, if the team misses any segment of the season it cannot be re-activated until the following off-season.  A team that has been suspended for any segment of a season is disbanded if it isn’t re-activated before the next pre-season draft. A re-activated team cannot be sure it will be in the same MLB division.