Preamble: This document is intended to outline rules and guidelines governing fantasy baseball play in the league currently known as “Debate World.”
I. The Auction:
A. The Auction is the primary mechanism by which each the league currently known as “Debate World” (DW) shall acquire MLB players each year. The auction shall be held once per year at such time as shall be agreed upon by members of the league in advance, at the discretion of the commissioner.
1. Unless otherwise decided upon by the league, the auction shall occur on-line, and conducted in 2 chat rooms set up and moderated by the commissioner(s). One chat room is strictly devoted to the calling of players, bids, and other “official” communications between bidding owners and the commissioner. The second chat room shall be for smack talking, dealing the dozens, making fun of other owners’ acquisition, and all other auction and baseball related banter.
2. We shall try to finish the auction in one time period. If the auction is not completed within this timeframe the commissioner will determine a supplemental auction time.
B. Each owner shall be allowed to call players for auction in a rotating fashion determined by reverse order of the previous years standing. Any player available for acquisition in Yahoo Fantasy Baseball shall be eligible for acquisition by auction unless that player is already on a DW team.
C. Each DW team shall be allotted a budget of $500 DW dollars to spend acquiring players in the auction. Teams control this budget for the entire year preceding an auction. Auctioning shall proceed by a simple “English” auction format with all bids being announced. All bids are binding and must be honored unless some other team enters a higher bid for the same player.
D. DW teams are required to draft the maximum number of players on a DW active roster for the season in question. For the purposes of this article only, “active” rosters do not include DL slots.
1. The minimum bid on any player acquired during the auction is $1.
2. DW owners may not make bids that their team will be unable to honor for salary cap or roster restriction reasons. No team may make a bid so high that it will not be able to spend at least $1 DW Dollar on each remaining empty active roster spot.
II. League Rosters and Scoring:
A. DW is rotisserie scoring fantasy baseball league that uses five hitting and five pitching categories. Teams earn one point in the overall standings for their placement in each scoring category.
1. The hitting categories are OBP, Runs, HR, RBI and SB.
2. The pitching categories are Wins, Ks, ERA, Ratio and Saves.
B. DW rosters are compromised of:
1. Nine active hitters (C, 1B, 2B, 3B, SS, CF, OF, OF, Util)
2. Seven active pitchers
3. Nine bench slots
4. Two DL slots
C. Teams may change their lineups on a daily basis. Teams will not accrue any statistics when they exceed 162 games played at any position or 1450 innings pitched by their active roster.
D. A waiver system will be used for in-season roster transactions.
E. The default settings for the league system (currently yahoo) will be used for items not otherwise specified in league rules, including positional eligibly.
III. Keepers:
A. DW teams keep players from year to year by signing them to a contract extension and using a keeper slot.
1. Each team is allotted 5 keeper slots that may be used to keep any players on a teams’ actionable roster. Teams are not required to use all of their keeper slots.
2. Keeper “slots” may also be traded. Should a keeper slot be traded, the team receiving the slot may keep an additional player from its actionable roster with the other team’s keeper slot.
3. Once a team has spent all of its keeper slots, it no longer has the option of keeping players from its actionable roster. The actionable roster remains actionable, however, and the team may either sell the players on its actionable roster (presuming there is a willing buyer) or purchase another keeper slot.
B. A team’s actionable roster is composed of all players on its roster (including DLs) at the end of the regular season. Any trades that are made during the DW offseason may transfer players from one teams actionable roster to another.
C. Teams may transfer DW dollars to other teams for only the following years auction.
1. An aggregate cap of $25 for cash transfers exists during the regulation season.
2. No limit exists on the amount of cash transferred to single team within the aggregate cap amount.
D. Whenever a player is called at the auction, a team may have said player on its actionable roster. Should it have the player on its actionable roster, the owner must decide within an appropriate time frame whether or not to keep said player, and, if so, what length of contract to sign the player for. A player who was not kept the previous auction may be signed to a one, two, or three-year deal.
1. The player’s new salary, which is immediately deducted from the team’s remaining auction budget, is the salary from the previous auction plus $15 in the first, plus $30 in the second year, and plus $45 in the third year.
2. If the player was not auctioned off in the previous auction, his salary for that season shall be considered as $ 1 and therefore will have a keeper salary of $16, $31, and $46.
3. A player must be returned to the auction when his keeper contract has expired
E. Whenever a trade is made during the auction that involves a player, this player moves to his new team’s actionable roster if and only if he was on an actionable roster before. If he had already been drafted or kept, he moves to the other teams active roster and his new team is now responsible for his salary.
F. All players signed to multi-year keeper contracts are considered under contract for each year of that contract. If a player under contract is not on an actionable roster at the auction, the team that released him during the regular season is responsible for all buy-out penalties as described in paragraph G
G. When a player under contract is called at the auction, the owner must decide to either use a keeper slot to honor this contract or buy the contract out. If the owner opts to buy the contract out, the player is then auctioned off and the contracted owner must assume the following penalty.
1. If his new auction price is less than his price under the old contract, the DW team buying out the contract must pay a penalty equal to the difference between the two prices.
2. If the new auction price is greater than or equal to the contract price, the old DW team pays no penalty.
3. If a manager opts to buy out a three-year contract in its second year, his team must pay the buy-out penalty both during the auction in which that contract is bought out and during the subsequent auction (which would have been the third year of the long-term contract, had this contract been honored). In this case, the penalty for the subsequent auction shall be determined by the difference between the price that the player goes for (or is kept for) in the subsequent auction and the price the player would have had had the original contract been honored (assuming the subsequent price is smaller, otherwise the penalty is zero).
H. If a player suffers a career-ending injury, any DW contract he is under may be terminated without penalty, and the player may be dropped from whatever active roster he is on at any time. This supercedes paragraphs F and G.
