World Series & Off-season

[Rockies GM (Alex)]

Hey guys!

Congratulations to the Chicago White Sox on winning the 2018 World Series!  What a great run for that team, solid work man.  You now get the label of defending champs next season

As far as the off-season goes, trading is now OPEN and will be open for three weeks until October 8th at midnight CT.  At that time, the MLB season will end, so I will be turning rosters over, calculating ARB for players, and sorting through the minor leagues to update service time.  Once I get all that finished, teams will have one month to decide on their off-season decisions.  Here's a lay out of the off-season schedule, which was agreed upon last off-season for future winters.

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TODAY - Trading opens
October 8th - Trading closes, rosters are turned over to 2019
November 8th - Team Free Agency Decisions are due to the Commissioner (Franchise Tag, Restriction Tag, Options, ARB, etc.)
December 1st - MiLB Draft Starts
January 2nd - Free Agency Opens
March 28th - 2019 Season Begins
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Thanks everyone for a great 2018 off-season!  Enjoy some time off, especially now through the end of November.  All that's required of GM's is to respond to trade messages and then decide your Free Agency Decisions before November 8th.  There will be an activity check sometime in the next couple of weeks just to see where we're at headed into the off-season.

Alex

[Rockies GM (Alex)]

Also, if you haven't joined the GroupMe yet, I'd encourage you to do so! It's been a very fun addition to the league, and I'm sure we'll have some great post-season baseball discussion during October: groupme.com/join_group/41577930/OzCTqZ

[Rockies GM (Alex)]

Also, this is a great time to hash out suggestions for next season! We've already gotten rid of silent bidding, which I think was a great idea. A couple other things that could be looked at:

1. Franchise Tag values. I personally don't like the Cockcroft list, and think we could put together a better system for determining FT's. This would be for next off-season, not the current one.
2. "Home-Town" players. Just an idea I had the other day... potentially on reducing the amount of ARB years from 7 to 6 years (so after year 3 of ARB would be FA), and then giving teams who drafted said player a 7th year of ARB. Just a thought.

Let me know what you guys are thinking for potential changes!

[Nationals GM (Tim)]

I’d like to allow for trading of MiLB picks.

[Orioles GM (Michael)]

Of the current suggestions, I'd be good with revisiting tag values depending on what was suggested, not a fan of changing ARB system (unless we just ran with a single "Type" and did just Type A), and wouldn't hate trading MiLB picks if I didn't think they'd be allowed to basically be passed in trades for free. What I foresee happening is that teams that don't care about them will end up getting offers of (insert player that's been out of baseball for 3 years) for a pick, and because it's an MiLB pick, it'll be allowed to pass, since it doesn't dramatically alter the league. But this happening with some consistency, and being (understandably) exploited by smart GMs, only stands to hurt competitive balance IMO.

[Brewers GM (Tim)]

1) I agree. Both in terms of make the change next offseason, and in terms of changing the calculation (e.g., Will's idea, which I know is still to be flushed out, which is fine)

2) I think I could get my around this if it did not affect players who have already been drafted. (i.e., only applied going forward to players from subsequent drafts).

3) on MiLB picks, I am in favor of trading them, but I would want to see what a vote looks like, because my memory was that perspectives were split

[Blue Jays GM (Stephen)]

I am down for a calculation, and home town players sounds good in theory, but think it would have unintended consequences. It would make it less incentivized to trade draft picks or people you have drafted. It would also decrease the value of traded specs over keeping your own. I think all specs should be of equal value.

As for MiLB picks, I can see this both ways. It can be used to replies people’s farms but some people don’t want to utilize it. I think if they become tradeable, there would need to be a change about getting skipped and not getting a player. I am not sure how an auto draft would work at that time, but you would hope the people who don’t want to do draft prep would trade their picks? Although, you could have a Mets situation last year where we replaced the owner after the draft and the new owner never had a chance to make picks or do anything with it. Maybe do an activity check beginning of November every year and you can only trade MiLB picks in the window between the Activity check and the end of the draft or something like that.

[Rockies GM (Alex)]

Reminder that trading closes on October 8th at midnight CT.