February 10, 2002
As I’m sitting here watching ski jumping and idly browsing
the Internet, I realized that Spring Training starts this week.
So I guess it’s time to get off my butt and put out a newsletter.
I don’t feel particularly funny tonight, so there aren’t
any quotes and won’t be any jabs at anyone.
But the days are getting longer, and the draft nearer, and it’s
been a busy off-season. So I’m gonna
keep this short and just stick to the important stuff.
Money.
Money is due March 1.
Send your $250 to Glenn by then or lose your place in the minor-league
draft.
Draft Day.
Saturday, April 6.
Roster Freeze Day
.
Friday, March 29.
10 P.M. Central time. I will put
protected rosters on the web site so everyone will have the weekend to prepare.
Name Change.
Marcus, having finished second by two hits, has changed
his team name to Two Hits.
Contraction.
No, it didn’t happen in the Major Leagues, but it did
happen in the CRL. Bill Fleisig has
gotten way to bogged down with work to continue as part owner of the Bambi
Slayers. And, as you may have known,
Rich ran his team solo this past season.
So Rich and his father-in-law, Terry, have decided to merge.
They are going to take the roster of Team 14, so that means that
every player on last year’s Team 4 is now available.
(And no, there are no trades with that team, since it doesn’t exist
anymore.) What’s going to happen
is that Team 14 will be renumbered as Team 4, and we will only have 13 teams
in the league. (This hasn’t happened
on the website yet, but will as soon as I figure out how to do it.)
Before you start to wonder about a replacement team, remember,
we were originally only going to add one team in 2000, but added two instead.
So we’re back to where we wanted to be back then.
Bill has left open the idea of re-joining the CRL as
soon as things calm down enough at Silver Creek Ranch.
Regardless of what happens, we wish Bill well.
He was a good owner, and more importantly, is a good guy.
Final Official Standings.
Team 1 did not make its innings last year.
As such, they finish with one point (kinda fitting, given their
old name) in both ERA and Ratio.
(The stat service cannot make this correction for us without it impacting
all teams that were behind them in those two categories.
Because we do not let this happen, we manually adjust the final
standings for the following season’s minor-league draft order – since that’s
the only real thing it affects.)
Based on this, Team 1 drops 20 points and finishes in 10th place.
Teams 2 and 5 move up to 8th and 9th, respectively.
Pitching Category Added.
Lest you all forgot, we added a fifth pitching category
effective this year, strikeouts minus walks (K-BB).
Roster Cleanup.
Here’s the keepers from the annual post-season active roster/reserve player cleanup.
The keepers are:
Team 1 – Andy Barkett
Team 2 – Barry Larkin
Team 3 – Kelly Stinnett
Team 5 – Pablo Ozuna and David Dellucci
Team 6 – Ronnie Belliard, Julio Franco and Kevin Millwood
Team 7 – Armando Rios, Bill Mueller, Armando Reynoso, Mike Fetters, Pedro Astacio and Gene Stechscultze
Team 11 – Adrian Brown
Team 12 – Mike Benjamin, Rafael Furcal, Brad Wilkerson and James Baldwin
Team 13 – Carlos Hernandez and Bret Prinz
As per usual, these players do not have to be protected
on Roster Freeze Day, but the guys they were tied to are definitely available.
Names and Addresses.
I fixed this once.
But since the web page hosting company was changed, and stuff on
it migrated back in December, and I don’t remember whether I changed everybody’s
info before or after the migration, I don’t know if it is accurate on the
web page. Please check yours
here
and let me know.
Off-Season Vote.
We had a vote this off-season to decide if we wanted
to have a scratch draft in 2003.
There were a couple of versions of this related to the trading deadline.
The result is that we will have a scratch draft in 2003 (which
means that nobody will sign any long-term contracts this year) and the trading
deadline remains unchanged.
That means there is one thing we need to decide.
First, do we keep farm players, or do we throw everybody back.
Allowing teams to keep their farm players (so long as they begin
2003 in the minors) might mean that there could still be a few trades with
second division teams after Memorial Day.
But one school of thought says that a scratch draft means starting
everything from scratch. So we need
a vote. The deadline is March 1.
Keep farm players or don’t keep farm players.
Let me know how your team votes.
There is one other thing that’s impacted by this, but
I’m not calling for a vote, I’m just making an executive decision.
If you don’t agree with me, tough shit.
Teams with players already signed to long-term contracts which
extend beyond this year get to recoup the additional salary.
For example, if somebody has a player with a two-year contract
for $7.50, they obviously can’t keep the player for two years.
So they should be able to reduce the contract to $5 (subtracting
the $2.50 for the additional year).
It’s only fair. I don’t know how
many players (and owners) are affected, by this, but if memory serves, it’s
only two or three. I’ll verify it
and put it out the first weekend of March with the results of the vote.
Damn I’m glad Spring Training is starting. Maybe that means there will be something to read about in the sports page.