CRL News

January 30, 2018

"The best baseball player I've ever seen to own a uniform"

Chipper Jones on Barry Bonds

I agree with Chipper. I won two titles with Bonds. I used to have the baseball TV package when I worked for the cable company and I can still remember the old ads the Giants ran when the, then, new ballpark opened in San Francisco. The soundtrack was the old Petula Clark song, “Downtown.” As the lyrics played out, the hook was, “… and go downtown!” Every time the word “downtown” was sung, there was a clip of Barry launching another one. Really clever ad campaign.

OK gang, I made it through the holidays and had a few weeks of down time, but now it’s time to turn our attention to the greatest sport ever invented. So it’s time to put out the initial timeline, including something I need a fairly quick (two weeks or so) turnaround on.

First, the news:

Terry has decided to hang ‘em up and retire from the CRL. We wish Terry and Rich well in their future endeavors.

Because of the limitations of the stat service (and this also applied to All-Star Stats), if I just drop Terry’s team, every team above his spot (four) would move up and those teams would be renumbered. Because of historical norms (we all know which team is which team number), plus the accounting hassle, it was easier to just trade Scott’s entire team to Team 4 and vice versa. Then I just deleted team 11. Scott now is the new owner of Team 4 (with all of his Team 11 players) and nobody else is impacted.

I have updated rosters for all teams – option players and guys at the end of a long-term contract have been released. All other players have had their contract status reduced by one year (L2 went to L1, S2 went to S1, S1 went to Option, etc). Obviously, the “O” players are not set in stone, their status is up to each of you on Roster Freeze Day.

Since I was busy with the holidays (working retail makes my new tagline “bah, humbug”), I have not gotten with all of you to decide which players you would like the option to keep among your linked players. As we have decided, if you have a player (or players) on reserve tied to a player on your active roster, you only get to keep one of those guys from each linked group. Now, I have obviously done some cleanup on the rosters – if one of the players was an option guy, he has already been released so there is no decision. Likewise, if one of the guys in a pair was under a long-term contract, the other guy has been released.

Still, it’s time to make a decision on who to keep between the players you have tied together. Remember, this exercise just allows you to keep the rights to a player – you are not required to save him on roster freeze day – you merely retain the right to do so if you want to at that time (if the player is reserved, and you keep him, you will owe a $5 activation from reserve fee.). A list of linked players is at the bottom of this newsletter. I need your decisions by Friday, February 16.

Timeline:

Friday, Feb 16 – list of protected players from season-ending links due.

Thursday, March 15 – initial payment due (more below).

Friday, March 30 – Roster freeze day

Friday, April 6 – Draft.

Money:

As you may recall, Ken’s mother passed away. We all contributed to a donation for St Judes. It came out to $10/team. So some of you may owe money that you did not think you did.

Here’s the list of who needs to get money to Glenn by March 15:

Team 1 - $250

Team 3 - $55

Team 4 - $250

Team 5 - $250

Team 6 - $246

Team 7 - $3

Team 8 - $197

Remember, get your money in by March 15.

Glenn’s address is :

Glenn Cekala

614 Mangrove Thicket Blvd

Ponte Vedra, FL 32081

Now, here are the decisions that need to be made by Feb 16 (the player listed first is axtive):

Team 1

Bader/Flores

Sandoval/Goodwin/Brinson

Barnes/Bucholls

Team 3

Hernandez/Dahl

Chatwood/Reyes

Team 5

Sogard/Cervelli

Team 6

Jaso/Tomas

McMahon/Owingns

Marquez/Miller

Team 7

Dickey/Finnegan

Team 8

Osuna/Diaz

Aguilar/Arroyo

Rosario/Riddle/Dickerson

Team 9

Nimmo/Conforto

Garcia/Gyorko

Lively/Nelson

If you do not get with me by Feb. 16, then you keep your active player.

Jim