CRL NEWS

March 13, 2022

 

                “I have a great job.”

-          Rob Manfred, the day after the agreement was reached.

 

Wonder how he felt the last three months.

 

This is, for obvious reasons, a little tardy.  But now it’s time for our Spring Training.  Unlike the pros, we have to cram all of this into a little more than two weeks.  So I’m not going into any funny quotes or anecdotes, and just lay out what we need to get done and the timeline to get it done.  (And there is plenty we need to get done.)

 

We’ll start with the timeline, and then lay out the things we need to decide.

 

Saturday, March 19 – Linked player cleanup.  As a reminder, you can only keep one of the players out of each linked group (be it either 2 or 3 players tied together).  Keeping the player now does not require you to keep him on roster freeze day, it just protects to right to do so.  If the player you decide to keep for now is currently on your reserve list, and you subsequently keep him on roster freeze day, you will owe a $5 activation fee into the prize pool.  A list of linked players can be found at the bottom of this newsletter, with the player on your active roster listed first.  If I do not hear from you by the deadline, I will cut loose your reserve players and keep your players on the active roster.  (Ron, I will go with the list you previously sent me unless you change your mind and send me a new email by Saturday.)  I will update the keepers on the On-Roto site sometime next Sunday and send everyone an email once that has been done.

 

BTW, Glenn has already paid for the site this season, so you should all be able to get in.  Let me know if you have any problems.

 

Tuesday, March 22 – Vote on special proposals for this year (more on this below).

 

Friday, March 25 – Initial payment deadline.  Here is a list of all team balances as of right now:

 

Team

 Balance

1

 $  467.50

2

 $           -  

3

 $  600.00

4

 $           -  

5

 $    25.00

6

 $  100.00

7

 $  542.00

8

 $  250.00

9

 $  343.00

10

 $  135.00

 

Subsequently, here is a list of who owes:

 

Team

 Owes

2

 $  250.00

4

 $  250.00

5

 $  225.00

6

 $  150.00

10

 $  115.00

 

Please send your payment to Glenn so that he receives it by Friday, March 25.  His address is:

 

Glenn Cekala

614 Mangrove Thicket Blvd.

Ponte Vedra, FL 32081

 

Friday, March 25, 10 pm CDT – Roster freezes due.  Send me your keepers by 10 pm (since I have to work on Saturday, I want to get the keepers in Friday night so everyone has a full weekend to prepare).  I usually get home between 9:30 and 10 pm, so I should be able to get the keepers into OnRoto by midnight (I will stay up as long as necessary to get it done) and let everyone know the rosters have been updated before going to bed.

 

Some general reminders on roster freezes since we haven’t done them in three years (at the beginning of the 2019 season).  2020 was wiped out due to COVID and 2021 was a scratch draft.  The scratch draft last year means we do not have to worry about signing contracts or optioning players.  I’ll get into that again next year. 

 

You may keep a player only at a position for which he qualifies.  To qualify at a defensive position, a player must have played at least 20 games there.  If a player did not have 20 games at any position, he only qualifies at the position he played the most.  The exception to this is your utility player, who can qualify anywhere (we’ll get to more on the utility position in the age of the DH in a bit).

 

The salary of any player kept is the salary he ended last season with (e.g., if you want to keep a player added in September roster expansion, his salary is $12.50).

 

Teams 3, 7, 8 and 9 can keep seven players.  Everyone else can keep 10.  You are not required to keep you full quota. 

 

In addition to your keepers, you may keep up to two farm players.  These players do not count towards your 7 or 10 maximum on the active roster and their salaries do not count against your salary cap.  If you choose to keep a farm player, you will owe $5 into the prize pool.  Likewise, if you choose to keep a player who is currently on your reserve list, you will owe a $5 activation fee into the prize pool.

 

Now let’s turn our attention to the things we have to accomplish with scant time to do it:

 

I am making two decisions by executive fiat, because I do not think we have enough time for a substantive debate on the issues:

 

1 – Any decisions we make to any of the below proposals are effective for this year only.  Next off season, we will have plenty of time to debate the merits and drawbacks of any decisions we make this year and will be able to vote on keeping, modifying, or ditching them.

 

2 – We will continue to use the utility position as our 13th offensive player.  My reasoning is that you can always draft a DH as your utility player, but you may not be able to draft a DH in your DH slot, because the position did not exist in the National League last year.  As such, it will be very difficult to come up with 10 DH players (using the positional qualification rules outlined above) that played 20 games at DH last year.  This ruling, is subservient to the rule above (and is only made in the interest of expeditiousness) and will be re-visited next off-season by the all members of the league with a discussion and vote.

 

Now to the other things we need to decide.  Now that all of you have everyone’s emails (if you don’t, go to the last newsletter here: www.c-r-l.org/news/2022news/22news1.htm ), please feel free to engage everyone.  (Again, I urge you to set up a distro list in your email client and utilize BCC so that everyone gets it rather than having it blocked by spam filters.)

 

Before I get into the three things we have to hammer out, allow me to give you a reason for my timelines (if you don’t care, skip the next three paragraphs).

 

My schedule is four 10-hour days, Wednesday-Saturday, 10:30 am – 9 pm (and it could be later because I have to wait until the last delivery driver gets back and then do all the end-of-day reporting).  My counterpart (Cheree) works the same hours, but works Sunday – Wednesday (all management is here on Wednesdays, that’s when we have our meetings).  Our schedules, her’s and mine, are outside the hours when most things happen around here (1 am to 9 am).  Because of this, there are many times during our shifts when we are the only Amazon employees in the building (there are some janitorial and delivery contractors, but they don’t count).  We are also short five managers.  As such, there is no one to take my place except Cheree.

 

So when I talked to my boss Friday and reminded him of a conversation I had with him back in December (I told him I hadn’t brought it up because I thought the event was cancelled, but found out Thursday night it was back on) he said I’d have to talk to Cheree and work out a way to switch shifts that was acceptable to her.  So my boss and I brainstormed and came up with the following scenario:

 

Everything is normal through Tuesday, March 22 (a normal off day for me).  I will then take vacation the next day (since Cheree will be here anyway) and then resume my normal Thurs-Sat shift (Mar 24-26).  Difference is, I will then continue to work Sun-Tue (March 27-29) for a total of six days in a row (Amazon has a rule you can’t work more than six days straight) and she will get six days off in a row.  Then she will work my Wed-Sat shift.  There is more that goes on after I get back so we can both resume our preferred rotations, but I won’t bore you with that.  I proposed the idea to her Friday, but she said she had to think about it and only accepted today – so I am now booked.  (Suffice to say, I know she wants to take a vacation sometime this summer and I told her I would reciprocate).

 

Welcome back everyone.  Now, here are some things I cannot decide by myself that we need to debate and vote on (again, these votes are for this year only):

 

Since we are drafting a week in advance of opening day, we will not have opening day rosters.  Nor is it likely that all free agents will be signed by then.  As such:

 

1 – Can we draft free agents?  My vote (and it’s just mine, because I have not talked to Fraser about this) is that we should be able to for the reasons I outlined in a recent email – you want to roll the dice, go ahead.  I think free agents could be a pennies-on-the-dollar bargain so long as they sign with an NL team, otherwise, it’s like buying a $10 Rolex on the street.

 

2 – Who will comprise our draft pool?  In the past, when we have drafted before opening day, we have allowed anyone still in the big-league camp to be drafted.  But one of you brought up a good point – most of the kids are just getting a look and are not likely to stick, so why don’t we define eligibility as guys in camp that are on the 40-man roster?  He has a good point, but my take is (and again, I’m just one-half of one vote) precedent says it is guys still in big-league camps.  Just like the proposal above, it’s a roll of the dice – you pay for a kid and he doesn’t make it.  But, unlike the scenario above, you do have an out – you can stash him on your reserve list and replace him with our normal DL process.  (BTW, I know news is not always easy to come by in Vegas, but we’ve always had people in the draft pipe up and say things like, “He got sent down yesterday.”)  With so many people in the draft room with laptops and Internet access it should be easy to check.  Of course, this will add time to the draft.  The question is, what is our draft pool? Guys in camp, or guys on the 40-man roster?  My vote, and again, I’m one-half of one team, is we go with precedent.

 

I need any discussion and vote wrapped up and emailed to me by Tuesday, March 22 so I can put out the results the next day (if you read the three paragraphs I said you could skip, you know why).  We need to get a decision prior to roster freeze day because of teams that have current free agents on their roster and must decide on them by March 25.

 

Other stuff:

 

Draft order: 2/6/10/5/4/1/7/9/8/3

Minor League Draft order: 1/4/5/10/6/2/7/9/3/8

 

We will try an experiment this year – an auctioneer.  Several of you (well, at least two) have mentioned that having one person of a two person team do a countdown impedes on strategy discussions.  So Marcus’ friend Jim Elrod, that many of you may have met at Farabee’s soiree at the Cosmo last year (who many of you know because of his participation in the PPP for years – he won his first one but has been contributing his $25/year since), has volunteered to be the auctioneer.  He will sit out until the first bio-break just to get a feel for how things run before taking over – and he won’t cost us anything other than a few beers. When Marcus first proposed this, I liked the idea, but added a few stipulations which he agreed to:

·         Count should be a 3-second count – going once, going twice, sold.

·         Any bid making it in before the “d” in “sold” restarts the count.  Any regular league owner (other than one making the bid) can override the auctioneer if they hear a bid come in before the “d.”

·         The auctioneer should enforce the team and position requirement for any owner bringing up a player.

·         We will still use a consensus to decide who made the same bid first.

·         In the latter rounds, I think there should be a one minute delay before the count starts to allow all owners to find the little-known guy in the draft sheets/software.  I could be persuaded to shorten that to 30 or 45 seconds, but I think we can’t just throw out the name and say, “Once, twice, sold.”

Anyway, if we like the idea after trying it, we could always see if we can get some other “draft roadies” (Little d would be another idea) to do the job in future years.  Elrod may like it – he’s already said it would save him a lot of money in the casino.

 

I know that Ken and Farabee are golfing on Wednesday and that I will be joining them on Thursday.  If you are interested in either day, please contact Ken or Steve.  And, if you want to play Thursday, wear your hard hat, I haven’t swung a club since last year in Vegas.

 

I do not know about any Thursday night get together as of this time.  I will let the normal host chime in on this one.  If he does, there is the normal $20-$25 tip per person that is only appropriate to help defray the cost of snacks, pizza and adult beverages.  The bullshit is free.

 

For those of you who care, I get in at 11 pm Wednesday night.  I don’t fly out until 6 pm so I can have a few hours to study/prepare (remember, I’m working six days straight, including roster freeze day).

 

Finally, here’s a list of linked players you need to decide on by Saturday, March 19:

 

Team 1 – None

Team 2 – Nootbar/Calhoun

Team 3 – Jackson/McGee

Team 4 – Ruf/Cooper

Thomas/Adames/Schwarber

Welker/Joe

Hudson/Bauer

Team 5 – Duggar/Senzel

Gibson/Paddack

Team 6 – Pujols/Berti

Arrieta/Syndergaard

Team 7 – Peterson/Acuna

Ruiz/Solano

Kennedy/DeGrom

Thompson/Strasburg

Team 8 – Stammen/Cueto

Givens/Kimbrel

Team 9 – Ortega/Hoerner

De La Cruz/Tellez

Team 10 – Lux/Robles

Diaz/Winker

Kieboom/Hiura

Muller/Lopez

Bednar/Flaherty

Wick/Clevinger

 

See everyone in Vegas!

 

Jim