Minor League Maintenance Amendments

Fellow Owners,

The Executive Committee met to cobble together together some amendments on the Minor League maintenance rule which is found in Private World Rules , Rule #3. We believe these amendments will help us to target specific areas of poor maintenance and enforce the rule in ways we were unable to this year with a few teams.

Here is the rule as it is currently written:

3. Minor League maintenance: Minor Leagues will fall under the same WIS Fair Play Guidelines for fielding a competitive ML team with only exception being the winning percentage which will be lowered to .200 instead of .250 for any one minor league team. Specifically: 

• Minor League team expected winning percentage of less than .200 for at least 80 games of the regular season. 

• Using a starting pitcher at 50% or below fatigue for 10 or more Minor League games in a row. 

• First violation will receive a warning from the Commissioner asking for correction. The second incident will be directed to The Executive Committee for possible removal from Crash Davis. 

We watched how this rule played out in its first season in use. While we found it a helpful start, the lack of some specifics regarding players made it fairly easy for some teams to circumvent the spirit of the rule for a good portion of the season which left the them woefully non-competitive for much, if not all, of the season. 

We would like to see maintenance of minor league systems tightened where necessary and loosened where it is not. We believe some of us got it close to right last year but the commissioner took our recommendations and trashed them, giving us his agenda which we feel falls short of specifics and enforceability.

Here are the changes we would like to make:

1. Remove the .200 win floor in the minors. 

We think it's totally irrelevant . While it is a very liberal win floor no one really cares about their minor league team's won-loss record--just nurturing the prospects on those teams and protecting them. The notifications to these teams seemed pointless--except for the ones who were falling down in other areas. We would remove the win floor entirely. But that doesn't absolve us of maintaining competitive teams, so . . . 

In place of the win floor we propose the following additions:

2. In addition to not being allowed to field a SP at 50% or below for 10 or more straight minor league games (which is already on the books) we would add: 

a. any minor league team with 6 or more players (who are not injured) at zero rest will be notified and asked by the commissioner to correct the problem. 

b. any team with pitchers playing the field or offensive players pitching for more than 5 games will be asked by the commissioner to correct the problem.

Failure to comply within 10 games of notification will result in referral to the Executive Committee for possible expulsion. If the team is given more time to correct the problem it will be short-term. The second time this occurs will result in automatic removal from Crash Davis. 

These seem like they should be no-brainers to the Committee, but if they aren't specifically written into our Private World Rules they are not enforceable by WIS customer service. And rules with no teeth in them are merely guidelines that can be followed or not.

We believe these changes will strengthen Crash Davis and help us continue on the road to being a top flight HBD world which, let's face it, we have not been for several seasons now. 

We will use all day Wednesday, December 11 to discuss and debate on world chat. Let your opinions be known. The proposal will go before the ownership to vote on for a 24 hour period on Thursday, December 12. Most important to remember is that the Private Rules are a work in progress, trial and error. If this passes we will find out next season if there is enough protection to maintain our goals of making our minors competitive or if we are at least  moving in the right direction.

Please go back to chat now and share your thoughts. I'll set up voting on SurveyMonkey and give you the coordinates Thursday morning. Thanks for taking the time to read and consider this.

Sincerely,

sermonauthor

Commissioner

Crash Davis