Draft Mechanics
How to prepare your Draft Card Supplemental Draft Old Timers Fraternity
The purpose of the draft is to achieve the goal of placing new players onto teams fairly. There are four patterns by which draft flow could proceed. Only one method is operational at a time. For strategic purposes, it is very important to know what will happen to your selections when you send your draft card to the commissioner office.
Warning: Any general team changes you make during the drafting season (rotation, contracts, subs, strategy etc.) will be overwritten by the draft update packets from the Commissioner's Office. You may, of course, experiment with the controls (this is helpful for new owners), but during drafting season the only changes that are registered at league office are those made to the draft card itself !!
Draft Patterns
For New Leagues Only
Z Pattern
The seed order for all picks in the inaugural season of your league will be randomly selected, and the draft will follow in "Z" format (i.e., the second round will start with the team who picked last in the first round and work back to the top. The third round will run in the same order as the first, the fourth round will run in the same order as the second, etc).
For Existing Leagues
Grid Pattern
The commissioner maintains a grid containing the first 96 picks (1st through 4th rounds) of each draft for the next three seasons. The seed order for these picks is determined by a weighted randomizing device (worst performing team from previous season will have the best odds). Since draft picks in rounds 1-4 can be traded, the number of picks held by each team is not necessarily uniform. It is possible that one owner may have none of the 96 picks in this phase while another has 8 or more. In existing leagues, the grid method is applied each draft to the first draft card submission.
Seed Pattern
The second 96 picks (5th through 8th rounds) of a draft, are based upon the same seeding technique as the grid pattern. However, since no trades of draft picks deeper than the 4th round are possible, each owner will always have four picks in this phase, one each for rounds 5 through 8. The straight seed method applies to the second draft card submission of an existing league.
Bid Pattern
For all picks beyond the 8th round (or beyond the first 192 picks), seed order is irrelevant, except to break ties when two or more owners try to acquire the same player. Bids cannot be lower than the established player value, but can move higher within a prescribed range. This pattern applies to the third (and, if necessary, the 4th and any thereafter) submission of the draft card. If you win the bid on a player, you pay a one-time fee consisting of the differential between the player value and your bid. For example, if you bid 55 units for a player whose value is 45 units, then a 10 unit debit is made in the miscellaneous item on your ledger. In other words, you are bidding not on the player's salary but simply for the rights to draft and sign him.
In all cases, three submissions of the draft card will be sufficient. Owners in brand new leagues will be randomly assigned a bare bones roster prior to the draft. Each owner will need to list in order of preference on the drafting card the players they would like to obtain. The draft card itself is electronic and can be found in the owner software. There are 40 slots for names though all of slots need not be filled in for an owner to submit the form (see "Strategy Suggestions"). The commissioner will announce three draft card deadlines. These dates are critical and, if missed, will jeopardize the quality of your personnel.
Seeding
Seed order for the inaugural draft (i.e., in newly formed leagues) is completely random. Seed order for subsequent drafts is determined in two steps. The first step is to derive a base seed order by arranging the franchises in order from the worst winning percentage to the best in the previous season. Ties are broken by examining "recent record" (the previous 324 games), or, if necessary, by looking at a team's record outside division (the better you do the worse your seed). The second step is a weighted lottery, wherein, moving down the list from worst to best, each seed gets exponentially fewer tickets. Then by random number selection the base seed order is revised to produce a final seed order. This second step helps prevent owners from "fire sales" or other actions that intentionally deflate a team's performance.
Draft Card Processing
The computer lines up the picks according to seed order, then carefully examines the player appearing at the top of the card by applying some tests. Knowing these tests can help you get the most out of your draft plan.
Test One
Checks to see whether this player may in fact have been left on the card from a previous draft. Only players from the currently featured era and the supplemental era are eligible for the draft.
Test Two
Checks to see whether drafting this player would exceed the number of maximum draftable players from this pool. The computer recognizes the following limits by default: Catchers 2; First-Basemen 1; Second-Basemen 1; Third-Basemen 1; Shortstops 1; Outfielders 3; Odds and Ends Batters 8; Starting Pitchers 5; Spot Starters 3; Relievers 7; Odds and Ends Pitchers 5. However, these limits can be overridden by tweaking the settings on the small blue card alongside your red draft card. These limits are intended to provide a combination of flexibility and protection against over drafting.
Test Three
Checks to see if drafting the player would exceed roster limitations of 22 batters and 18 pitchers. If you have lots of players with options to extend, they may clutter your roster and restrict somewhat your maneuverability. Contract decisions are not made until all drafting has been completed, so it is not possible to release these players ahead of time.
Test Four
When the bid pattern draft is employed, the computer checks to see whether you may have been outbid for the player under consideration.
Test Five
When a supplemental player is under consideration, a check is made to see that the owner actually has sufficient units to make the acquisition.
If any one of these tests fails, the player at the top of your card is erased, all players below him move up one position on the card, and the computer keeps applying tests to the next player on your card. This procedure continues until it finds an player that can pass all the above tests, or until it reaches the last player on the card.
If all five tests pass, the player is fact drafted onto the owner's team. The computer then searches the draft cards of all other owners in your league and removes that player from their cards, moves their players up one position and so on. If the drafted player is from the supplemental era, then units are deducted from your supplemental account according to the rules specified in Supplemental Draft. If the drafted player is obtained by a bid, then the difference between the MPV and units bid is deducted from your account under the line item "miscellaneous debits."
Warning: Units will be deducted from your supplemental player account whenever a supplemental era player is drafted, regardless of whether you actually sign the player to a contract. See Supplemental Draft.
This process continues until all 96 draft pick opportunities are accounted for. The commissioner will then make available a draft result packet for the league and put it on the server. Once you download the packet and install it on your computer, you will be able to see a brief narrative of each pick, who got whom etc., as well as an updated draft card which shows only the players on your card which remain available. Except for the inaugural season, three iterations of drafting should be sufficient to complete team rosters given that each team should have multiple players carrying over from the previous season. In the inaugural season, the commissioner may either extend the draft to a fourth submission or ask owners simply to fill our their rosters from the "Waiver Wire" when the season opens. The waiver wire will be opened at the beginning of the season for the inaugural season only.
If a team is unable to field a functional team (see Strategy Suggestions) by the end of the third round, the commissioner's office has the option of automatically (and randomly) placing enough additional players on your team to begin the season.
At the end of the drafting season, owners will be given their existing rosters and be asked to prepare for the first game session. At this time owners will have a certain period of time to make contract decisions, strategy decisions, plan rotations, substitutions and so on.