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News Archive
Just in case you might have missed anything throughout the
season, important notes that appear on the home page or other
messages will be posted here as well. Other places for
information include the rules and
frequently
asked questions.
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1/29/21
- How do you pick players for the Redistribution Draft?
Visit your team roster and just above the list of players you'll
see the link "Choose Redistribution Draft Picks."
- We're going to toss around a few rule change ideas including
size of the taxi squad and the allowable salaries of minor
league players. With continued existence of the Covid
virus, we might also be looking at expanding the taxi squad size
again this season (maybe not as much as in 2020). However,
for the duration of the Redistribution Draft, we're going to
work with the standard 40-man roster limits and the standard
limits on the number of players you can have on your roster
making over 250 in salary.
1/28/21
- Results of carryover choices posted. View the
Transactions page to see
the cuts in your league.
- The 2021 Redistribution Draft is now open. You'll have
a little over
2
full weeks to make your selections (see the link on your team
roster). Deadline is Saturday 2/13/21 at Noon EST.
- For more information, see the rules regarding the
Redistribution Draft
- There are 2 weeks to do your list for Round 1, but you
should consider building for all 5 rounds - or at least as much
as you can, because if any of your listed picks/alternates are
gone by your turn in the order, we'll pull up picks from Round 2
and beyond to make sure you get 3 selections.
- After Feb 13, we post the results of only Round 1 only - any
drafted players will be removed from the remainder of your
lists.
- You'll have almost 2 weeks to redo draft lists (if you choose),
then we post the results of only Round 2 (again removing
drafted players from your rounds 3-5)
- Then one more week for an optional redo of your draft
lists, and we post the results of Rounds 3-5
- The season calendar of deadlines
is not yet updated for 2021, but the
deadlines for the Redistribution Draft are:
- Sat 2/13 Noon EST - First submission - we post results for Round
1
- Sun night 2/21 Midnight PST - Adjust your lists for Rounds 2-5 - we post
results for Round 2
- Sun night 2/28 Midnight PST - Adjust your lists for Rounds 3-5 - we post
results for the remaining 3 rounds
- Any players on your
Prospect Roster have been moved back to your 40-man roster.
You can begin to move players to prospect status again after the
Redistribution Draft.
1/26/21
- There are still some teams to get legal rosters. I'm
not home tonight so I'm physically unable to process the cuts
until very late Tuesday night or on Wednesday, so I'm
extending the deadline for now until tonight at midnight Eastern (this
was originally midnight Pacific but the person with the most
teams to fix just completed).
- We'll adjust the deadline for the first redistribution draft
picks accordingly. Some of you ask for extensions when the
deadline is Super Bowl Sunday, so this way we avoid that.
- With this little extension, this also gives everyone a shot
to reconsider any decisions about
Masahira Tanaka
- At the time the roster cuts are processed, all 2021
salaries are deducted for the players you keep
- If Tanaka later signs with a team in Japan - you can cut
him after the Redistribution Draft, but you
will only get an 80% rebate for his 2021 salary.
- Your choice is to keep him and take the chance he finds
a home in MLB and risking losing 20% of his salary if he
doesn't - or cut him now and risk that he does in fact stay
in the US and you've lost the pitcher.
- Obviously if you have Tanaka under contract for 2021 or
beyond, you've already paid for him and you won't get that
money back, so you only risk taking up a roster spot by
keeping him, you're not risking any cash.
- Where do you have Tanaka? You can
view all your rosters
and search for him on the web page or
check the all your players
page
- To be clear, if the deadline passes but a Tanaka signing
in Japan is announced before I process the cuts, Tanaka will
be removed from all rosters at that time and teams will not
be charged for his 2021 salary
1/25/21
- While we wait for tonight's extended deadline for roster
cuts, I've reset the
transaction order for the Redistribution Draft and the off
season. Remember that we had a
Covid-season change
that, among other things, put the winner of the Bottom Feeder
Open in the first spot of the order rather than the team with
the worst record.
- There are still some teams that are not at the
28-man limit. Some it appears haven't started,
some are over one of the limits.
- Check your
teams for errors
- I don't want to do the cut downs for you - so I've
extended the deadline until 1
AM Eastern time tonight. Depending on
the feedback I get it may go a little later, but every
extension will cut into the time that everyone else has for
the first set of Redistribution Draft picks that are due on
Sunday, Feb. 7.
1/22/21
- Are you getting "deceptive site" warnings while using Chrome
to visit BWB? One quick suggestion is to try a different
browser. However, you can also
change your security
settings in Chrome to prevent the constant warnings and
perform your tasks without interruption.
- Reminder - you must cut your rosters down to 28 or
fewer players by Sunday night (midnight Pacific Time)
- You'll have to pay the 2021 salary for the players you
keep at that time. You will not receive additional
cash until Opening Day, so keep enough for the
Redistribution Draft and for pre-season free agency.
- If you're going to be paying for individual teams and not
one of the packages, you can save $5 per team if you pay
by Saturday night at midnight Pacific (or shown on the
site as 3 AM EST on 1/24/2021). See your
payment summary.
1/20/21
- New leagues are open
for 2021. We're listing only 3 to begin with - if
there's additional demand later this winter we can add more.
- Do you want to try to resuscitate a troubled franchise
rather than begin one from scratch? There are a number of
orphan teams
that you can adopt and attempt to rebuild.
- Did you win a league championship or win one of the other
postseason tournaments (or be named a conference champ)?
Then you earned a free bonus team that you can
use in 2021 for either a brand new league or as an orphan.
You can check to see if you
have any bonus teams in your list. (Bonus teams weren't
added to any Cooperstown Club members - you can grab an extra
team for no additional charge at any time).
1/18/21
-
Week 30 Transaction
Results Posted
- Winter Trade Period #2-
Next deadline is for your roster reductions to 28 or fewer
players - deadline
Sunday, January 24 at midnight Pacific Time
-
With the trading period done and everyone about to cut down your
rosters, all the trade rumors have been cleared out to start
fresh for a new season.
- 119 New players added to the game based on the 40-man
rosters
for MLB teams
- This is the only player addition until after
Opening Day
- To find them - In the filter/search area of the player
lists, look for the "New in 2021" menu -
See the list of new players
1/17/21
- Anyone who paid over $100 in total team fees in 2020 got
missed in calculating the credit due back to you for the
shortened season. That's been fixed and you'll find an
updated payment summary.
- New leagues are open
for 2021. List draft leagues draft when they fill -
deadline dates are estimates and targets for filling. Live
drafts have tentative dates and times set aside for them already.
1/12/21
- 2021 team fees are posted
- Check your
payment summary
- Because about 2/3 of the 2020 season was wiped out,
there are discounts for 2021
- For teams paid on a per-team basis, roughly 2/3 of
your 2020 payment has been credited to your 2021 fees.
Typically the discount was spread across your teams -
look in the "Other Discount" column with the heading
"OD" on the summary page.
- For team owners who purchased a full-price Season
Ticket in 2020, you'll have the chance to get a 2021
Season Ticket for $150 - about half off the normal $295
cost.
- Pay by January 24 and get an early payment discount
- If you're adversely affected by the pandemic and
recession and will have trouble with your 2021 team fees -
please contact me and we can arrange something.
1/9/21
- Winter Deadlines - CHANGES: (pushing things
back one week)
- Sunday, January 17: Winter trade period #2
- Sunday, January 24: Rosters cut down to 28 or fewer
players
- Sunday, February 7: Redistribution Draft - picks for
Round 1
- Subject to change. All deadlines are at midnight
EST.
12/23/20
12/4/20
- Winter Deadlines:
- Sunday, December 20: Deadline to indicate you're keeping your teams for 2021
- Sunday, December 20: Winter trade period #1
- Sunday, January 10
January 17: Winter trade period #2
- Sunday, January 17
January 24: Rosters cut down to 28 or fewer
players
- Sunday, January 31
February 7: Redistribution Draft - picks for
Round 1
- Subject to change. All deadlines are at midnight
EST.
12/3/20
- The system is now open and ready for you to start picking
your player cuts and for trades - the first trade deadline is
Sunday night, December 20 at midnight EST.
- First step before you can do any trading or pick
your carryover players - indicate if you're
keeping each
of your teams in 2020. You must answer "yes" before
you may submit any trades or before anyone can contact
you for trades. Deadline is December 20
or we assume the unanswered teams become Orphans.
- Are you having problems with constant warning
messages about BWB being a potentially dangerous website?
- This happens primarily on Chrome and I think some on
Firefox.
- I changed some security settings on my browsers this
summer and so the warning messages went away for me. I
apologize that I then kind of forgot about it and some of
you were frustrated in working on your teams.
- Plans are that over the winter, we'll gradually move the
BWB site to a new host and a new web domain - combining with
some other changes, this should fix the situation.
- In the meantime - what about picking your player cuts?
It's not a great solution long-term, but while you work on
BWB, you can change some security settings in the browser
and the warnings stop. Let me know and I can guide you
through the change - at some point this weekend I'll post
some directions.
- I hope you'll stick it out through the changes this
winter - thanks for playing Benchwarmer Baseball!
11/30/20
- And we are underway for prep into 2021:
- We're not quite ready to open up the teams for trades and to
start listing your player cuts. There's some additional
setup work to do first - will try to get everything open by
Tuesday night.
11/29/20
- Salaries are done - not yet posted. I had to spend
some time with some
rule changes around salaries before I could
move on.
- Figuring out positions comes next - that should be fairly
quick and done by Monday.
- I'll post the new salaries and positions at the same time -
and then we'll open things up for 2021 prep.
11/24/20
- So, what's new? What's going on?
- I'm currently working on finalizing player salaries -
the base salaries are done and I'm calculating the premium
bonuses. The salary cap has been determined - this
should all post this weekend.
- Also - hopefully by this weekend, we'll have position
updates.
- After those are all up, we'll open things up for you to
start cutting back your rosters to 28 players and start up 2
early winter trading periods.
11/16/20
- Benchwarmer Bash Final Results:
Stargell's Spectacular Slammin Spectacle (Steel City League) defeated Three Blind Mouse-ketiers (Three of a Kind League) 4 games to 2.
- Congratulations to team owner Jason Kiernan, who
actually is the owner of both teams in the final.
- This is Jason's 2nd win in the BWB ultimate tournament.
He won with his team from Marxball in 2018.
11/15/20
- We're down to our 2 final teams in the
Benchwarmer Bash, but no matter which team wins,
Jason Kiernan is the champion as he owns both teams.
- Series completed
-
Bash Bracket
11/14/20
11/13/20
11/11/20
-
Benchwarmer Bash 2020 - Federation finals complete - Games 1-7 posted
- And we're down to 8 teams remaining in the Benchwarmer Bash.
Quarterfinal games are next.
11/10/20
-
Benchwarmer Bash 2020 - Federation semifinals
complete - Games 1-7 posted
- Look for the "Federation Results" links on the Bash main
page to see the matchups and the game scores.
11/9/20
-
Benchwarmer Bash 2020 - Association finals complete
- We've reduced the field from 128 teams to 32 - these series
winners now move on to the Federation round where we'll cut the
teams down to 8.
11/4/20
11/2/20
- Cash for final division placement was distributed - check
the team finances.
Playoff awards come after the 2021 salary cap distribution.
- Moving on to 2021 - prep work is beginning:
- Roster pages have been changed to the off season version
in prep to start cutting players. The dates on the
page and the roster limits aren't yet updated/reverted back
to normal numbers - that will come later this week.
- Lineup slots and lineup positions are cleared out
- 2020 contracts expired
- All the players who sat out for Covid reasons are back
on their BWB teams. Any contracts they had were
extended 1 year.
- I will start work on 2021 salaries and positions later
this week
- Post-season trading will open soon - but perhaps not
until the preliminary salaries are posted.
Roster pages are currently still locked - you won't
be able to start on making changes just yet.
10/31/20
- Benchwarmer
Bash
- All the league champions plus a bunch of wild card teams
now move on to the annual BWB tournament of champions.
- The brackets and schedules for the association
semifinals are now posted.
- Teams involved have one final lineup change available -
the lineups you set will run all the way through the Bash
finals. The deadline is Sunday night at
midnight Eastern.
- Games will probably begin on Monday night.
- Meanwhile - starting soon - preparations for 2021 - stay
tuned.
10/30/20
- 2020 Playoffs - Championship Week is Complete!
- Pages for the
Benchwarmer
Bash are up
- The Association level has been expanded from 2 teams to
4 teams - that will be 2 league champions plus 2 wild cards.
- For this season, teams in the Big Red Machine League,
the only league so far in the Koufax Federation, will
compete in the Cobb Federation - the Eddie Collins
Association
- As the league championships finish up, the field posted
will be updated with the new league champs and the updated
wild card status.
- Teams that are playing in the Benchwarmer Bash have one last
chance to change lineups - at that point the lineups will lock
for the full scope of the Benchwarmer Bash. The
deadline to change lineups is Sunday night, November 1 at
midnight Eastern.
10/29/20
- 2020 Playoffs - Championship Week - Game 3 posted
- Someone discovered an error in using the minors and the taxi
squad to fill in lineup holes. Something in converting the
process from regular season to playoffs didn't work and it was
possible to place the same guy to fill in more than once.
I apologize for this - it likely extended into the previous
rounds, but at this point I can't go back and fix all of that.
Finding it now, I was able to re-score about 6 games from Game 1
& 2 in the current week. The results were the same except
Game 1 in the Bottom Feeder Finals of Batman League went the
other way. The owners of the affected teams have been
notified by email, so if you haven't received a message, there
was no change to your games.
- I've found the program error and we can move on with the
remainder of the series - Game 4 will be up Friday morning.
10/28/20
- 2020 Playoffs - Championship Week
- Game 2 posted
- There's going to be a delay in Game 3. We've
discovered a lineup error and might need to redo a handful
of games from Games 1 & 2. Game 3 won't be up until
Thursday.
10/26/20
- 2020 Playoffs - Week 3 - League semifinals, Gore
Cup, and Bottom Feeder Open
- Reminder - tonight is the deadline to
change your lineups for the finals week in the playoffs
10/25/20
- 2020 Playoffs - Week 3 - League semifinals, Gore
Cup, and Bottom Feeder Open - Games 2-4 posted
- For the Big Red Machine League - your playoff pages were
showing the wrong league for this week's games - that's now
fixed.
- Some quick stats on the league semifinals:
- Overall, only 60% of the division winners in the 65
leagues advanced from the first two rounds into the
semifinals these were the teams seeded 1-4 in the
tournament.
- Only 47 of the 65 #1 seeds (72%) are still alive
- 44 #2 seeds
- 36 #3 seeds
- 29 #4 seeds
- The lowest seed advancing to the semis was a #14 seed:
California from Fenway Fenatics (Craig Burke). The
team finished the regular season 22-32 and defeated
Cincinnati (#3 seed, 31-23) and Centauri (#5 seed, 29-25) to
get this far. They are up against Skeleton (38-16),
the league's top seed, in the semifinals.
- Other low seeds getting this far include 3 #13s, 5 #12s,
8 #11s, 8 #10s, and 10 #9s. These teams all pulled an
upset in the first round and repeated the upset in the
quarterfinals.
- Only 7 leagues had all 4 division winners advance to the
semifinals
- No league had all of its division winners fail to make
the semifinals, but 9 of the 65 leagues have only 1 division
winner in the final four.
10/24/20
- 2020 Playoffs - Week 3 - League semifinals, Gore
Cup, and Bottom Feeder Open - Game 1 posted
- The random game selection and the starting pitching
games used was reset for the next 2 weeks. It's
possible that your league will use one of the same random
games used in the first 2 rounds or that one of your
starting pitchers will use the same game as before - but
there are no repeats over this week and the week of the
league finals.
- All teams are "back in it" as the Gore Cup and the
Bottom Feeder Open fields are set
- We're utilizing the structure of the conference
championships for the league semifinals. In most cases
this won't line up with the real conferences that teams play
in. I contemplated trying to play with the setup to
get them as close as possible, but it was just more
efficient to fill them without worrying about the
conferences.
- This season, without real conference play, the
final team standing in a conference will be designated the
conference winner. Should all remaining teams
be eliminated in the same week, initial playoff seeding will
be the tiebreaker.
- Teams that advance to the finals can change their lineups
again for the next round. Lineups are open again
and the deadline to make changes is very short: Monday night at
midnight Pacific (shown on the web as Tuesday, 10/27 at
3 AM Eastern)
10/21/20
- 2020 Playoffs - Quarterfinals complete - Games 6
& 7 posted
- Reminder that lineup changes for the next round of playoffs
are due tonight at midnight Eastern
- You'll start to see seeding/matchups on your league's
playoff pages for the conference championships and the Gore Cup.
This preliminary listing may have some errors as I'm doing it
quickly by hand. I will be running some verification
checks to look for mistakes and correct them before the schedule
is set for the next steps. The official schedule should be
up on Thursday.
- The teams that lost in the first round will now come back
for the Bottom Feeder Open. You have something on the line
- the winner of that tournament will have the top spot in the
draft/transaction order for the off-season.
10/20/20
- 2020 Playoffs - Quarterfinals - Games 2-5
posted
10/19/20
- Lineup changes are open again for anyone who wants to change
their lineups for the next week of the playoffs (the league
semifinals plus the start of the Gore Cup and the Bottom Feeder
Open). Deadline is Wednesday night, October 21 at
midnight Eastern.
- 2020 Playoffs
- Schedules for the league quarterfinals will go up later
today - I hope to have some results up Monday night
- In the meantime, some notes from the first round:
- In 520 7-game series across BWB, the low seed won
134 times (25.8%)
- Of 260 division winners, 25 were upset and did not
advance to the quarterfinals (9.6%). Most of these
were 3-4 seeds, but there was one top seed and and five
#2 seeds that didn't move on.
- 3 of the 4 division winners in Fenway Fenatics were
defeated. The Beer League lost 2 division champs.
10/18/20
- 2020 Playoffs - Round One Complete:
Games 5-7 posted
- Remember, in Round One, the division winners started
with 1-game lead before any games were played.
- For teams advancing to the quarterfinal round, your
deadline to change lineups is TONIGHT at midnight Eastern
- My goal is to be able to start posting quarterfinal results
by Monday night.
- If you lost, you'll now go into the Bottom Feeder Open -
those games won't start until we move to the league semifinals.
10/17/20
- OK, we're going to try this again. When I set up the
playoff scoring program to use expanded rosters, I missed a
change that I needed to make when copying the process from the
regular season scoring (using random games throws in some
twists). As a result, a significant number of spots that
had benchwarmers should have been filled by players from the
taxi squad and minors.
- So - we will re-score Game 1 to get it right
- The new Game 1 results will be on the site on Saturday -
probably late morning.
- Thanks to Jason Kiernan for noticing the problem.
If you see something you think is wrong, I always want to
know. In most cases it allows me to recheck and
confirm that everything works as intended, but it also helps
me find issues that need to be fixed.
10/16/20
- 2020 Playoffs - there will not be a game 2
tonight...
- Someone noticed that one of his taxi squad players
should have filled in the lineup instead of getting a
benchwarmer in the first game - I did some spot checking and
this happened at least a few times. I need to go back
in and fix that - and I may have to re-run Game 1 on
Saturday
- This doesn't happen often (or ever), but I'm actually
moving the next lineup deadline earlier.
I'll have at least 2 playoff games posted by late Friday and
we'll be done with the first series by Sunday. Any lineup
changes you have for the 2nd round are now due Sunday
night, October 18, at midnight Eastern.
- 2020 Playoffs - Brackets posted for the 1st
round of all 16 teams playing for the league championship.
- Sorry for the extra time - setting up two new rounds of
playoffs takes a bit of time to set up pages to display
those results and set it up for all the leagues.
- You can see the link to the playoffs on your league's
home page - however the fastest way to get there -
particularly if you have multiple teams, is from one of
these pages:
- I am still working on some set up tasks to adapt the
playoff scoring to allow for expanded rosters.
I am hoping to begin posting
results by Saturday. Look for the first 2 games
to be posted late Friday night.
- If you notice any problems or mistakes - like links that
don't work or pages that load the wrong league - please let
me know.
10/15/20
-
Week Ten Transaction
Results Posted
- There are no more transactions this season. There
may be certain pages that allow you to try to sign/cut
players/move players to IR, but we're currently setting for
Week 11 and normally you can sign players on Week 11.
If you get through to any transaction submissions, they will
be ignored this week.
- You can change your lineups again for the 2nd week of
the playoffs. The deadline is
Monday, October 19 Sunday night, October 18
at midnight Eastern
- See the season list of
deadlines
10/13/20
10/12/20
- I haven't explained the pitching rotation correctly enough
(and my opinion on that is backed up from the multiple questions
I've received), so let me try again.
- Note the
changes to the playoff format for the Covid-19 season of
2020
- All 16 teams are in the league championship tournament
with the 4 division winners seeded 1-4
- For the first round only, division winners will start
with a 1-0 lead in the series. The lower seeded team
must win 4 games to advance, while the division winner only
needs to win 3. This is a change that a few people
have suggested over the years for the "regular" playoffs
and, while I don't think I agree with that overall, in this
wide open season that seemed like a reasonable reward for
the division winner.
- So, will BWB just count game 1 as a win for the division
winner without playing it? Or will the division
winners play game 1 just like everyone else but with a 1-0
lead in pocket? To be honest, I don't yet know
completely how this will work.
- However, for your purposes, figure out your rotation
P1-P5 just like you normally would. We won't be
skipping the P1 spot - put your best pitcher in P1 (if
that's how you do it). P1 will start in the first game
your team actually plays.
- This way, particularly since I'm still working on the
seedings, you don't have to guess if you're playing a
division winner in the first round - and you won't have as
much time between the series to set your lineups after we
start playing,so you probably don't have to redo your
rotation for the next round.
10/11/20/
- 2020 Playoff
Tiebreakers - the first pass through this is to break ties
in the divisions and this is now posted. There may be
slightly different results when checking the entire league if
there are multiple teams with the same record - that's the next
step to determine.
10/10/20
- Still working on league tournament seeding and setup - so
I'll keep passing that time back to you - deadline for
playoff lineups extended to Tuesday night, October 13, midnight
Eastern
- To answer a question....with the new format for the Covid
season where division winners start the first round with a 1-0
advantage in games, which pitchers will play in Game 1....P1?
Or P2? - The answer - we'll start those series with P1 in
Game 1 and move forward from there (but there will only be a
maximum of 6 games played in those series).
10/9/20
10/7/20
- And we have our final division winners - Games 58 & 59
posted in Hall of Fame League and Motor City League -
See results
- You will have a chance to change lineups in between playoff
series - although once the brackets are set and ready to go the
time between deadlines may be shorter - perhaps only 2-3 days -
more to come as that becomes more clear.
- Reminder - you can set your pitching rotation without any
regard to when your pitchers last started in the regular season.
Each series in the playoffs is a fresh start for determining
games of rest.
10/5/20
- Tiebreaker Games - Week 9 continues - Games 55-57 posted -
See results
- See
standings for all leagues
- Around BWB
- 25 Two-way ties were broken by a single winner-take-all
game in Game #55
- 2 divisions had three-way ties and the first step for
resolving those is to play a 3-game round robin schedule in
Games 55-57
-
Hall of Fame League - Cobb Division:
California, San Diego, and Seventh tied
-
Motor City League - Greenberg Division: Bee
Em, Mt. Pleasant, Oklahoma tied
- In both leagues, the three teams all went 1-1 in the
round robin phase - the ties are not yet
resolved
- The next step is single elimination -
here's how that works and here's how the
pitching
matchups are different in this season
- For Hall of Fame League the teams are ranked:
- 1. California - 10-4 record against the
other 2 teams
- 2. Seventh (6-8)
- 3. San Diego (5-9)
- So it's San Diego at Seventh in Game 58.
The winner plays at California in Game 59 for
the division title
- In Motor City:
- 1. Mt Pleasant - 9-5 in the combined
head-to-head
- 2. Bee Em (6-8, 5-2 vs Oklahoma)
- 3. Oklahoma (6-8)
- Game 58 is Oklahoma at Bee Em. The
winner plays at Mt Pleasant for the crown
- It's been a bit of a challenge adapting the division
tiebreaking games to this Covid season, but I'm almost there.
The single-game tiebreakers are done as well as 2 of the 3 round
robin games in the 3-way ties. Nothing is posted yet, and
I still have some work to do in order for those games to show up
correctly - but it should all be up by this afternoon.
- Meanwhile, here are the
rule adjustments
for the tiebreaker processes
10/1/20
- For the 1-game playoffs, because St. Louis and Detroit
didn't get to Game 60, which would correspond to BWB Game 55,
I've decided that we'll do random MLB games for the batters and
bullpen stats for those games. Starting will be handled by
the next queued start for your P5 slot, which would be up next
in the rotation. The 3-team ties require a few extra games
beyond #55 to settle. This presents a challenge for
setting up the lineup and scoring - as the programs that handle
those for the regular season aren't designed to use MLB games
out of sequence. I'm still figuring out how to do that.
- Consequently, the deadline for setting playoff lineups is
extended, for now, until Wednesday, Oct 7 at midnight Eastern.
That may get pushed back again depending on my progress.
9/28/20
9/26/20
- As I write this, the doubleheader between St. Louis and
Detroit that would be made up on Monday is still not certain to
be played. If they do not play - which would mean they
don't play a game #59, used for BWB game #54, we'll still have
the final game of the season - without any stats from players on
either team.
9/22/20
- Players selected in the 1st round of the 2020 draft
are now included as part of the
BWB player list. Your first chance to
sign them will be in the Redistribution Draft in January 2021.
-
Week Nine
Transaction Results Posted
- Week
Ten Transactions/Lineups - for now setting the
deadline to Saturday, October 3 at Noon Eastern - this may
be extended depending on how long it takes for playoff setup
(with a completely unique format for 2020, there's going to
be a lot of manual work to do that).
- This is the FINAL week for transactions until the
winter:
- Week 10 transactions are limited to cuts and IR
moves in preparation for the playoffs.
- Usually you'd be making IR moves at this time of
year only to make room on your 26-man roster for other players in
the playoffs. We're using expanded rosters this
season for the playoffs, so this might not be needed as
much this season.
- However - this is your LAST CHANCE to cut
players who have a contract for 2021 and beyond
before roster carryover selections in December.
You must keep all players under contract as part of your
28-man carryover squad. If you have regrets about
a contract, you either have to cut the player now or
trade him away in November/December. Of course,
this also means you won't have him for any playoff games
past the first week.
- Your lineup changes this week are for the first week of
the playoffs - the first round of the 16-team bracket.
You may reorder your pitching rotation now without concern
for rest between starts between Week 9 games and the
playoffs.
- You will be able to change your lineup/rotation for
future playoff weeks. Dates TBD.
- Note - Week 8 was the last week to sign free agents -
all the existing web pages are set to close that off each
year in Week 25, not Week 9. I thought I got
everything, but a few signing attempts got through - those
were deleted. Same goes this week - if a page still
lets you try to sign players, those attempts will be
discarded.
- See the season list of
deadlines
9/21/20
- We had 5 teams clinch division titles during the last round
of games. Congratulations! Normally, every year I
post division champs and information plus a rundown of close
races around BWB. This season, everything is moving fast
and I'm not going to have time to put those up.
9/18/20
- Reminder - Contract Extensions are due this week
- deadline Sunday night at midnight Pacific. Here are some
updates/clarifications:
- You're doing this to save cash in future seasons
for players who will have higher salaries in 2022 and beyond
- You do not have to do this in order to keep players
- you will choose 28 players to keep on your roster in
December.
- You must have enough cash on hand to pay the full
contracts right now, up front.
- Any player under contract MUST be kept in December
when you make your roster carryover selections.
- You are not currently in a use-it-or-lose-it cash
situation. Any cash you have on hand at the end of
the season will be yours through the fall/winter.
You don't have to worry about maximum cash balances
until March/April 2021.
- Team cash - Your
cash
balances were just updated to include Week 6 game
results/placements. Week 7 games will be completed
before we process the Week 9 transactions - the
results/placements for Week 7 WILL count toward your cash
balances when signing contracts, but will not appear on the
website before the deadline.
- What happens if you try to sign more contracts than you
actually have cash for? (Say that you misjudge how much cash
you're going to get for Week 7). I checked in the
rules and on the blog and this isn't outlined, so let me
tell you how this has always worked:
- The first consideration is that I take care of next
year before future years - this theoretically will have
more immediate effect to your team, but might really be
to your disadvantage. So, if you try to spend too much money, everyone you attempt to sign for 2021 will take precedence
over future seasons (and 2022 will take precedence over
2023 and beyond - etc.)
- So, for example, you try to extend Byron Buxton
for 2021 for 577 and extend out to 2025 for Fernando
Tatis (2025 will cost you 6000) - but you are short
in cash by 100. The Buxton signing will go
through and the Tatis contract will only go out to
2024.
- If everyone is at the same extension year, the
second consideration is to give precedence to the player
with the higher current salary.
- Given a similar example, you try to extend Tatis
through 2021 for 881 and Buxton for 577, but you're
short in cash by 100. In this case the
extension for Tatis prevails. That's generally
what you'll want because the 2021 salary for Tatis
will be much higher than Buxton's. But beware
if Tatis is the lower-priced player in that
scenario.
- This is the same if you're extending multiple
people for multiple years and say, the trouble comes
with players extended to 2023 - the player(s) with
the higher 2020 salary will have precedence.
- If it comes down to players with the same 2020
salary, I'll try to use some judgment - Which player
will likely have the higher salary in 2021 (or the
extension year in question)? I'm not going to try
to do an actual calculation but will use my best guess.
- If multiple contracts have to be denied/cut back,
I'll always go back and see if once a contract is
stricken to get the team balance out of the red, can any
others be restored?
- There's generally too many people to work with -
I
don't go back to teams and ask which contracts they want
to keep/drop to keep the balance in the black.
Think carefully if your cash balances are projected to
go negative.
- It should be a bit easier this season - there are no
trades or free agent signings going on at the same time.
However, contract extensions are technically the last
thing to be processed in any week - if you are
submitting an IR move this week, the 250 charge for that
move will take precedence over the contracts.
Maybe save your IR moves until next week.
- You should always do a final
check on transactions
for all your teams and see the final balances.
9/14/20
- All teams just received an extra 1000 in cash to help with
contract extensions
- This is the final week to submit contract extensions
for 2021 and beyond
- There are no free agent signings allowed this week - only
cuts, IR moves and contract extensions
9/12/20
- Remember - transaction/lineup deadlines are now on
SUNDAYS.
- However - because I'm messing up some teams' plans by adding
Isan Diaz (see below) back to their rosters at the end of the
week, this week's deadline time is extended from Noon to
7 PM Eastern.
- Isan Diaz opted back in from sitting out all season.
He's been added back to his original rosters and available to
put into lineups for Week 8.
- His prorated salary for 2 weeks will be charged to the
teams.
- I think this only puts one team immediately over the
50-man limit (Mt. Airy in Geek Pride) - because he was added
so late, that team has a week grace period to get the team
back to 50 players.
9/8/20
- With Game 27, we've reached the halfway point of our regular
season
-
Playoffs in the Covid-19 world
- Clarification - Playoffs will use the expanded rosters
that we've been using for the entire season.
- Don't forget that the team with the worst 2020 record
will not automatically draft first in the 2021
Redistribution Draft.
Results of the playoffs will play a role in setting the
offseason draft order
- Deadline day change:
Transactions/Lineups are now due at Noon
Eastern on Sundays
- There are no more salary rebates for cut players this season
- Prospect Rosters are locked - you can't move anyone there
for the remainder of the season
- This upcoming transaction week is the final chance to sign
free agents for the 2020 season
- All orphan teams that are still unclaimed were awarded the
4000 in orphan cash (in normal seasons this happens in early
July)
9/4/20
- Upcoming deadlines - see the
season schedule of deadlines
- Monday, September 7 - this is the
final week to get a prorated salary rebate
for cut players and it's the last chance to move
anyone to the Prospects Roster
- Sunday, September 13 - at Week 8 we
shift to Sunday deadlines and this is the final
chance to sign free agents
- Sunday, September 20 - unlike normal
season when contract extensions end in July, this year you
can wait until this final week of regular season
transactions to sign players to extended contracts.
9/1/20
- I incorrectly calculated the financial awards for the
results and division placement in Week 1. See
league finances
- Financial updates listed for 8/29: reversed the awards
on 8/25 (Big Red Machine had no cash given out for Week1, so
nothing changed for that league).
- On 8/30 - credited the proper amounts for Week 1
- On 8/31 - Results of Week 6 transactions and Week 2
games
8/27/20
- Any remaining
orphan teams are free for the remainder of the 2020 season
and you'll also get the orphan rate for the team in 2021.
- We're down to just a few teams with zeroes:
- 2 teams still are 12-0: Underground from Beatleball
(Michael Quinn) and Lampoon's from Chevy Chase League (Jason
Kiernan)
- One final team is without a win: New Riverside from Gone
But Not Forgotten League (Dave Matter)
8/26/20
- Deadline day change:
Week
Six Transactions/Lineups due Monday, August 31 at 7 PM EDT
- This week is the trade deadline
8/25/20
- Entering our next set of games, there are 9 teams across BWB
with a perfect 9-0 record. At the other end, 8 teams are
still looking for their first win.
- Sorry for any problems that this may have caused in planning
your transactions - the salary rebate calculation for your
players in transactions was incorrectly showing an 80% rebate
for players you cut. This has been fixed to the actual
value of 44%.
8/24/20
- A few updates on the
Covid-19 rules covering team finances, first round
picks, BWB entry fees
- Quick note on the starting pitching stats for Week 2.
Because the deadline was pushed back for the Week 2 lineups from
8/5 to 8/8, the cutoff date for starts for players you moved
from some other roster spot to P1-P5 would also have been 8/8 -
anything before that would have been ignored. This would
have put a lot of teams in some tough positions for games.
So, I allowed starts from 8/5-8/7 that would have been included
with the original deadline. We should be on track the rest
of this season for staying on schedule, so this should be the
only time that's needed.
- A reminder that with the short season, we're fast
approaching some deadlines - see the
season schedule of deadlines
- Monday, August 31 - we shift to Mondays
for transaction/lineups at Week 6 and this is the
trade deadline
- Monday, September 7 - this is the
final week to get a prorated salary rebate
for cut players and it's the last chance to move
anyone to the Prospects Roster
- Sunday, September 13 - at Week 8 we
shift to Sunday deadlines and this is the final
chance to sign free agents
- Sunday, September 20 - unlike normal
season when contract extensions end in July, this year you
can wait until this final week of regular season
transactions to sign players to extended contracts.
8/23/20
- There's not a lot that can be told from 1 week - but here's our 1-page look at comparing
teams across all the leagues in the BWB universe:
Around BWB
8/21/20
- Week 5 transaction order is now set -
it's based on the standings after Week 1 games
8/18/20
- And we have Game 1
in the books! I usually just run one game to start off to
work out the kinks of the process in starting up for the new
season - check back on Wednesday night for more game scores.
8/17/20
- We have a season schedule! Check out
this week's games and a view
of your team's schedule for
the entire season.
- Some explanation of the schedule format:
- Originally, the plan was to have the final two weeks of
the season be games within your division. However -
seeing what's been going on with the game postponements due
to Covid-19 testing results - the idea of whether all teams
are going to get 59 or 60 games played seems up in the air.
Should too many teams fall short of a full 60-game season,
BWB will have to cut off a few games from the end of the
season.
- So, I pulled out the original Week 6 from the planned
schedule - the final week of inter-conference play - and
moved that to Week 9 - moving up the original Weeks 7-9 a
week earlier.
- It's not ideal - if we play the full 54-game schedule,
your last games of the season will not be in the division.
However, if we have to cut games - it allows us to make the
decision as late as possible and still keep your divisional
games at a full 6 games against each team.
- St. Louis has enough games played now for us to score BWB
games. I am trying to get that done as soon as possible!
I would expect right now that Tuesday night will be the
*soonest* I can get the first games up - it may take a little
longer.
8/13/20
- As mentioned below, the transaction order for Week 4 is now
set to a random order. Fingers crossed that this is the
only week we need to do that.
8/12/20
- Marcus Stroman was removed from all BWB rosters before
running Week 3 transactions as he opted out for the season due
to Covid-19. His salary was rebated a prorated amount or
his contract was extended by a year. He'll be returned to
his original rosters after the season.
- Stroman's choice has brought up the need for a clarification
to the rule of players
opting out - the provision that a player who opted out would
have his BWB contract extended another year was originally
intended with the idea that the list would close on Opening Day.
Looking ahead - if any players opt out in September, you've
already had him for about 2/3 of the 2020 season, so players
opting out after August 31 will not get a contract extension.
- In an email sent to all owners last week, I mentioned that
by Week 3 we are typically using current season standings to set
the weekly transaction order. It's usually 2 weeks apart -
so, for example, Week 1 standings sets the order for Week 3.
With the delay in St. Louis games, we haven't even started Week
1, let alone finished it.
- In the email, I said that for Week 3 we'd still use the
transaction order based on 2019 standings, but would likely
change that moving forward.
- Beginning with Week 4 (deadline 8/18), until we can set
transaction order based on 2020 standings, BWB will set each
week's transaction order via a random draw that will change
from week to week.
- In some cases the transaction order might be set a few
days after the transactions for the previous week post -
depending on further developments with the MLB schedule.
We are probably looking at a gap of more than 2 weeks
between standings and setting the order when we first start
out.
- For Week 4, the order will be random and will be posted
here on the website by Thursday night.
8/11/20
- I am getting close to posting a 2020 BWB schedule. I
have it all laid out - I just need to set it up for all 65
leagues. Just a peek behind the scenes: I use the same
basic 150-game schedule structure since 2000. And in a
normal season thanks to some computer programming I did years
ago, I can generate the full BWB season schedule in an hour or
two. To do a shortened 54-game schedule, I had to figure
out all the matchups first by hand, so that took me some time.
- Speaking of schedules...St. Louis still is hampering our
season. A couple of days ago I was ready to say we'll just
skip St. Louis or artificially change their game numbers to
allow us to start the BWB season. But on the off chance that
they start playing on Friday and try to make up many/most/all of
their games, then by the end of the season it would start to
match up better.
- Something to prepare for - if it turns out that a
significant number of the Cardinals games are not made up,
we may have to cut a
week out of the BWB season. We'll need 59 MLB games to
play 54 BWB games - and if St. Louis doesn't play all of their
games, that will mean that some of their opponents won't get to
59 games either, which would leave our final games missing
several teams' players. More to come on that.
8/8/20
- OK, so St. Louis has foiled our plans to be able to start
scoring games this weekend. The Cardinals have to play one
more game for us to be able to start the BWB season. Stay
tuned.
- We do have to keep up with our normal transaction deadlines
as the goal is to have you set lineups before most of the actual
game performances occur. This will mean we're going to be
flying blind a little bit in regards to your team's results by
the time you need to set lineups. This season will be
different in many ways.
- So prepare for a very short turnaround - I'll process Week 2
transactions on Saturday night and then the next deadline is
Tuesday night at 7 PM Eastern. After that we'll be to our
standard 6-7 days between deadlines.
- However, I'm going to be away from home a little longer than
I thought this afternoon - so I'll pass on that time to you -
the Week 2 transaction/lineup deadline is now 5 PM
Eastern today.
8/5/20
- You might be asking...when do we start playing
games?
- First, understand the Five Game Gap - if you're new to BWB or just need a
reminder, check out the explanation of
how MLB games map to BWB
games
- So we need to wait until all teams play MLB game #6 to
get to BWB game #1
- Based on the current MLB schedule, not accounting for
killer viruses or weather problems, it looks like:
- Miami and Philadelphia will play game #6 on
Wednesday
- St. Louis will play game #6 on Friday
- So - if everything goes well, Saturday will be the
first chance to score BWB game #1. However, with
my time on Saturday evening, I'll be working on the Week
2 transactions. (I will try, but cannot guarantee, that
game 1 results will be posted on Sunday)
- Maybe just pretend this year we're back in the old days
of Robot Baseball (for those of you who played our
predecessor game)...back in the 90s...when game results were
mailed out a week or two - or longer! - after you submitted
your lineups by mail.
8/2/20
- If there's any kind of announcement about an interruption of
the 2020 season by Monday evening, BWB will still process the
Week 1 transactions - however, there may be a push back on the
deadline.
- This has already been a crazy start to the season - and
based on what has already happened, we're going to have to be
flexible and sometimes play things by ear. I've attempted
to try to line up everything in advance, but things may change.
- Among the changes put in place is that players who opt out
throughout the season - not just by Opening Day - will be put on
the "Covid list." That and other changes/additions - like
the structure of the playoffs and the offseason draft order -
are found on the
Covid
2020 page.
8/1/20
- There's a lot up in the air and rumors of a shutdown of the
MLB season - I'm pushing back the Week 1 deadline to
Monday evening at 7 PM Eastern. For now - you
should still be working on setting your lineups for our first
games.
- Taxi squads will increase by 4 players immediately -
pushing rosters up to 50 total players. All teams
will get an extra 2000 in cash this week - there's more to come
on any additional cash distributed in the regular season.
- Nick Markakis is coming back off the Covid list - I'll be
putting him back on rosters this weekend. Isan Diaz is
opting out - I'll pull him off of rosters before processing Week
1 transactions. For our purposes, the "Covid list" will
apply to anyone who opts out before our Week 1 (BWB Opening Day)
deadline.
- Sorry - I created the list of teams who have to reduce cash
a couple of days ago, but didn't post it.
- After Week Zero transactions, teams should have had their
cash balances at or below 13000 (11000 + the 2000 extra cash
given to all teams). Like we did in 2019, teams will get a
final chance to get their balances below that number.
-
This is the list of teams that still need to get
balances below 13000
- These teams still have a chance to use their cash
before losing it.
- Because all teams have been given 2000 in cash for
Opening Day, the new maximum balance is 13000
- The teams on the list can only work their cash down
via contract extensions
- Use the normal contract extension form to
submit your choices
- Before we process Week 1 transactions, we'll run a
special contract extension round only. After those
extensions are processed, any of the teams that still
have balances over 13000 will be cut down to that amount.
- Then we'll move on to run Week 1 transaction
submissions as normal.
- The deadline to complete this is the same as the
Week 1 transaction deadline - Sunday night 8/2 at
Midnight EDT
-
Only the
teams on this list need to be concerned about this
7/25/20
- Reminder: your teams' cash balances need to be below
11000 after processing this week's transactions or the
balance will be cut down to 11000. Need to take a quick
pass again to see where you stand? Check out the
all my transactions page
which displays the estimated cash balance for you after this
week's
transactions (does not include the effects of any trades).
- And we've got a regular
season schedule for transactions and deadlines
- Week Zero deadline should have been Fri 7/24 and Week 1
should have been Wed 7/29, but with my delay in getting some
of the Covid measures in place and delaying the posting of
Week -2 transactions, we'll have some adjustments and will
have to have some short weeks to get back on schedule:
- Week Zero: due Tuesday 7/28 at midnight Eastern
- Week One: due Saturday 8/1 and extended to midnight
Pacific
- Week Two: due Thursday 8/6 at midnight Eastern
- After that, weeknight deadlines are 7 PM Eastern and
Sunday deadlines are noon Eastern
- Some other notes on the condensed schedule
- Salary rebates and assumptions decrease roughly 11%
each week, but the maximum salary rebate is 80% and
toward the end of the season, the minimum salary you'll
pay is 33%
- Trade deadline: Week 6 - Monday, August 31
- Final week for salary rebates: Week 7 - Monday,
Sept. 7
- Final week to add players to the Prospect Roster:
Week 7 - Monday, Sept. 7
- Final week to sign free agents: Week 8 - Sunday,
Sept. 13
- And in a weird season, you'll have all the way until
Week 9 to sign multiyear contracts (due Sunday, Sept.
20)
7/21/20
- Quick reminder - players who have opted out of the season
entirely have been pulled from rosters - and will show up now on
free agent rosters - but they cannot be signed as free agents.
Attempts to sign those players will be discarded. You'll
see "Covid" in the status column in the free agent list for
those players.
7/18/20
- Now on your roster page: If
you had players on your roster who opted out for 2020 and
removed from your roster for the season, they are now displayed
at the bottom of the page.
7/17/20
- Some changes on the site to accout for the Covid-19 rule
changes:
(there may be some missing things - let me know if you find any
problems)
- The warning message for Week Zero maximum cash balance
has been changed from 5000 to 11000
- The checks on roster limits and lineups should be OK now
to allow for: 46 total players / up to 10 players on the
Taxi squad / up to 36 players making salary over 250 / up to
24 hitters over salary over 250 / up to 22 pitchers over
salary over 250
- Transaction page should now allow you up to 8 rounds of
picks instead of 4 (good for the next 2 weeks)
- The lineup change page shows options for setting
expanded taxi squad slots for T5-T10
7/16/20
- Now posted -
How
will BWB function during the 2020 season of Covid-19?
- For those of you who have emailed or posted on Facebook
or various blogs, I've taken your thoughts into
consideration. I couldn't implement them all - some
were counter to my thoughts - some of you contradicted each
other - but many of them did play a role in setting up this
season.
- A large part of what I'm trying to accomplish is to have
a fun season in 2020 (if it lasts) without teams having to
completely blow up their rosters and long term plans.
- Some highlights:
- Players opting out for the 2020 MLB season were
removed from BWB rosters and will be returned after the
season - all transactions for these players in Week -2
were discarded. Their salaries have been refunded
for 2020 and any contracts extended for an extra year.
- Taxi squad will increase from 4 to 10; IR will
increase from 1 to 3.
- Transactions for Week -1 and Week Zero will allow
for 8 rounds of picks instead of 4.
- All teams were just given an extra 6000 in cash.
- The maximum cash balance your team can carry into
2020 on Week Zero is increased from 5000 to 11000 with
the new cash just provided.
6/21/20
- Week -3 transaction deadline pushed back to Sunday, June 28
at midnight EDT.
- First round draft picks? Some of you have asked when
they will be added to the player list. Like a lot of
things right now - this is TBD - but this won't happen in the
near future - probably not until after we reset the transaction
order again to reflect the 2019 season results.
6/11/20
- Sorry for slow posting of transaction results - a
combination of timing and technical issues. I hope to have
those up soon - the next deadline will NOT be this Sunday night
(a July 4 opening day seems impossible now).
5/20/20
- Thanks for your patience as we wait to see what's going to
happen with Major League Baseball in 2020.
- Obviously, there's not a June 1 start for MLB, so it's time
to readjust the preseason calendar.
- At the moment, we'll shoot for a July 4 MLB start date
as that's been one that's been thrown around a lot
- The next transaction week will have the deadline, as
previously scheduled, of Sunday, May 31 - so nothing you'll
need to do on Memorial Day weekend.
- After that, we'll schedule transactions again to be
weekly on Sundays, with a potential Week Zero deadline set
for Saturday, July 4. The Week Zero deadline typically
lines up with Opening Day - so we'll be flexible with that.
- This adds 5 more weeks of transactions.
- All previous transaction weeks have been renumbered
by 5. Week -11 is now Week -16, and so on.
- The deadline just passed on 5/17 is now Week -6 (I'm
working on those transactions tonight)
- The next deadline on 5/31 is now Week -5
- The schedule for the regular season will be
determined once we know when MLB will start and how many
games will be played.
- If Opening Day is stretched out past July 4, we'll
adjust deadlines accordingly with more time in between them
- my hope is to not have to renumber again. If there
is no baseball in 2020, then we'll figure out what comes
next.
- See the
updated schedule of transaction deadlines
5/6/20
- So, what happens in BWB for salaries in 2021 and for
multiyear contracts?
- At this point, any major decision/change will have to
wait to see what MLB will do - but for 2021 salaries:
- If MLB plays some sort of schedule in 2020, we'll
probably adjust the salary formulas to extrapolate the
reduced stats to be equivalent to 162 games. Most
of the components of the salary formula are based on raw
stats - the number of games, plate appearances, innings
pitched, hits, etc. - There's one 1 or 2 components that
are average-based.
- If MLB doesn't play at all in 2020, this is still
TBD, but my general feel is that 2021 salaries will then
be exactly the same as 2020 salaries
- How about multi-year contracts?
- Much like in MLB, if a contract expires in 2020,
it's done. We're not going to extend any
expirations for contracts.
5/5/20
- Meanwhile, with at least a glimmer of hope that there will
be a partial MLB season to be played in 2020, we're looking to
fill up 2 more new leagues:
- British Invasion League is a league drafting via the
list format - we need to fill 4 more teams
- Mile High Leauge will use live drafting - we need to
fill 5 more teams there
- See our
list of new
leagues for 2020 for more information along with
links to sign up to take the teams.
- Or, we still have a number of
orphan teams
available who need good new owners ready to take them over
and build them back to playoff contenders.
3/29/20
- Big Red Machine League Draft - Phase Two Draft, Part
Three is
complete
- See the league
draft index for more information
- Rosters populated and finances updated
- The Phase 2 draft is now complete - your league moves
into weekly transactions (next deadline is Sunday 4/5).
3/27/20
- BWB Plans and Schedule Updates
- We're still in a holding pattern to know what's going to
happen with the MLB season. Until that's announced, we
can't do much more than speculate what that will do to the
BWB season and schedule.
- Had we been on the normal schedule, Thursday would have
been "Week Zero" - the date at which all teams must have a
legal roster and the last chance to add any players for BWB
Opening Day. The Week One deadline was to be next
Thursday, April 2.
- Thursday night we just posted the results of what was
originally supposed to be
"Week -2" - meaning that if we hold with the schedule
format, there would only be 2 more transaction weeks (-1 and
Zero) before Opening Day.
- Just as a guess, I can't see the 2020 MLB season
starting before June 1, although a lot of opinions would put
it much later than that.
- So we're going to make some adjustments:
- Add 3 more preseason transaction weeks. To do
this and make the records/history work out, all the
previously posted transaction weeks were changed by 3.
Starting with the roster carryover choices, which were
marked as Week -8 - they have been converted to Week
-11. And so on.
- Space things out a bit. There's not a lot to
act on right now. Some teams may be ready to go.
Some teams might be out of cash. I have a lot on
my plate personally. We don't have to
do this every week. So the remainder of the
preseason will be scheduled, for now, every two weeks.
- This updated schedule
of transaction deadlines is geared toward a June 1
MLB Opening Day. We'll adjust as the situation
changes.
- The schedule for the regular season will be
determined once we know when MLB will start and how many
games will be played.
- What else will we do before MLB starts up again?
- We still plan to draft 2 more new leagues - one list
draft and one live draft.
- I hope to have some postings up to discuss some rule
change suggestions.
- And I'm kicking around the idea of holding some kind
of preseason tournament for all BWB teams using 2019
stats. But, the structure of the BWB season is
automated - to now try to set up a structure and play
the games for over 1,000 teams might be too much for me
to attempt. More to come...
3/12/20
- Obviously, with today's news of a delayed start to the MLB
season, we're going to be in somewhat of a holding pattern.
- Yet to be determined is whether the affected games in
March/April will be made up or cancelled outright.
- We'll look at the adjustments to the BWB schedule once
we have definitive news from MLB on its plans.
- For now, Week -2 Transactions submissions will still be
due on Sunday, 3/15. After that, we'll take a look at
the schedule and maybe go at a more relaxed pace.
- I would still like to start up 2 more new leagues for
2020 - one with a list draft and one with a live draft, but
we'll see how that progresses. That's probably the
limit for what we can kick off this season.
3/9/20
- Welcome to Benchwarmer Baseball - It's
a unique form of fantasy baseball as we play 150 individual
head-to-head games in a season simulated from daily MLB
stats - this isn't a Rotisserie game.
- New leagues to start in 2020 are open - sign up now!
- This is fantasy baseball 365 days a year.
Teams have cut down their 40-man rosters to
a maximum of 28 players that they can carry over onto
their 2020 squads. And they participated in the
Redistribution Draft that gives teams with bad records
in 2019 a good advantage in rebuilding. For the
next few weeks, they'll be putting their finishing
touches on their 2020 opening day rosters with free
agent signing and trades.
- Check out the Benchwarmer Baseball
Tour for an introduction.
- Check out our
list of new
leagues for 2020 that you can join to
begin your dynasty. Or, if you'd like to attempt
to turn around a struggling team, view our available
orphan teams
...pick up an existing team and rebuild it,
rather than start from scratch.
- If you're a first-time owner, you play under the
"rookie rate" of $35 for your first team (normal
price, $65)
- Orphan teams are also just
$35 - about 1/2 the normal
price.
- If you're interested, your first step is to
sign up here.
Then go ahead and pick out a
new league
or check out the
orphan
list again.
- Are you already a BWB team owner and want to add
teams? Check first to see if you have an
available bonus team
from 2019 or else
add new teams here. Email us if you want an
orphan team
and we'll set you up.
2/29/20
- There is an extra 1000 in cash to distribute to teams after
the Redistribution Draft to cover added costs for moving players
to the Prospect Roster. That 1000 will get credited this
week during transactions - so you can consider that part of your
balance as you're making your moves.
2/24/20
-
Redistribution Draft - Rounds 3-5 posted
- We now move on to normal weekly transactions - in the
preseason, deadlines are Sunday nights at midnight Eastern
- All transaction types are open - signings, cuts, trades,
and contract extensions
- Next deadline is for Week -4, Sunday night,
March 1 at
midnight Eastern
- See the season list of
deadlines
2/23/20
- Big Red Machine League Draft - Phase Two Draft, Part
One is
complete
- See the league
draft index for more information
- Rosters populated and finances updated
- We continue with Phase Two of the draft - your next set of
picks are due on Tuesday night, March 3 at midnight
Eastern
2/20/20
- Did you know that we start some new leagues with a live
draft? Instead of using our list format, we draft the
first 20 players for each roster live.
- I'm trying something new this year: Instead of waiting
until a league fills and trying to determine a workable
draft date, I've scheduled dates ahead of time to let you
plan ahead:
- Mile High League: Saturday, February 29
- 2 PM EST
- Mods and Rockers League: Sunday, March 1
- 4 PM EST
- Family Night League: Friday, March 6
- 10 PM EST
- If leagues don't fill, they will have to be pushed back
to an alternate time or not run at all.
- Check out the full
list of new leagues and if you want to join one of these
live drafts, you can sign up
here if you're new to BWB or
add a league to your
current list.
2/18/20
2/13/20
- Big Red Machine League Draft - Phase One Draft is
complete
- See the league
draft index for more information
- Rosters populated and finances updated after the results
for Phase One.
- We now enter Phase Two of the draft - your first set of
picks are due on Saturday night, Feb. 22 at midnight
Eastern
2/5/20
2/3/20
- Our first league is full for 2020! Big Red
Machine League is full and ready to go!
- View the league draft index,
which includes links to past drafts as examples
- This is a list draft - the Phase One Draft lists are due
Saturday night, Feb. 8 at midnight EST.
2/2/20
- Another deadline extension! I am unable to work on the
draft on Monday, so I'll pass that time on to you. Redistribution Draft lists
now due on Tuesday morning at 9 AM EST.
- Check out all of your
teams' draft lists on page - including error checks
1/22/20
- The draft/transaction order has been updated to put playoff
teams at the end of the order - the league champion drafts 16th,
the runner up 15th, and the other 2 division winners are 13th
and 14th,
1/20/20
- Results of carryover choices posted. View the
Transactions page to see
the cuts in your league.
- The 2020 Redistribution Draft is now open. You'll have
just about
2
full weeks to make your selections (see the link on your team
roster). Deadline is Sunday night 2/2/20 Midnight EST.
- For more information, see the rules regarding the
Redistribution Draft
- There's nearly 2 weeks to do your list for Round 1, but you
should consider building for all 5 rounds
- Then, after Feb 2, we post the results of only Round 1 only - any
drafted players will be removed from the remainder of your
lists.
- You'll have 2 weeks to redo draft lists (if you choose),
then we post the results of only Round 2 (again removing
drafted players from your rounds 3-5)
- Then one more week for an optional redo of your draft
lists, and we post the results of Rounds 3-5
- The season calendar of deadlines
is posted, but the
deadlines for the Redistribution Draft are:
- Sun 2/2 - First submission - we post results for Round
1
- Sun 2/16 - Adjust your lists for Rounds 2-5 - we post
results for Round 2
- Sun 2/23 - Adjust your lists for Rounds 3-5 - we post
results for the remaining 3 rounds
- The draft order is not yet updated to account for
division/league champions - check
back later this week
- With all the cuts - the Trade Rumors list is cleared out in
our annual deletion of everything.
- Any players on your
Prospect Roster have been moved back to your 40-man roster.
You can begin to move players to prospect status again after the
Redistribution Draft.
1/17/20
- Deadline approaching! - your roster cut
downs to 28 or fewer players is due Sunday night at midnight
Pacific
- If you have multiple teams, you can
check all your
teams for errors on the roster limits on one page
- Reminder about how the Prospects Roster works: (see
the full rule)
- Prospects don't count against the 28-player maximum that
you may retain on your roster for 2020. So you can
keep up to 28 players AND some or all of your prospects.
- You may cut some or all of your prospects, you're not
mandated to keep them.
- After the roster carryover decisions (January 19), all
prospects will revert to be part of your standard 40-man roster.
Keeping prospects will reduce the total number of players
you can pick up in the Redistribution Draft.
- After the Redistribution Draft is compete, you can
then make moves to put players onto the prospects roster
for 2020.
1/8/20
- New leagues are open
for 2020. List draft leagues draft when they fill -
deadline dates are estimates and targets for filling. Live
drafts have tenative dates and times set aside for them already.
1/6/20
- Fall trading period
2 - Transactions Posted
- Trades are now closed until after the Redistribution
Draft is completed in February.
- Your picks for which players you'll keep on your
roster in 2020 are due on Sunday night, January 19 at
midnight Pacific (1/20/20, 3AM EST)
- 122 New players added to the list based on the 40-man
rosters
for MLB teams
- This is the only player addition until after
Opening Day
- To find them - In the filter/search area of the player
lists, look for the "New in 2020" menu -
See the list of new players
1/2/20
- Happy New Year! It's been quiet from me recently, but
I have been doing some prep work for the new season (and taking
some time off).
- Position data is now final - I went through 740+ players
without MLB stats in 2019 to update their current position
based on minor league play.
- During that search on positions, I've pulled 242 players
off the current BWB player list.
- Most of those deleted players were not on any rosters,
but these 5 were still on at least one roster in BWB and
have now been deleted from those teams automatically:
- J.T. Chargois
- Neftali Feliz
- Ian Kinsler
- Kyler Murray
- Bruce Rondon
- Coming soon - I'll be going through the current 40-man
rosters for MLB teams and finding new players to add to the BWB
list.
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