[USML Announce] Draft Eligibility - PLEASE VOTE

[Richard E. Robbins]

This is tough.

In a perfect world, I'd prefer to identify major league vets from the NRI lists and add them to those on the 40 man rosters.  This would result in a situation in which the only prospects subject to the auction draft are those on the 40 man lists -- which I believe to be an unavoidable result.  This is what I believe Mark Kerber suggested at the outset.

Is it better to have a draft in which Surhoff, McLemore, Bernard etc. are not eligible or one in which Reed, Blanton, Craine etc. are eligible?

Limiting matters to the 40 man roster eliminates major league vets who I believe should be in the draft.

Expanding to full NRIs adds in a number of prospects that should probably not be there.  One can argue that having introduced prospects by going to 40 man rosters we should also add NRI prospects since it's hard to tell why a major league club puts a player on the 40 man as opposed to making the player an NRI (consider Joe Mauer for example).  On the other hand, if introducing prospects is not a good thing, then limiting things even if the rule turns out to be arbitrary is not necessarily a bad thing.

My preference is to use the 40 man rosters plus Mauer plus specifically identified major league players who appear on the NRI lists and who have lost major league rookie status.  Any league owner can identify a player meeting the criteria for being added to the list.  I will undertake to maintain the list of players suggested by league owners and circulate it on a daily basis.  Believe it or not, this is what I think Kerber suggested day one on this topic.

If my suggestion is not acceptable to a majority then I'll support Jeff's second alternative.

-- Rich 

On March 8, 2004, JHWinick at aol.com wrote:

> Gentlemen,
> 
> After a long discussion with Rich Robbins, it seems that there is a need to 
> lock this issue down.  Therefore, I put the following issue to the league
> for a vote.  There are three options:
> 
> 1.    Only players on 40 man rosters (plus Joe Mauer) are eligible to be 
> drafted.
> 2.    Only players on 40 man rosters or on the Non Roster Invitee List are 
> eligible to be drafted.
> 3.    Only players on the 40 man rosters plus those players identified and 
> agreed upon by the league membership will be eligible to the drafted.
> 
> As you may have seen with my prior email, there are a number of major league 
> veterans that are on the NRI list (Helling, McLemore) as well as a few 
> prospects that may break camp with the team (Blanton, Crain, Reed, etc.).  
> It is worth noting that there are also quite a few pure prospects on the 
> 40 man rotations (Delmon Young, Bobby Jenks, etc.).  
> I think this is an imperfect situation 
> where we ought to let the market work - i.e. let everyone have an 
> equal crack at all of these players knowing full well that they may be 
> worthless this year and will have contracts already starting to run.
> 
> Lets see if we can get this resolved today.
> 
> Jeff Winick