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Question |
Answer |
| Sometimes I can't change my team correcly, even though the site is supposed to remember me. | There may be a few bugs in the process - if it appears that you are not recognized correctly, try logging out and logging back in to reset your session. |
| Any chance you could have more teams make the playoffs? | Right now, there are no plans to increse the championship field. We've got 25% of the teams in the playoffs, which is about in line with MLB. It's tough to finish in 2nd with a better record than other division winners, but that makes a title even more challenging. |
| How about increasing the roster size at the end of the year like in the majors? It's tough sometimes when you've got some injured players. | This is actually one reason for not expanding the rosters. With only 2 taxi squad spots, if you have more than 2 injuries to players making over 250, you've got some choices to make. Carry the player on the bench and risk a Benchwarmer Player? Or drop a player to make room. The goal of the league office is to promote some roster turnover, and this is one way to do it. Plus, there's a lot of infrastructure designed on 26-man active rosters that I don't feel like changing. |
| Why are some minor league players available while others are not? | Players are added to the BWB Player List when any of these occur: A) They appear in a major league game B) They are a first-round draft pick or C) They appear in the 40-man rosters, as published by Sports Weekly in late December of each year. (All players who appeared on Spring Training rosters in 2000 were put on the list in order to build up the player pool). |
| Why isn't player X who was just signed from Japan on the player list? | If he was not signed in time to appear on the 40-man rosters in December, he doesn't get on until he plays a regular season game. |
| Player Y is a hot phenom in Spring Training and is going from AA to the majors this year. Everyone knows he'll be Team Z's #4 Starter/Opening Day catcher/etc., etc. Why isn't he available? | If he's not already listed, the only way he makes it now is once he plays a major league game. It's impossible to tell the future and many March "stars" don't make it. |
| Roger Clemens isn't available. | Roger's an odd case - retiring and then changing his mind. The standard policy is on an official retirement, a player is removed from the BWB lists and doesn't return unless he plays a regular season game again. This is just an odd case where he decided to come back immediately. Rather than break with the rules, he's not available until he pitches again - so look for him for Week 1 transactions. By the way, his salary for 2004 will be 4438. |
| If I cut a player in the off-season, why don't I get a salary rebate? | The rationale for this is to cut down on endless speculation - signing and cutting players multiple times during the off-season. It introduces an element of risk in deciding to keep, draft, or sign a high-priced player. Ultimately, this is hoped to contribute to better league balance. |
| Why do you have transactions only once per week? | Since the game is played on the basis of weekly lineups, there is little point in having daily transactions. |
| If I pick up a player, why can't I put him in the lineup that week - why do I need to wait a week? | Because so many decisions may hinge on you getting / not getting your player, it's just easier to deal with to handle lineup decisions once signings are official. |
| I have a backup catcher on my bench. Why did I have a "Benchwarmer Catcher" in my box score? | If your starting player doesn't appear in a given major league game (say Game #34), the backup has to appear in that same game to be in your lineup. |
| Redistribution draft - do I get to change my picks between rounds? | No. You submit a list of up to 15 players and that list does not change throughout the draft. |
| Why do I get to set my lineup only once per week? | Since major league teams play their games on different days (meaning, not all teams play their tenth game on the same day), changing lineups on each day would be tough for players to plan for and frankly, it's a lot easier to administer weekly changes. |
| Explain the 5-game gap to me. | Because pitchers don't pitch every day, we need to use a span of games to guarantee their stats are included. So, we use pitching performances over a 6-game span. Thus, ML games 1-6 are used for BWB game 1. In order to get some kind of correspondence, we use the last game of that span for the hitters - so ML game 6 = BWB game 1. This was ripped off from Robot Baseball, but made sense for me. |
| When I pick my first roster, do I have to keep under the salary cap? | Yes. Choose your startup draft roster as though you were going to get everyone. If you go over the salary cap, your submission is invalid. |
| Why don't you do a live draft? | Technically, we're not set up for that. Although there would be ways around that - email, IM, etc., checking the salary cap and all the roster limits on each transaction would slow down the process. Maybe some day. |
