Friday, January 16, 2015

Beer Drinkers Rotisserie League Constitution 2020

BDRBL Constitution 2020

Beer

Drinkers

Rotisserie

Baseball

League

Constitution

 

Commissioner: Mark Grebowsky(2003- ?)


PREAMBLE

We the owners of the Beer Drinkers Rotisserie Baseball League (BDRBL), in order to promote fair play, do ordain and establish this constitution.

OBJECT

To assemble a roster of Major League Baseball Players whose statistics compiled during the course of the season by the methods described in this constitution exceed those of all other teams in the League.

INTRODUCTION

Rotisserie Baseball is a simple process that allows the average baseball fan to own/manage their own team of Major League Baseball players.  The salaries of these players is substantially less than the amount they are receiving from their Major League owners.  This constitution shall describe the processes/methods that the BDRBL has established to manage the movement of the players and the league in general.

ROSTERS

A BDRBL team is made up of three rosters: the Active Roster, Reserve Roster, and the Minor League Roster.

Active Roster

The active roster is similar to a major league team’s starting lineup.  The major league performance associated with the 25 players on a rotisserie team’s active roster directly affect how that team fares in the standings.

Quantity

Position

Comments

10

Pitchers

Any combination of starters and relievers

2

Catchers

1

First Base

1

Second Base

1

Third Base

1

Shortstop

5

Outfielders

1

Corner Infielder

First or third baseman

1

Middle Infielder

Second baseman or shortstop

2

Utility

Any non-pitching position

Reserve Roster

The reserve roster is similar to a major league team's bench.  At the beginning of the season, a team's reserve roster contains up to 10 players.  This number fluctuates over the course of the season due to trading and other roster moves but never exceeds 10.  The reserve roster contains those major league players that are available for insertion into the active roster (starting lineup).  The major league performance associated with the players on a rotisserie team’s reserve roster has no impact on the standings.  Their statistics do not count toward the standings.

·         Reserve Roster players have predefined salary of $5.

·         Reserve Roster players are eligible for promotion to the active roster.

·         Reserve Roster players can be traded and waived.

Minor League Roster

The minor league roster is similar to a major league team’s farm system.  This roster is designed for those managers that would like to draft players for future seasons.  This roster can contain up to 15 players  During the minor league portion of the rotisserie draft, managers choose to place players on their minor league roster.

·         Minor League players have salary of $2.

·         Minor League players can be activated onto their BDRBL team’s active roster.

·         Minor League players MUST be activated onto their BDRBL team’s active or reserve roster within 2 weeks of exceeding their minor league eligibility in the Major leagues.

·         Minor League players can be traded or waived.

·         Minor League players can be returned to the minor leagues provided they were selected in the minor league draft and still are Rookie eligible as eligibility requirements were set forth in 1971 with a rookie formally defined as a player with less than 130 at-bats, a pitcher with less than 50 innings pitched. .

DRAFT DAY

On a Saturday before Opening Day, the BDRBL holds their annual draft.  This is without a doubt the most important event of the season.  The success of a BDRBL team is tightly knit to how well it does on this day.  Draft Day is actually three separate drafts - the Minor League Draft for the acquistion of the Minor League Roster,the Auction Draft for the acquisition of the initial active roster, and the Reserve Draft for the acquisition of the reserve roster.

Minor League Draft

The first portion of draft day is the Minor League Draft, to fill its Minor League Roster.   This draft is different, in that, no bidding takes place.  The 5 players are simply chosen in 5 separate rounds of selection.

·         Only rookie eligible players can be drafted in the Minor League Draft.

·         There are no positional restrictions in the Minor League Draft. A manager is free to select all pitchers, all hitters, or a combination of the two. 

·         The order of selection is determined by the order in which the teams finished the previous season.  The 5th place team selects first, proceeding in descending order to the last place team, and is in turn followed by the 4th, 3rd, 2nd, 1st place team.

·         The draft order reverses each round(snake draft).

·         During an expansion season, the new manager(s) will select immediately following the last place team.

Auction Draft

The second portion of the draft (dubbed the Auction Draft) is the mechanism by which a manager fills its active roster (starting line-up).  Each team must acquire 25 players at a total cost not to exceed $280.  The teams do not have to spend all $280.  The day starts with a given team (random selection) nominating a player for acquisition.  Along with the player's name, the manager will submit an opening bid.  Other interested managers then continue the bidding until only one bidder is left.  That team acquires the nominated player for that amount and announces the position that the player will fill.  The process is repeated until every team has a squad of 25 players.

·         All players are eligible for the active draft regardless of whether or not they played in Major League Baseball games the previous season.

·         The minimum bid for a player is $1. The minimum bid increase is $1. All bids are in full dollars.

·         The bidding order is irrelevant.

·         Teams are permitted to shift players around during the course of the draft, as long as the player is eligible at those positions.

·         Teams are not permitted to bid on a player they cannot afford.  For example, a team with $3 left and two openings on its roster is limited to a maximum bid of $2 for one player.

·         No team can bid for a player who qualifies only at a position that the team has already filled.

Reserve Draft

Immediately after the completion of the Auction Draft in which the teams fill their active roster, a third draft is held (dubbed the Reserve Draft) to fill its reserve roster. style="mso-spacerun: yes">  This draft is different, in that, no bidding takes place.  The 10 players are simply chosen in 10 separate rounds of selection.

·         Anyone is eligible to be drafted in the Reserve Draft.

·         There are no positional restrictions in the Reserve Draft. A manager is free to select all pitchers, all hitters, or a combination of the two. 

·         The order of selection is determined by the order in which the teams finished the previous season.  The 5th place team selects first, proceeding in descending order to the last place team, and is in turn followed by the 4th, 3rd, 2nd, and 1st place team.

·         The draft order reverses each round(snake draft).

·         During an expansion season, the new manager(s) will select immediately following the last place team.

FEES

1.        Basic:  $225 league fee. This covers the cumulative total of salaries paid for acquisition of a 25 man roster that may not exceed $280 and the CBS Sports Web Hosting Fee.

2.        Transactions:  $0 fee to cover all trades, activations, de-activations, waiver claims, and free agent claims over the course of the season.

PLAYER SALARIES

The salary of a player is determined by the time and means of his acquisition .

·         The salary of a player acquired in the Auction Draft is his auction price.

·         The salary of a player acquired in the Rotation Draft is $5.

·         The salary of a player acquired in the Minor League Draft is $2.

·         The salary of a player claimed as a free agent or on waivers is $3.

Because you can only commit $280 for salaries on Draft Day, and because you will keep some of your players from one season to the next, salaries are very important, particularly after the season ends and winter trading begins.

POSITIONAL ELIGIBILITY

A player may be assigned to any position at which he appeared in 20 or more games the previous season.  If a player did not appear in 20 games at a single position, he may be drafted only at the position at which he appeared most frequently.  The 20 game measure is used only to determine the position(s) at which a player may be drafted.   Once the season is under way, a player becomes eligible for assignment to any position at which he appears in at least 5 games.

The league secretary will assign an eligible position (based on the player’s previous experience) to those players that have been protected on roster freeze day but does not have major league experience.

Those players who are drafted during the auction draft and do not have Major League experience, will be eligible at the position they are most likely to play during the upcoming season – this too will be up to the discretion of the league secretary.

STANDINGS

The following criteria are used to determine team performance:

·         On Base Percentage (OBP)

·         Home Runs (HR)

·         Runs(R)

·         Runs Batted In (RBI)

·         Stolen Bases (SB)

·         Earned Run Average (ERA)

·         Wins (W)

·         Saves (S)

·         Strikeouts (K)

·         WHIP: base on balls (BB) + hits (H) / innings pitched (IP)

Teams are ranked from first to last in each of the ten categories and given points for each place.  This example shows the scoring for a 17 team league  The first place team will receive 17 points, the second place team 16 points, and so on down to 1 point for the last place team.  The team with the most total points wins the pennant.

A team that fails to pitch a total of 1150 innings during the course of the season cannot be ranked ahead of any team that does pitch 1150 innings, in ERA or Ratio.  This rule helps to promote a pitching staff that closely resembles that of a major league team.  Otherwise, a rotisserie owner might be compelled to draft all relievers.

Pitchers' offensive statistics are not counted, nor are the pitching statistics of the positional player who is called in to pitch after the game has gotten out of hand.

Tie-Breakers

·         In cases of ties in an individual category, the tied teams are assigned points by totaling the points for the ranking at issue and dividing the total by the number of teams tied.

·         In cases of ties in total points, final places in the standings are determined by comparing the placement of the teams in individual categories.  Respective performances are calculated and a point given to each team for bettering the other.  Should one team total more points than the other, that team is awarded the higher placement in the standings.

·         Should the total points still be equal, the tie is broken by adding each team's total at-bats at season's end, plus triple the number of its innings pitched.  The team that scores a higher total by this measure wins the tie.  A coin toss is then incorporated should a tie still exist.

STATS

The weekly player-performance summaries downloaded from CBS Sportsline. constitute the official database for the computation of standings in the Beer Drinkers Rotisserie Baseball League (BDRBL).

·         The effective date of any transaction for purposes of statistical calculation is the Monday immediately after the deadline (Sunday @ midnight) for reporting transactions to the league secretary.

·         Transactions recorded on Draft Day, including trades and call-ups to replace disabled players, are effective immediately.  Transactions occurring after Draft Day but before the first statistical report (Week 1) are effective the Monday immediately after the first statistical report.

·         Performance statistics of a player shall be assigned to a rotisserie team only when he is on the active 25-man roster of that team.

·         BDRBL General Managers that have not fulfilled their financial obligations to the league will not receive statistical rewards.  Statistics will accumulate once the payment has been received by the league treasurer.

It is common for a single major league player to accumulate statistics for several rotisserie teams over the course of a season.  However, the player can only be active on a single rotisserie team for any given week.

TRANSACTIONS

The movement of players from roster to roster, from team to team, and from free-agency to team, are termed transactions.

ACTIVATIONS

An activation is the movement of a player from the reserve or minor league roster of a team to the active roster.  A player can only be activated to the position at which he was drafted or to a position in which he has appeared in 5 games during the current season or 20 games the previous season.  A player must be on a major league team’s active roster in order to be activated onto a rotisserie team’s active roster.

DEACTIVATIONS

A deactivation is the movement of a player from the active roster of a team to the reserve roster.  A player must be activated in the position left vacant by a deactivation.  A position cannot go unfilled.

TRADES

From the completion of the rotation draft until midnight on August 1st, teams are free to make trades of any kind without limit .  However, at no time can any team have on its active roster more players at a particular position than allowed under the rules of the Auction Draft.  So long as these rules are adhered to in the immediate wake of a trade, teams may trade any number of players, at any position, irrespective of the number or position of the players being received in such trade.

·         At no point may a team have more than 18 players on its reserve roster and farm team combined.

·         At no point may a team have more than 43 players on its active, reserve, and farm team combined.

·         At no point may a team have more than 25 players on its active roster.

·         Between August 1st and August 31st, trades may only be made between teams that are within 3 places of each other in the most recent standings.

·         The trading of draft picks is not allowed.

·         Trades consisting of cash and/or players to be named later are not allowed.

·         No trades of any kind may be made between September 1st and October 15th, nor between Roster Freeze Day and the conclusion of the rotation draft on draft day.

SIGNING FREE AGENTS

Active major league players not on any BDRBL roster (active, reserve, or farm team) at the conclusion of draft day become free agents.  During the course of the season the pool of free agents may also include minor league players not on any team's reserve roster who are promoted to an active major league roster and waived players who are not claimed.  Beginning one week after the first standings report, such free agents may be signed, without limit, in the following manner:

·         Free Agent claims are first come first serve.

·         A team can submit a bid for more than one free agent per week.

·         Free Agents have a salary of $3.

·         Players signed as free agents are not eligible for roster protection following the season. 

·         For each free agent that it signs, a team must at the same time waive a player its active or reserve roster.   

WAIVERS

Players are placed on waivers (a) when they cannot be accommodated on a team's active or reserve roster, because of space and/or positional limitations; and (b) under the rules governing the winter roster (see WINTER ROSTER).

·         The waiver period commences at noon on Monday and extends for one full reporting period (i.e. one week).  At the conclusion of that week, if the player    is unclaimed, he goes into the free agent pool, and may be acquired by a team only as outlined above (see SIGNING FREE AGENTS).

·         Waiver claims are honored according to the inverse order of the standings effective the week before the close of the waiver period.

·         A team may reclaim a player that it has waived only if all other teams in the league decline to claim him.

·         The player’s salary is $3 or his current salary, whichever is higher.

·         Players picked up on waivers are not eligible for roster protection following the season.

ROSTER PROTECTION

Each team can protect as few (0) or as many(25) of the players on its 25-man roster as it wants from one season to the next.   During an expansion year this maximum limit is reduced to 10.

·         The names of players being retained must be recorded with the League Secretary by midnight, the day 2 weeks before draft day..  Players being protected (other than players who remain on the Minor League Roster and the exception on the following line) have their salaries increased $5 .

·          The exceptions to the $5 increase in salaries is for Minor Leaguers who have used up their Minor League eligibilty. These players salaries will go from $2 to $5 to $8 before moving into the $5 salary increase.

·         The cumulative salaries of players protected prior to Draft Day are deducted from a team's $280 expenditure limit, and the balance is available for the acquisition of the remaining players needed to complete the team's 25-man roster.

·         Players acquired through Waiver Claims or Free Agency are not eligible for protection.

·         Protected players who are placed on the disabled list of a major league team after roster-freeze day but prior to Draft Day can be released by notifying the League Secretary.

·         Reserve roster players that did not play in the Major Leagues the previous season, are no longer eligible to be carried into the draft on a rotisserie team’s reserve roster.

·         Players selected onto the Team’s Minor League Roster the previous season can be carried into the draft in the following three ways:

·         Minor League Roster - occupying the selection that he was selected at.  The player’s salary will not count against the teams $280 draft budget.

·         Active Roster - occupying the position that the player qualifies at.  The player will count against the team’s $280 draft budget.  If the player did not play a game in the major leagues the previous season, the league secretary will select the player’s positional eligibility.

·         Reserve Roster –   The player’s salary will not count against the teams $280 draft budget.  Only Minor League Players that are still rookie eligible are eligible to be protected on their rotisserie team’s reserve roster. The players salary will be increased to the reserve roster minimum of $5.

PRIZES

To consecrate the bond of friendship that unites all Rotisserie League owners in their pursuit of the pennant, to symbolize the eternal verities and values of the Greatest Game for Baseball Fans Since Baseball, and to soak the head of the BDRBL champion with a sticky brown substance before colleagues and friends duly assembled, the Yoo-Hoo Ceremony is hereby ordained as the culminating event of the baseball season.  Each year, at the awards ceremony, the owner of the championship team shall have a bottle of Yoo-Hoo poured over his head by the owner who finished lowest in the standings.  The Yoo-Hoo Ceremony shall be performed with the dignity and solemnity appropriate to the occasion.

All fees shall be promptly collected and wisely invested by the League Treasurer, who is empowered to subject owners to public humiliation and assess fines as needed to ensure that payments are made to the league in a timely fashion.  The prize money shall be divided as follows:

·        

Place

Percentage

1st

45.0%

2nd

25.0%

3rd

15.0%

4th

10.0%

5th

5.0%

WINTER ROSTER

Effective October 15, each owner is required to submit to the League Secretary a list of 25 players, irrespective of position, taken from its combined active and reserve roster.  This group of players becomes the winter roster.

·         After October 23, winter rosters may exceed or fall below 25 players through trading action.  Whatever size the roster, however, any successful claim of a player on waivers must be accompanied by the placing of another player from the claiming team on waivers.

MISCELLANEOUS

THE GILBERT RULE

This rule is to vote out a troublesome owner.  Any discussion regarding the removing of an owner shall not be taken lightly.  To remove an owner requires a 75% vote of owners not in dispute with the owner in question. The league will run the team until a new owner can be found or is disbanded prior to the auction.

THE TREX RULE

This rule is to remove an inactive owner from the league.  An owner will be considered inactive if no moves have been made and response from owner after 6 weeks. At this point the league will run the team until a new owner can be found or it will be disbanded prior to the next auction. 

TRADE COMMITTEE

This rule is to prevent collusion between owners to fix the league.  A 3-man committee consisting of the Commissioner and 2 owners appointed to the committee will approve or reject trades in a timely manner. 

AMENDMENTS

The BDRBL restricts rule changes to once a year at the annual Winter Meeting.  At this time any manager in the league may propose amendments to this constitution.

·         A rule change is voted on by a show of hands unless one manager requests a vote by secret ballot.  A manager has the right to abstain from voting on any amendment.

·         The number of votes required to pass an amendment is 3/4 of the managers present at the meeting.

MEETINGS

The BDRBL has two required gatherings per season.  The first is the Winter Meeting which is held in conjunction with the Awards Ceremony.  The primary purpose of the Winter Meeting is to discuss rule changes, as well as, the upcoming season.  If an owner cannot attend the Winter Meeting, he should appoint an alternate to voice his opinion and to cast his vote.  The second required gathering is Draft Day.

EXPANSION

 The process of expansion is the means by which the BDRBL adds additional teams.  Expansion comes in the form of a motion at the annual Winter Meeting - thereby requiring 3/4 vote of those present to pass.

 A committee is formed to handle the affairs of expansion.  Such as recruiting prospective managers and screening their applications.  The committee has the right to reject any application.  The new managerial prospects submit sealed bids to the committee, with the highest bid receiving the expansion team.

Once selected, the new manager has the option of choosing up to five players from the previous seasons' Winter Waiver List at their salary prior to release.  Also available to the new manager is the right to sign players who are in the free agent pool .  He submits a list of up to five players to the expansion committee, who then assign fair market salaries to the players.  The manager then has the choice of signing the players as he chooses.  No more than five players can be selected from each of the two sources for a total of ten players maximum.

The established teams in the league will be restricted to protecting a maximum of 10 players instead of the normal 13 on Roster-Freeze Day .

OFFICERS

There are three offices in the BDRBL:  Secretary, Statistician, and Treasurer.

Treasurer: It is the job of the treasurer to notify the managers of their bills, as well as, receiving and depositing their payments.  The treasurer will pay all bills and at seasons end distribute to the top finishers their respective share of the wealth.

Secretary: The secretary's primary responsibility is to receive the transactions as reported by the managers, and to forward the information to the treasurer for billing purposes, and to the statistician for roster purposes.  The secretary is also responsible for taking notes at all meetings and for disseminating information to the league.

Statistician: The job of the statistician is to compute and distribute the weekly reports to the league.

These three officers form the Executive Committee.  When there are discrepancies in the interpretation of rules or an emergency decision must be made, it shall be made by the Executive Committee.

SELLING A TEAM

Once in awhile, a person buys into the BDRBL and it wasn't what they expected, or it didn't suit their needs.  When this happens the league has certain rules and regulations to help that person rid themselves of their problem, as well as, to protect the integrity of the league.

The sale of the team is in the hands of the league, not the selling partner.  It is handled much in the same way as expansion.  A committee is formed to handle the affairs.