Strat Newsletter, April 15, 1998

Strat Newsletter, October 26, 2002

FINAL OFFSEASON SCHEDULE FOR COMBINED 20-TEAM LEAGUE:

November 8	By Friday, November 8 at the latest, initial 8-man protect lists are due for existing 16 teams. Trading hiatus begins. The 8-man protect lists will be published as soon as possible after all of them are in.
November 9 to November 22	Expansion teams have 2-week period in which to schedule and hold the first round of expansion, where they draft 8 players each from the unprotected regular rosters only (taxi rosters remain protected), no more than 2 players from each existing team. Picks will be published on the website as they are received.
November 23	By November 23 at the latest, existing teams protect 8 more players, bringing their total to 16. Existing teams will have at least 24 hours after the end of the expansion round to examine the expansion picks before submitting their next protects. The 16-man protect lists and updated expansion rosters will be published as soon as possible afterwards.
November 24 to December 7	Expansion teams have 2-week period in which to schedule and hold the second round of expansion, where they draft 8 more players each from the unprotected regular rosters only (taxi rosters remain protected), no more than 2 players from each existing team, such that each expansion team will be up to 16. Picks will be published on the website as they are received.
December 8	By December 8 at the latest, existing teams will perform their taxi squad transactions, that is cuts and promotions, and make an injured reserve move if desired, then make their final 4 protects to get to their final 20-man roster and final taxi squad. Existing teams will have at least 24 hours after the end of the expansion round to examine the expansion picks before submitting their next protects. The 20-man protect lists, updated taxi squads, and updated expansion rosters will be published as soon as possible afterwards.
December 9 to December 22	Expansion teams have 2-week period in which to schedule and hold the final round of expansion, where they draft 4 more players each from the unprotected regular rosters and taxi squad cuts (with no per team limit), and they perform their own taxi squad transactions, such that each expansion team is up to 20 on their regular roster.
December 22	By December 22 at the latest the final 20 man regular rosters for 2003 and taxi squads for 2003 will be set. They will be published as soon as possible following the last pick. Trading is allowed to resume.
December 31	Team name changes, park effect changes due.
January/February ?	2003 Draft

NOTES:

8-Man Protect Lists are due by Midnight, CT, Friday November 8. Please email or call in your 8-man list. Remember, those 8 men must come off of your regular roster. Taxi squad transactions do not place until after the second round of expansion. You cannot promote from your taxi squad at this time, and you cannot IR someone on your regular roster to the taxi squad at this time. Anyone who is on your regular roster and not among the 8 men that you protect will be exposed to the expansion draft.

Congratulations to the Playoff Teams. The race for the best record and first place in each division went right down to the wire, with the top 4 teams all knotted at 103-57 with 2 games left to play. CSW spoiled it for CPK with a 1-0 win on the last day, and HIP and SFE completed sweeps of WRI and DET, respectively, to win their divisions by 1 game over CPK and SSB. HIP and SFE tied with 105 wins, but HIP gets first tie-breaker on a 5-3 head to head advantage. CPK and SSB tied for the next best record with 104 wins, but that tie-breaker also goes to the Suburban Division CPK team, for its 6-2 record vs. SSB. The first round of the playoffs begin with SSB hosting CAL and CIN visiting CPK. Congratulations to Rob, Paul, Phil, Steve, and Greg, and me.

CRC wins first overall draft pick in 2003. The race for the first overall draft pick was almost as tight as the one for best overall record, as 4 teams finished within 9 games of the prize. CRC edged both LEW and CSW by 2 games. LEW gets second overall thanks to its better division record (LEW and CSW split 77, LEW was 54-44 in Division, to CSW’s 48-50 mark).

JOL wins expansion league. In case you missed it earlier in the month, JOL (Bob Reincke) finished 41-25 to capture the expansion league. The other three teams finished 10 to 11 games behind. Bob gets the 11th pick in each round of the 2003 regular and taxi drafts for his victory. The expansion teams will draft after the ten non-playoff teams and before the six playoff teams in each round.
2003 Regular and Taxi Draft Order:

Remember, the draft order above is only for the regular and taxi drafts in 2003. The expansion draft will reverse order every round, exactly like was done in the mock expansion, starting with Ralph, Mike, Chris, Bob, Bob, Chris, Mike, Ralph, etc.

FINES:

COL and CSW, $5 each for late lineups. DET $10 for failing to submit lineups. The pitching matchups were posted early (10/10), so everyone had two weeks to prepare lineups. There was no excuse for not having them in on time.

Strong warnings to DET, LAV, and WRI to watch their usage better next year. LAV ran out of catchers for the last series (I ended up putting Geoff Jenkins behind the plate), DET came within 2 AB of running out of 3B, and both DET and WRI were seriously lacking relief pitching most of the month. These deficiencies do affect the competitive balance of the league (eventual first place teams SFE and HIP swept last place teams DET and WRI, respectively, in the final series).

USAGE:

For lack of a better place to put it, here is a rundown of who did run out and when during the last month:

After Game	4	8	12	15	18
CAL	Weathers	Nelson			Leiter
CRC	John Franco		Posada	Catalanotto, Garcia	Dotel
CSW		Adams	Gwynn		Bautista, Giambi, Fox
CPK	Kreuter		W. Gonzalez		Bonds, Halladay
CHI	Garces, Reitsma		V. Nunez	B. Williams	Maddux
CIN	C. Wilson, R. Seanez			McGwire, Rocker
COL	Hatteberg, E. Martinez		Giambi, Hollandsworth	Kent, Castillo, Crawford	Ro. White
DAR				A. Boone, Oswalt	Konerko, J. Johnson
DET	Herges	Tam	Rolen	Drew	Marrero, Tejada
HIP	Segui		Reidling		Piazza
LAV			Cedeno, Radke	Hall
LEW			J. Gonzalez, Lamb, Stewart	Colon, Wakefield, Weber	Manzanillo, Ra. Ortiz
SOB				McGriff
SFE			Karsay	DeJean	Aurilia
SSB	Griffey, Smoltz	C. Johnson			L. Walker, K. Brown
WRI	Worrell	Rupe, Witasick	Jimenez

NEWLY REPORTED TRADES for 2003: