Pre-season games have already started, which is a sure sign that spring is just around the corner. Another sure sign is that you’ll be hearing from me more and more often over the next several weeks, all leading up to:

Draft Day 2003: Sunday March 30

This year’s draft was easier to schedule than any other in recent history. I’m hoping that doesn’t mean I’ll be getting frantic calls from three or four owners the third week of March telling me that the 30^th isn’t possible. Please block out the 30^th on your calendar in big red letters. 

It sounds like Rich has secured the large conference room at his company’s Oakbrook office for the 30^th, so we’ll once again be drafting in comfort and with lots of elbow room. Preliminary plans are for the Draft to start around 8:00 AM (same as last year).

Once again, everyone should plan on brining his own lunch and beverages for the day. There will be some fridge space available (but not a ton), and as I recall, there is a microwave (Rich, if you know differently, please let us know).

Since we'll be in Rich's workplace, alcohol would not be a good idea. As is tradition, the League Office will once provide the traditional Old Gold pretzel rods and Twizzlers.

We’ll again be using the Internet to communicate with Ruffin Draft Headquarters in Greensboro, NC., and we’ll hopefully be able to display the Bid Spreadsheet like we did last year. Everyone seemed to like having the current bid information projected, and I’m working on updating the display to list the name, salary, and team of the previous player acquired. Hopefully that will cut down on the "who got him?" and "how much?" questions that follow many of the player acquisitions.

There will be plenty more Draft Day information coming your way as the date draws near.

Speaking of dates…

The Administrative Pre-Season will kick off on March 19 when Roster Cut Sheets will be sent to CFCL owners. Roster Cut Sheets will be sent via e-mail in Excel Format. If you do not have Excel on your computer, you can download a free Excel reader from Microsoft -- there's a link in the Download Center of the website.

I’m hoping everyone will be able to send their lists of cuts and keepers via e-mail this year. Eliminating the snail-mail option will enable to push back Roster Freeze Day a couple days since we won’t have to allow for transit time in the mail. This means everyone will have an extra day or two to think over their cuts.

If there’s anyone out there who would rather submit cuts via snail-mail, let me know and we can discuss adjusting the dates.

If there are any questions about how the process works, check the relevant portions of the Constitution or contact me.

Also, please remember that you’ll be required to send a check to cover all your expenses by Roster Freeze Day. I’ll send reminders in future mailings, but if you want to get it out of the way, you can send it now.

Here’s a breakdown on what will be due with your cuts:

Make checks out to David Mahlan and send them to:

David Mahlan
1431 Palmer
Downers Grove, IL 60516

You’ll notice that the $5 fee for Draft Day Poker isn’t listed above. We’re going to take a break from the poker this year – I won’t have the time to make up the cards with the top 104 players on them, and there has been concern expressed that the process of passing out the cards and tracking how many cards each owner has received is just something else that slows the pace of the Draft. Besides, it seems it’s been more of an afterthought in recent years anyway.

It was suggested that we just pass out a random card each time a player was drafted, but without having specific players associated with each card it would suck all the fun out of the endeavor. Or it would at least eliminate the connection to what we’re doing in our Draft, which was the point to begin with.

While things have been fairly quiet in terms of CFCL trades, we’re coming to that point in the pre-season when Rotation Draft picks start changing hands at a pretty rapid pace. Keep in mind that there are a few tools available on the website to help keep Rotation Draft picks straight:

At the end of the Roster Changes section of the online Report, there is a link to the 2003 Rotation Draft Pick Tracker. This is a web page that lists all of the draft picks owned by each team and also indicates those picks that have been traded away.

The Excel roster sheet (available in the Download Center) lists all of the draft picks that have been acquired by each team via trade. The number in parenthesis at the top of the list is the total number of draft picks owned by that team.

The Download Center also includes the full listing of all 2003 draft picks, broken out by round and fully updated for all trades to date. This can be found under the 2003 Draft Prep section.

According to the official league records, a record nine players are eligible to be signed to X-year contracts this spring:

Adam Dunn (Eric’s Lambchops)
Corey Patterson (Eric’s Lambchops)
Brian Lawrence (DoorMatts)
Roy Oswalt (DoorMatts)
David Williams (DoorMatts)
Marcus Giles (Dem Rebels)
Brad Wilkerson (David’s Ruffins)
AJ Burnett (Six Packs)
Ben Sheets (Steve’s Stones)

As you’ll recall, X contracts were something we came up with as a means of encouraging the investment in minor league players and of rewarding their owners for scouting minor leaguers and sticking with their investments.

In order for a player to be eligible for an X contract, he must meet the following requirements:

He must have been drafted as a minor leaguer (M contract)

He may have been traded while a minor leauger, but he must still be owned by the team that owned him when his contract changed from M to D

If you’ve got X contract-eligible players, see the CFCL Constitution for details about your options for signing these players at roster cut time.

In the last report, I listed players who had been traded to or signed by American League teams this off-season. Here are some more casualties since that report:

Under our current rules, these players are automatically removed from their CFCL team.

In case you haven’t noticed it on the News Flash section of the website, a couple CFCL owners have new e-mail addresses.

The Ruffins can now be reached at: [email protected]

The Lambchops are now at: [email protected] (also, be sure to include John Lemon ([email protected]) on all e-mails sent to the Chops)

Thanks to everyone who contributed thoughts, ideas, and opinions to the topic of changing the weekly transaction reporting deadline. While many people had personal preferences in terms of days and times, the one thing everyone seemed to agree on was that the deadline should be scheduled for whenever it would be best for me to get the reports out in a timely manner. I appreciate the concessions to my schedule and restrictions at the office, and I hope I gave everyone the chance to have input on the issue.

What we ended up doing was the following:

The weekly transaction reporting deadline will be at 4:00 PM on each Friday afternoon.

The weekly Report will be posted on the website as soon as possible on Friday night. I’m just guessing here, but I imagine that this will usually be by 10:00 or 11:00 PM. Sometimes it will be a few hours earlier than that, other times (though seldom) it might not happen until early Saturday morning. Rest assured that I’ll do my best to get info posted as soon as possible.

The transactions reported on Friday afternoon will be effective beginning with Saturday’s games. This means if you acquire a free agent hitter on Friday and he hits 3 homers that night, those 12 bases won’t count for your team. It’s not perfect, but hopefully it won’t cause too much heartache.

Note that the 4:00 Friday deadline applies to free agent bids and normal movement between active and reserve rosters (just like the Noon Tuesday deadline did). If you have an injury-related move, a player sent to/called from the minors, or make a trade, those transactions and associated moves can still be made any day of the week. These types of mid-week transactions must still be reported by NOON to be effective immediately.

If there are any questions about how this will work, please let me know now so we don’t have to spend valuable Draft Day time going over this.

I’m sure everyone’s now very familiar with the new rules put in places for dealing with players who end up in the American League via trade, free agent signings, etc. I won’t go into all the minutia here, but will just summarize with the following:

Players who are owned by CFCL teams and who go to the AL can be kept through the length of their CFCL contract (or may be immediately released without penalty)

If the player goes to the AL during the season, the CFCL team can keep the player active and accrue whatever stats the player produces in the AL.

The following year, or if the player goes to the AL during the off-season, the CFCL team can keep the player, but MUST keep him on the Reserve List unless the player returns to the NL. Also, if the player is not a minor leaguer, the player’s salary will count against the teams $2.60 Draft Day spending limit.

The Constitution on the website and the Word version in the Download Center have been updated to reflect this change, as well as all the other changes made during the off-season.

Jason Grey’s organization, Masters of Fantasy Baseball, has taken on the responsibility of organizing and running the Tout Wars experts league. A while back, Jason asked for volunteers to help out with the Drafts, which will be held in Wood Dale, and it sounds like our own Paul Zeledon has offered to man the auctioneer’s gavel during the event.

Anyone who remembers Paul’s handling of Ken Welsch at the 1996 Draft ("Wait your turn, boy!") knows that Paul can be a forceful and entertaining Draft Day presence. The Tout Wars Drafts are scheduled for March 15 (AL) and 16 (NL), and will be open to the public, so feel free to watch Paul and Jason (who will be drafting an AL team) in action.

In a past report, I mentioned the Baseball Hall of Fame exhibit that’s currently appearing at the Field Museum. Matt Grage has expressed interest in possibly going as a group at some point. If anyone else would like to join in, let me know and we can go about trying to select a date. I believe the exhibit is here until sometime in July.

2003 Toppers

Based on the final 2002 standings, here are the teams that will receive Toppers, the number of Toppers the team receives, and the players who are eligible for Topper use:

Record Book