Most Recent CFCL Report

The Holiday Season may be finally winding down, but things are just ramping up here at CFCL Headquarters. We creaked back into motion this week with voting on some rule changes and other issues, and now it’s time to start getting geared up for Winter Waivers.

I’m happy to report that, after some close calls, we’ve got final confirmation that all of 2006’s owners will be returning for another go at it in 2007. Our three out-of-town owners have confirmed that they (or a representative) will be present for the Draft, including the defending CFCL Champion, Dave Holian, and Teddy has confirmed that he’ll be back as well.

Ten of the CFCL’s 12 owners responded to the recent rule change ballot/opinion survey (Matt Bentel and Paul Zeledon abstained), with the following results:

There were three proposed changes to the Constitution, and all of them were overwhelmingly approved:

Weekly Transaction Deadline
The weekly transaction deadline will be changed to 6:00 PM on Sunday (Central time). All weekly roster moves, free agent bids, and waiver claims must be received by this time and will be effective for the games on Monday. (10 votes for, 0 against)

Post-Trade Roster Adjustments
The following text will be added to the Constitution’s Trades article (9 votes for, 1 against):

A team cannot exchange players who were not involved in the trade between their Active Roster and Reserve List in order to fit under the in-season salary cap. This means if you acquire a .30 pitcher for a .04 pitcher, you cannot reserve a .25 OF and replace him with a .02 OF in order to fit the new .30 pitcher on your roster under the salary cap. You will need to reserve the .30 pitcher following the trade, and then activate him at the next weekly trade deadline when you can do the other shuffling.

Official Trade Completion
The underlined text in the paragraph below will be added to the Trades article in the Constitution (10 votes for, 0 against):

... teams may move players between their Active Roster and Reserve List and, if necessary, waive players immediately following a trade. These moves must be announced concurrently with the trade, and the trade will not be considered completed and official until every team involved in the trade haa reported the trade and their associated roster moves to the League Secretary and the rosters of all teams involved meet the usual in-season roster requirements.

In addition to the actual rule change proposals, we also asked for opinions about previous changes and other possible changes under discussion:

Winter Waivers in January
The majority of the owners responding favored keeping Winter Waivers in early January, with 3 stating they loved the new Winter Waiver period and 5 others saying they were fine with keeping it as-is. One owner was in favor of moving Winter Waivers back to October, while another felt a move to late January would be better (but liked early January as a second choice).

Half-Week Winter Waiver Periods
A majority of owners (6 out of the 10 responding) also approved of the shorter Winter Waiver periods (half a week vs full week). Four owners loved the shorter periods and two were “fine” with them. Two owners felt a return to the full-week period was preferable, while one other owner wanted the periods even shorter than they are now. Finally, one owner felt he wasn’t familiar enough with the process to comment.

2007 Draft Location
Assuming the room is available, it looks like we’ll be drafting in Oak Brook again this year. Six owners responded that they strongly favored Rich’s office, while 3 owners preferred Steve’s office on the city’s north side (1 strongly favored it, while two others preferred it but were OK with Oak Brook as well). One respondent had no preference one way or another. It should be noted that one of the owners who preferred Steve’s bank did so only because it would give him the opportunity to Xerox his butt on Steve’s photocopier. I’ll leave it to your imagination to figure out which owner that was (and to guess if that owner has already “done the deed” at Rich’s office).

Owner-Entry of Transactions at TQS
This was the one entry on the ballot/survey that had no clear “winner”. Five voters felt that owners should have the option of entering their own transactions at the TQS site (1 without qualification, while 4 others felt there should be clearly-defined consequences for incorrect moves). Another 5 owners felt that all owners should use the same method for reporting transactions. One of those five specified that he preferred that everyone use the TQS site.

At a minimum at least, that last issue deserves further discussion. Complicating that issue is the fact that TQS does not have an effective demo of a league that uses owner-entry of transactions available on their website, and since the majority of CFCL owners have never used the feature, it’s hard to know what to expect. Any of you owners who have used it are encouraged to share your experiences on the Forum.

Opening Day in 2007 is scheduled for Sunday April 1. That means our target weekend for Draft Day is March 31-April 1. It seems to have been the norm in the past several years that we end up drafting on Sunday. While that's certainly not set in stone yet, that's probably the current favorite.

As usual, we'd like to have a definite date set by mid-to-late January, so if you know of issues with either date, let me know ASAP.

As noted above, Winter Waivers are just around the corner. As a quick refresher, here's a quick outline of the new process.

The deadline for submitting 23-man protected lists will be 4:00 PM on Friday January 5 (the first Friday in January). Send protected lists to [email protected]. All the usual rules and conditions for protected lists apply -- M contract players and AL players DO count against the limit of 23 players you can keep, and you must protect any players on long-term contracts.

Whether you’re e-mailing your cuts or phoning them in, I highly recommend that you supply the list of players you’re keeping AND the list of players you’re cutting. This will help make sure no one slips through any cracks.

Players who are not protected are available to be claimed on waivers (including those who are in the AL ). The deadline for submitting a claim on a player from the first group of waived players is 4:00 PM on the following Tuesday (January 9).

For each player you claim you must waive one of your 23 protected players. These waived players form the pool for the second round of Winter Waivers, which concludes at 4:00 PM on the following Friday (January 12).

The Friday-Tuesday cycle continues until there is a round in which no players are claimed.

Free trading between CFCL teams can begin upon the completion of the first round of Winter Waivers (January 9).

Those are the basics. For more detail on this, see the Winter Rosters and Winter Waiver article in the Constitution.

To assist with Winter Waiver decisions, I’ve updated the Excel rosters that are available in the Download Center to reflect players who are currently property of American League teams. Note that there are no guarantees behind this – I did the best I could at identifying and tracking ALers, but you should know your players’ status better than I do. It’s very possible I missed a few guys who went to the AL or have marked some NL players as ALers. Keep that in mind…

The Monroe Doctrine

After a brief 16 year hiatus the Monroe Doctrine is back and better than ever!

The 2007 Hall of Fame voting is going to be revealed and ESPN.com allowed the general public to voice their opinion. As of this writing there were a little over 45,000 votes cast and one thing is incredibly clear. Anyone who says the fans should have a say in ANY election (and we can talk about the All-Star game at a later time) is absolutely nuts.

by Rich Bentel

The way the ESPN voting is allowed is that you can vote a couple of times a day, so I understand that 45,190 different people didn’t vote, but the point is still the same. Here’s a brief recap on some of the voting.

316 fans voted for Bobby Witt. Bobby Witt! 316 times! As far as I can tell this isn’t a “Please cast one vote for me” Jim DeShaies thing. Supposed baseball fans thought that Bobby Witt did enough to earn a prestigious vote to the Hall of Fame.

542 knuckleheads felt Dante Bichette deserved enshrinement. If not for Coors Field (and Mile High Stadium to start with) Bichette wouldn’t be remembered for anything but a bad haircut and really tired looking eyes.

587 felt that Wally Joyner should get in. Joyner was a fun story as a rookie, but so were Jerome Walton and Joe Charboneau.

1038 voted for Tony Fernandez. Solid career, better shortstop than most, but certainly not worthy of receiving votes.

On the flip side, Tony Gwynn only received 88% of the votes. Now that’s enough to get him in, but what about Gwynn isn’t Hall of Fame worthy?

Cal Ripken Jr. only received 86%. Again that lets him in, and the only thought I have is that he’s hurt by being famous (in part) for going to work everyday and some people don’t think that’s a big deal.

The steroid era has begun in Cooperstown with the eligibility of Mark McGwire. Receiving only 29% of the vote, fans seem to be taking a clear stance on what they think of players who cheat. And I know there’s an argument out there that says “It wasn’t illegal before X date”. Something doesn’t have to be illegal to be wrong. McGwire, Sosa, Bonds, Palmeiro, Sheffield , Giambi, Caminiti and many others were playing at an improper advantage over the rest of the league and none of them deserve to have their image hanging on the wall.

Personally I voted for Gwynn, Ripken, Andre Dawson, Jack Morris and Goose Gossage.