[USML Announce] Draft Day (Night)

[jhwinick at aol.com]

Gentlemen (and Brad Lee),

Subject to Buddha's approval, I've prevailed upon my brother Mark to pinch hit for Buddha.  As those of you who know Mark can attest, despite my efforts, Mark's politics fall right in line with Buddha's.  It should be a match made in heaven.

However, there are some things that need to be sorted out in order to make this happen.

First - we'll need to keep our Mark's straight.  Mark Winick claims the name Mark at the draft.  Kerber and Blocker can be called whatever they like, other than Mark.

Second -  Mark would like to start the draft as early as possible.  He will be coming in from the suburbs and would like to return to the safe confines of the suburbs as early as possible.  How early can we start?

Third - I know this is a potentially explosive subject, but that's never stopped me before, so why start now.  Mark would like to know if he can bring his son to the draft with him.  That request ties in with the second request, so it may be that this won't be an issue if we can't start early enough.  But if we can start relatively early, Mark would like to bring Josh.  FWIW - you guys would get a kick out of Josh - I'd put his baseball knowledge against anyone else's in the room.

Fourth - Strategy - Mark has agreed to bid $1 more than Blocker, as long at it appears to be a guy that Mr. B really wants since that's the penalty for being the defending champ.  I've advised him that when Brad's voice gets louder it means he really wants the guy, so you can safely bid him up another dollar or two.  He's been alerted that Kerber price enforces, so he should always be prepared to leave Kerber hanging when Mr. K goes that one extra dollar.  I told him that any hot prospect young pitchers (especially if they pitch in Minnesota) will be purchased by the Brats, so he should take them off his draft list.  It goes without saying (but I told him anyway) that because many rookies will be eligible at the draft even if they aren't expected to make the opening day roster that it will be safe to announce those names since they're sure to wind up on the Red Hots.  Are there any other "strategies" of which I should advise Mark?

On a more serious note, we also need to agree on pre-draft deadlines.  I propose the following:

Final retention rosters distributed to the league by Friday, March 12th at 10:00 p.m.

Finally, in light of the very early draft this year, I propose that we slightly modify the dump a dog rule.  In one of my other leagues, when we draft more than a week or two prior to the season we agree that everyone is allowed to make one change to their roster by 10:00 p.m. the night before the draft.  So, a team would be allowed to drop a player from his retained roster OR add a player to his retained roster OR swap a player on this retained roster with a player that hadn't previously been retained.  Since things will still be in flux at Spring Training, I think this is an excellent idea.  To avoid gamesmanship, everyone would send their announcement to the rest of the league prior to 10:00.  If someone wanted to change their decision based upon what others had done, they would be allowed to do so by sending a follow up email to the balance of the league before midnight.  I'll understand if people want to stick with dump a dog, but this seems like an improvement that would benefit all of us.

That is all.

TOeFuKi





-----Original Message-----
From: rickgam at comcast.net
To: USML Announcements <announce at usml.net>
Sent: Thu, Mar 4, 2010 7:15 am
Subject: [USML Announce] Draft Day (Night)



Greetings;
      March 17 it is!  What time are we looking at?  I can be downtown late afternoon if need be.  Anyone up for a pre-draft meal/get-together?  I just realized that it'll be St. Pat's day, so it could make for an interesting atmosphere downtown.
    Rick



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