I thought it may be interesting and beneficial for those of us who are in private continuing leagues to share with each other our basic rule sets. Perhaps there's something one league is doing that others may find interesting enough to implement in their leagues. So if you are in one of these leagues, share with us how you do things. Specifically, try to address these areas:
1. Do you protect players and, if so, how many?
2. How do you handle minor league players?
3. If you are in a NL- or AL-only league, how do you handle those players who switch leagues?
4. What steps do you take to encourage communication and trading activity among your owners?
5. How often do you have drafts, how many rounds are they, and do you manage them yourselves?
5. Any other aspects of your league that you feel make it unique.
So here are mine. My league, NL Pure Prairie, is entering its 23rd season, most of which with Scoresheet.
1. We protect 10 players from one season to the next. Over the years, we tinkered with this and went from 14 to 8 to 12 and finally 10. For us, 10 seems to be the sweet spot. You can protect the core of your team, yet still have enough decent players thrown back into the general pool for the spring draft. There is usually a flurry of activity between January and March where owners are shoring up their protected lists.
2. We can protect up to 2 minor league players in addition to the 10 major league players.
3. If a player switches leagues, he can be used for the remainder of the current season but is lost after that. No compensation is given to the owner who lost the player. Basically, a player must be signed to a NL organization on any given draft day to be eligible to be on our rosters.
4. We feel our activity level is good, but it's probably due to the fact that we were all friends when we created this league. We don't really have any systems in place to stimulate activity. This is one area where I'm hoping to see some interesting ideas from other owners.
5. We have a 20-round spring draft in March, then a 4-round supplemental draft on the first Saturday of each month, May through August.
6. We maintain a 35-player limit on our rosters throughout the season. If an owner has more than 35 players prior to any of the supplemental drafts, he loses a draft pick, starting with his 1st rounder, for each player he is over. It's proven to be effective at managing roster limits.
Thanks for reading and looking forward to seeing other great ideas!