I have just started listeninig to the latest pod cast which just happens to be about salary cap leagues and I wanted to say that this league is not seeking to be like the league Jeff Passan is talking about. As I stated before, simplicity is best, but with a good touch of realism. I like to think the cap system I have in mind fits this bill. Here are a couple of fine points for those of you who are interested to review.
Prospects:
I would like to run our own rookie draft right after the real life one in June. What I do in my basketball league is make rookies free for the first three years of their career followed by three "arbitration" years where the salary is determined by the players performance in the previous season. In baseball, rookies take some time to get to the majors, so I would do something like make them free for the first four or five years of their MAJOR LEAGUE career after which time they would be a free agent. A player would not be considered a major leaguer until he was considered so by Scoresheet. I think that's 130 at bats and 70 IP, something like that.
Veterans
In my basketball league, veterans are signed to 3 or 5 year contracts. We have an 80 dollar cap, so players who are signed for $9 or less can be kept up to 3 years and players signed to contracts of $10 or more can be kept up to 5 years. I say "up to" because in the basketball league we can waive a player at any time and free up their entire salary. This is one of the simple aspects of this league. I could have penalties for waiving a player before his contract is up, but I don't want the rules to be so complex that they scare people away. Also, being able to waive players early doesn't seem to give anyone any unfair advantages. Teams buy out contracts in real life all the time, so this simple process I use in basketball and possibly a baseball league really simplifies the real life process which is way to complex to be fun! Having said that, we could make a small penalty, like losing 20-30% of the players salary under the cap for the rest of the year if we chose to wiave a player early. This is something we should all agree upon before moving forward of course..
This is all I can think of for now, but let me know if you have any questions and I will be in touch. I will stop by this web site more often to interact with everyone on this new league. I am in the middle of planning a trip to So Cal right now and will be on my cell phones internet - we will see how that goes : )