Coming up on the end of the season I asked around the league for ideas on how to make the league better. We already have a no trade deadline clause, but I figured to ask what else we could do. Joe pitched the concept, (the whole thing is his idea and I hope he chimes in) how he got to it I am not sure, but I believe he borrowed it from current NFL rules.
The concept is to freeze the prices of a few assets from being allocated arbitration dollars after inflation. Say you have Javy Baez at $8, and you put a franchise tag on him, nobody can allocate arbitration dollars to him. (The commish would keep a lost of players with tags and post it for everyone in the league to know who they are) The idea is to give a few tags to teams in the middle of the pack and help them keep surplus items that will help them rebuild faster without affecting the finances in terms of lowering the price of a player from the previous year.
How those assets are selected was the challenge. We figured points accrued as the entry level for awarding tags (14k for 3 tags was an earlier proposition, and then less tags the more points you earned, with different brackets) but days after tossing ideas around, we reached the conclusion that tags should be awarded for participating as well. We wanted people to finish their innings and games played as the basis for earning tags, and then points accrued for how many tags they earned. After discussing for days, and with the help of Justin getting us data from 2015, we found that 15.5k was a more reasonable entry level for earning tags in terms of points accrued, and we arrived at our curRent numbers:
18,500 AND BEYOND 1 tag
17,000—18,499.9 2 tags
15,500—16,999.9 3 tags
From our proposal:
This is the criteria for owners to achieve Franchise Tags:
- At the end of the season (beginning with the 2017 season), each owner
must reach at least 1450 innings pitched, and average more than 150 Games Played per position (resulting in a grand total of 1800 total games or higher)*, in order to be eligible to receive Franchise Tags.
Teams should aim to max out all their games and innings. This will ensure that a team that falls short of the maximum should still fall within the accepted limits of 1800 games and 1450 innings. Owners should be wary of aiming for the lower end of each threshold, which may result in falling short and being disqualified from franchise tags if an unexpected situation further depletes their team. - To be eligible for a franchise tag, a player must be rostered prior to the annual auction and stay on your roster the entire year. Players added via auction, trade, waiver wire or reacquired after being dropped are not eligible. Players may not be tagged by the same owner in consecutive seasons.
- Franchise Tags will take place after league inflation, and prior to arbitration.
We are pretty pumped about this, as we think these awards won’t screw the finances of the league for starters, but help players get from the bottom to the top much quicker.