Dramatic overpay at the draft

I’m the commissioner of a 1st year league that completed the 1st of 2 auction draft sessions last night. The results were absurd in that owners dramatically overpaid for almost every player drafted. For example one team has 12 players on its roster and a payroll of $370, another has 10 players for $367, another has 11 and $365, another at 17 and $367. Another drafted two players at exorbitant rates then left the draft. Not sure if they read the rules or not, but it appears there will some difficulty in these 4 financially strapped teams Fielding valid rosters by the time the season starts. The next session is planned for March 18. One option appears to be to allow all teams to make cuts with penalties before the next draft session and manually administrator the cuts. It seems like rewarding ridiculous behavior, but might provision VII.e.ii apply here? The other option is to let the big spenders muddle through with what they have. Any advice? Thanks…

I suggest you just let them muddle through it, but remind everyone that they will be expected to fill out a lineup

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I agree letting them muddle through it is the way to go. It’s almost a rite of passage in Ott :smiley:

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I’m one of the teams that overpaid. Just to make sure, my understanding is that I only have to be able to field a roster of 22 to have a legal team. While it would be nice to get a full load of 40 players, that is not required, right? The good thing (I think) is that I don’t have any players that overlap positions (i.e. only one 2B, one SS, etc.) Thanks for your help.

While technically yes you only need to have 22 players to be considered legal, you must have $1 available for each unused roster spot. So if you are only going to roster 22 players, you can only spend $378.

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$400 - (40-22) = $382

You may only need 22 players to be legal, but you will need another 10-15 MLB players to adjust for daily lineups and depth. A key component of scoring points is pushing hard to hit the Games Played and Innings caps.

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Heed my message, not my math

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