How do I know when other owners lose the ability to cut players from their rosters?
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You can’t cut players while arbitration is open and after the keeper deadline but before your draft.
Last year we had to get commissioners involved to cut players between season end and arbitration start. I say “had to,” I was under the impression the owner wasn’t able to make cuts.
Are you saying owners can cut between now and arbitration?
Yes - you can try it yourself, just click the link to Cut Players
To add some color:
Cannot cut after the keeper deadline but before your draft for obvious reasons without commissioner intervention
Cannot cut during arbitration / vote-off because the system originally was not built to handle a player being given arb dollars or a vote off, and then that player no longer being rostered. It’s easier to just not allow cuts than to try to unwind arb/votes and inform teams that they maybe no longer had completed arb or made a valid vote, etc.
Otherwise, the system as it is currently set up will let you cut players, which is, if nothing else, how it should be going forward.
If I’m missing a good reason to not allow teams to make cuts on their own right now, let me know.
When I navigate to the cut player screen, I get this message:
ROSTERS ARE LOCKED
You cannot cut any players right now
Note: I didn’t see this until just now. Earlier this night I could see the normal screen.
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This has been fixed to allow cuts until arbitration starts.
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A post was split to a new topic: Off-season invalid roster
Alright I woke up today finally remembering how this all works.
@legendaryan was of course right - last year teams could not cut players after the last day of the season without intervention from the commissioner.
This has been true for many years - after 11:59pm ET of the day the MLB regular season ends, cuts are locked until after arbitration. Or at least, cuts should be cut off.
During arbitration, cuts are not allowed because unwinding arb or votes for cut players is too complicated to really force people to engage with.
Before arbitration and after the regular season ends (the period of time in question), the reason was simply at some point the system will do year end stuff and while salary increases are applied, etc, any cuts will mess up the system.
So, to answer the original question correctly:
Teams cannot cut players from 12:00am ET the day after the MLB regular season ends until 11:59pm ET on November 14 (the last day of arbitration). Teams can also not cut players from 12:00am ET on February 1 (the keeper deadline) until the completion of their league’s auction draft.
This makes the related question about illegal rosters both more of a pain and more enforceable from a league’s perspective. I stand by my advice there, but now as a league you know that people cannot cut penalty-free immediately after the end of the regular season, which may mitigate some “bidding practices that go against the spirit of the game” to quote @legendaryan
I’m documenting all this so future Niv doesn’t forget why this stuff works the way it does! And to inform any commissioners grappling with this question.
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