[IBL] A rule for discussion

[Nelson Lu]

To tell the truth, I don’t remember the exact reasons, but my immediate gut feeling was that I probably did vote against it.  I think that part of the reason was that I do think that managing with very limited resources *is* what we are intended to do in this league - trying to be resourceful in creative ways when situations call for them, and that in ye olde days that’s how they did it in real life as well (although not any more).  (I believe I voted the “fix illegal rosters during series” amendment as well for similar reasons - that we have the emergency rules to cover the situation.)

That having been said, as George pointed out, with the BF system, one difficulty in doing this has now become even more difficult now.  I’m open to revisiting it, and certainly, as Kris has taken over the team practically, I’d defer to him on the vote.  (And soon, I do think he should be considered the full owner.)

> On May 1, 2018, at 8:01 AM, Doug Palmer <aeronutty43 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> first of all, Andrew just broke the Internet with "I agree with Doug ....." LOL
> 
> My proposal narrows the circumstances that the aforementioned vetoed rule advocates.  If a team doesn't have enough eligible pitchers (no rested starter like Andrew demonstrated or simply sheer numbers like I had) that they should be allowed to get enough arms (or arm).  I don't know how it violates the spirit of the game or of the rules by allowing a team to have either an eligible starter or enough pitchers to compete.  Yes, sometimes it's the stupidity of the manager that gets one into these situations, but more times than not, it's the freak incidents like weather, injuries or very, very long ballgames.
> 
> I'd like to hear from the owners who voted no as to the reasoning and whether or not the narrowing of the circumstances changes their mind
> 
> Doug/BAL
> 
> On Tue, May 1, 2018 at 10:52 AM, Andrew Selder <aselder at me.com> wrote:
> A similar thing happened to BOW in wk 3 BOW at WMS.
> 
> Game 1 was a blowout, so Mike brought in a long reliever (who was also a rated starter) to finish out the game. Game 2 was then rained out after 4 innings, so that’s a starter burned. Game 3 (first game of double header) was similarly rained out after 2 innings. All this combined with a couple rain outs the previous week meant that BOW did not have a rated starter available for game 3.
> 
> I agree with Doug that mid week transactions in situations like this make perfect sense.
> 
> Andrew
> 
> On 1 May 2018, at 4:27, Doug Palmer wrote:
> 
> IBL’ers,
> 
>  
> Had a series of events in this weeks BAL/POR series that bordered on the ridiculous and turned what was an exciting, back and forth matchup into a farce.  And I would like to throw a proposal out there for consideration.
> 
> In G2 of the series, George (POR) had an inordinate amount of bad luck with injuries as he had 2 pitchers go down with injuries within the first 3 innings.  Not the “roll when he’s pulled” variety but rather, “roll now and check”.  That, in and of itself, is bad luck but we’ve all been there.  The game went back and forth and eventually went to extra innings.  During the course of the game, I used up relievers as did George.  Although the score was 4-4 heading into extras, there were a lot of men left of base and usage was becoming an issue.  Then the game went 17 innings.  8 pitchers used by POR and 5 used by BAL.  Most all of the pitchers used had eaten up their usage so that they would be unavailable the next game.  Now, for me, you could chalk it up to not having enough long men or maybe not carrying enough pitchers (I carry 11) but that’s not the case with George (he also carries 11 but had more long men it seemed).  He got screwed by the rapid fire injuries combined with the extra innings.  I got burned by losing a reliever in G1 due to a blowout (so I went into the rest of the series down 1 pitcher) and then burned by having 2 pitching slots occupied by starters that couldn’t pitch due to being tired.  But that’s not the craziness!  
> 
> The bull&^%$$ comes in G3.  Due to the 17 inning affair, I went into G3 with only 2 pitchers available.  George only had 4.  Would that EVER happen in a real game?  That a team would go into a game with only 2 or 4 pitchers capable of pitching?  Of course not.  Oh, and the kicker to all of this, with 2 outs in the top of the 9th, BAL tied it with a grand slam which sent the game to extras.  Yeah.  2 pitchers available and extra innings.  Better still, POR ran out of players.  An exhausted pitcher had to play left field.  And had the game gone another inning, POR would have had to forfeit as he had no bench players (to pitch) and would have been out of available pitchers.  I was 1 inning away from losing my reliever and having to use an outfielder as a pitcher.  But this was ridiculous.  It lost it’s cuteness and became outright frustrating that the rules are such.  And not only did it affect this series, now we’re both screwed (to varying degrees) for the next series.
> 
> We referred to the constitution and 3.5 outlines that you can replace injured players, but that’s only to create a legal lineup (luckily Sean was around last night and watched our game).  NOT to address losing your pitching staff.  What I would like to consider and would like to start a discussion about would be to add a rule into the constitution which would allow a team to make emergency call ups if, at the beginning of a game, they have 4 or fewer available pitchers (to reach a situation where they‘d have no more than 5).  It would not be mandatory, but it would give the owner the option to make emergency call ups.  The players deactivated would be subject to the 2 week rule, just like it is now, so an owner may not want to bring up a total of 5, but would have that option.  But it would prevent a situation like the one that happened last night.  It would ONLY affect pitchers as we already have a rule (3.5 in the constitution) that affects positional players.
> 
> What should have been a good and fun series with late inning heroics and come from behind victories instead left a sour taste in my mouth (I won’t speak for George here, but I didn’t get the sense that he was having fun there, losing players left and right).
> 
> Thoughts?  Decent idea?  Or is it one of those things that happens so infrequently, that we don’t need to bother?
> 
>