[IBL] What if.....no 2020?

[Sean Sweda]

I've been thinking a lot about how to handle no 2020 MLB.  The solution I  
would propose looks something like this:


The 2021 IBL season would be played with 2020 cards (2019 MLB).  Owners  
would decide whether they want to participate or sit out the season.  I  
think whichever direction we go we have to give owners the ability to  
opt-out if they aren't interested.  In the end, we need people who are  
motivated to play their games if we want to meet our deadlines.

Teams that sit out the 2021 season would retain all of their players on  
their roster without usage requirements.  Teams that sit out the season can  
still sign free agents and make trades.  If a team that sits out the 2021  
season trades a player away during the season they may not re-acquire that  
player until the start of the 2023 season.  This is explicitly to  
discourage player "rentals" during 2021.

The 2021 season would not be a full 162 game schedule.  Perhaps a series of  
short "sprints" of round-robin play to win spots in the postseason?  I'm  
not really sure what the best solution looks like, it depends a lot on how  
many teams are playing.  The goal would be to implement a schedule that  
increases the role of randomness.

We would also come up with some single season rule changes for 2021 that  
make it easier to compete.  Perhaps teams that did not make the playoffs in  
2020 would be allowed to designate a certain number of players as "usage  
immune", meaning they could go under/over our usage thresholds and still be  
retained.  Perhaps these teams would also be allowed a higher max cap on  
usage (currently 150%) so they could abuse short sample size players to a  
larger degree. The key principle for these rule changes would be to give  
the teams that didn't have as many good 2020 cards a better chance to win  
games in 2021.


The reason why I think this is the way to go is that it maintains the "this  
year" vs. "the future" balance that underpins our league structure.  Any  
season played with ephemeral rosters (e.g. re-draft the players for a  
single season) is going to break that fundamental dynamic because those  
teams have no future.  In my view we need a resolution for 2021 that  
maintains a functional market for both buyers and sellers throughout both  
the 2020 and 2021 seasons.

Anyway that's a rough sketch of the idea.  I haven't wanted to get too far  
into the weeds on this stuff because there are still so many unknowns.   
FWIW, I think no 2020 MLB is actually a less thorny issue than a very  
abbreviated 2020 MLB.

Sean