Roster Cuts

"Making final cuts is what I hate most about this job. Monkeying around with people’s lives is never fun. On the other hand, when I’ve picked the team, 25 players are monkeying around with my life." - Don Zimmer

Transactions
March 3
RED HOTS trade Kelly Johnson (.20D) and Jason Hirsh (.05D) to CLOWNS for Chris Snyder (.01C) and Bronson Arroyo (.06C).

COPPERFIELDS trade Ken Griffey Jr (.13D) and Aaron Rowand (.24D) to CLOWNS for Jimmy Rollins (.38D) and their 9th round Rotation Draft pick in 2008.

BULLS trade Stephen Drew (.02C) and their 10th round Rotation Draft pick in 2008 to CLOWNS for Rich Hill (.10C) and John Maine (.06C).

March 7
RUFFINS trade Mark Reynolds (.09D) to BULLS for Rich Hill (.10C).

March 8
MOORE BETTER trade Derek Turnbow (.02D) to STONES for Tony Gwynn Jr (.01D) and Will Inman (.05M).

March 9
BULLS trade Brent Lillibridge and their 5th round Rotation Draft pick in 2008 to RED HOTS for their 7th and 15th round Rotation Draft picks in 2008.

Roster Cuts
Roster cut worksheets have been e-mailed to all owners and are also available in the Download Center. The deadline for roster cuts is 4:00 PM Central time on Monday March 24. All teams must reduce their rosters to 15 or fewer players and submit the names of the players being kept to the League Secretary by this date. Any rosters not received by the deadline on March 24 will be reduced to 15 by a random method determined by the Executive Committee.

We'll Be Right Back...
Before we get to the information about the cuts, we've got a brief commercial interruption. As reported in earlier messages, all CFCL fees must be paid by the time your cuts are received. This is usually the place where I plead each year for everyone to send in a check for the annual fees, only, guess what? I've already received payment from all but one owner. I'll follow up with him directly to spare him the embarrassment of being called out in public (being the defending champ and all). But seriously, thanks to everyone for getting payment in on time!

Cuts - The Gory Details
The roster cut sheets are (I think) fairly self-explanatory, and certainly those of you have been through this processes before should have no problem filling them out. I won't go into a lot of detail here about how to submit your cuts, but there are a number of things you should be careful to keep in mind when completing the form. A couple of years ago I put those reminders and a number of other details into a separate document that I creatively entitled Roster Cut Instructions.

For old pros and young upstarts alike, the temptation will be to dive right in to your cuts, but I encourage everyone to at least take a glance at the instructions so you're aware of all the requirements and implications of your decisions.

Submitting Your Cuts
When you e-mail your cuts, make sure you put ROSTER CUTS in the subject line -- that way I will know not to open your message until I've submitted my own cuts to Rich.

Send in your cuts as soon as possible. I have to have them By MARCH 24 or we'll make your cuts for you. As a reminder, your cuts are considered final as of the time you send them -- that means no trades are allowed between MARCH 24 and the end of the Draft. Once you mail in your cuts, your roster is frozen, so if you're working on any last-minute blockbusters, make sure they're completed and noted on your roster cut sheed beofre you send it.

One protected lists have been submitted, they cannot be changed, even for moving players between Active and Reserve Lists. EXCEPTION: Changes may be made before the Draft ONLY to reserve players who were sent to the minors or placed on the DL between the time cuts were submitted and the start of the Draft. You cannot move players from your Reserve List to your Active Roster after your cuts are submitted.

National League Opening Day Rosters
Draft Day (March 30) is the day before Opening Day for most teams, so the official National League rosters probably won't be set before the Draft. Every team will probably have a few borderline players who still might get send down to the minors before Opening Day.

Remember, you can download the 2008 Spring Training Rosters from the Download Center. This spreadsheet has up-to-date information about which players have been send down by their NL team.

Pre-Season Calendar
Along with Draft Day, here's a list of other important days in the coming weeks:

Roster Freeze Day
- Monday March 24, 4:00 PM
List of Keepers Released
- Wednesday March 26
Draft Day
- Sunday March 30
Opening Day Rosters must be set
- Monday April 1, Sportsline Deadline
First Regular Transaction Date
- Friday April 4
First Free Agent Bid Date
- Sunday April 6

Some Nice Things You May Have Missed
Items posted since the last report that you'll probably want to be familiar with:

• IMPORTANT: CBS Sportsline News


• 2008 - Fee Increase!


• The Twenty-Fifth


• Constitutional Updates


• Co-Commish Mailbag


• HEAD'S UP: Positional Error at Sportsline


• Hometown Discounts

Hometown Discounts

Three teams will have Hometown Discount rights to a total of six players in this year's Draft (it would have been four teams with right to seven players if Dontrelle Willis had stayed in the NL).

Details about the players who are HTD-eligible and how that will factor into the bidding on Draft Day is covered here:

Hometown Discounts

In addition to being available in this post, the link above will also appear in the CFCL links sidebar to the right. As in the past, I'll update the Hometown Discount information weekly as the season progresses.

HEADS UP: Positional Error at Sportsline

This problem with CBS Sportsline was noted in a posting on a fantasy baseball forum, and it will be an issue for our league.

It appears Sportsline is not determining eligibility correctly for the "combo" infield positions: Middle Infielder (MI) and Corner Infielder (CI). According to our rules (and those of most other leagues), players qualify for MI if they had played 20 games or more at 2B or SS the previous season, and qualify for CI if they had played 20 game or more at 1B or 3B last year.

Sportsline is correctly determining eligibility under those rules, however they are ALSO qualifying players for the "combo" positions if they played a total of 20 games at the two individual positions combined, which should not be the case.

For example, Rich Aurilia had the following Games Played counts last year:

1B - 55
2B - 9
SS - 12
3B - 22

Under our rules, Aurilia should qualify at 1B, 3B, and CI on Draft Day.

At Sportsline, however, he is also listed under MI because he played a combined 21 games at 2B and SS. He does not qualify at either 2B or SS, but Sportsline would allow him to be placed at the MI position. Our rules do not currently allow this - Aurilia would need to qualify at either 2B or SS to be placed at MI.

This won't be a huge deal for Draft Day, as we'll use the position eligibilty information in the Draft Pool listing (see the 2008 Position Eligibilty or 2008 NL Spring Training Rosters files in the Download Center if you have elgibility questions). It might be a problem if you're using the free agent listings at Sportsline to do draft prep -- keep in mind that the listings for MI and CI may include players who do not actually qualify there.

Where it WILL become an issue is during the season when owners will be making their own roster moves at Sportsline. You'll need to be extra careful when assigning players to the CI or MI positions to make sure they actually qualify for one of the individual positions under that combo umbrella.

It sounds like a number of leagues have already contacted Sportsline about this error, so hopefully it will be straightened out before it causes problems.

Co-Commish Mailbag

I've gotten some questions via e-mail related to roster freezes and Draft Day, and I thought it would be helpful to share the queries and answers with everyone and possibly head of some repeats. A lot of the stuff we're doing now we only go through once a year, so many people seem to have the same questions.

Q: If a player we protect is traded to the AL between roster freeze day and the auction do we simply lose that player or once they are protected do they fall under the "players that are traded to the AL stats count" rule?

A: Guys who get traded to the AL after Roster Freeze Day can be kept for the season. From the Constitution: "If the player moves to the American League between Roster Freeze Day and the end of the season, the player can be treated like any other player on the team's roster for the duration of the season."

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Q: If a player starts the year on the DL we can put him on our reserves for the auction if we so desire, but their salary counts toward our $260 limit. Can we list them on our active roster and move them to the reserve list before the auction on the day of the auction or does that all have to be set when we submit our freezes? I read the constitution and it seems like we can move them to the reserve list on auction day if they are on the DL and we wouldn't be able to move them back to the active roster if not still on the DL come auction day if we freeze them on the reserve list so I just wanted to clarify things.

A: Yes, if a guy gets placed on the DL after you freeze him, you can move him to reserve prior to the draft (his salary would still count against your $2.60). A few notes on this:

1. You CANNOT put a guy on Reserve prior to the Draft if he has not been officialy put on the DL by his NL team. In other words, you can't speculate about a guy going on the DL and reserve him just in case -- there has to be an official transaction that he's been DLed before your can go through the draft with him on Reserve.
2. If there HAS been an official transaction putting a guy on reserve, we prefer that you decide if you're going to reserve him or leave him active ASAP. This will allow us to have the paperwork for the Draft (roster forms, amount to spend/players to acquire for each team) as accurate as possible on D-Day morning. It also allows all owners to update their spreadsheets and draft software so we don't have to futz around with inconsistencies on Draft Day.
3. For that reason, we'll have a deadline the afternoon or evening before the Draft -- all reserve moves, etc, need to be done by that deadline so we can update paperwork, send out announcements, etc. Once that deadline hits, the pre-Draft rosters are completely frozen.

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Q: When is roster freeze day again?

A: Roster Freeze Day is Monday March 24 at 4:00 PM Central time. Note, that this earlier post to the Blog included a list of important dates leading up to Opening Day: Draft Day Housekeeping, Pre-Season Calendar, etc.

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Til next time...