Rebels and Danger Work a Buster

Jealous that earlier in the day the Ruffins had cornered the market on all available Drews, the Rebels shored up their pitching staff by acquiring Chris Carpenter (.31 13+) and Chris Narveson (.05 13+) from the Danger in exchange for Hanley Ramirez (.49 13+).

Weeks Won't Keep Ruffins Down

Despite having traded Neil Walker minutes before Rickie Weeks forgot how to run to first, the Ruffins are undeterred and made a move to shore up their 2B slot.

The Ruffins traded Ricky Nolasco (.12 13+), Zach Braddock (.06 13+) and their 4th and 14th picks to the Bulls in exchange for Kelly Johnson (.20 12+), the lame duck Colby Rasmus (.04 X) and the Bulls 9th round pick.

Bulls - Rebels Continue Trading Frenzy

The Bulls and Rebels completed a deal that can best be viewed as building for the future for both teams.

The Bulls acquired Anibal Sanchez (.02 13+) and the Rebels 8th round pick in exchange for minor league speed demon (and Candy Clown heart throb) Billy Hamilton (.05 Mx), Mike Minor (.05 12+) and the Bulls 4th round pick.

Money Ball

Allow me to put on my Roger Ebert hat for a moment. I've seen the trailer for the new movie Money Ball starring Brad Pitt. Based on the book by the same name it's a movie that chronicles Wunderkid Billy Bean and his approach to running the Oakland A's.

Based only on the trailer, it looks like a wonderful movie. It's baseball, it's true (or as true as Hollywood will allow it to be), it star Brad Pitt displaying his dry humor (think Ocean's Eleven/Twelve/Thirteen in baseball cleats) and (perhaps best of all) it has Pitt looking a bit worse for wear. Don't know if it's the camera, the makeup or maybe Brad is just showing some age like the rest of us. What's not to like? Hopefully the rest of the movie will hold up.

Clowns and Ruffins At It Again

The Clowns sent out a Going Out Of Business Sale ad and the Ruffins ran to the store with a shopping cart.

Solidifying their outfield and bullpen, the Ruffins acquired Drew Storen (.10 12+) and Drew Stubbs (.05 11) in exchange for Neil Walker (.05 12+) and Brandon Beachy (.01 13+).

In the Ruffins words "I will now begin the difficult task of acquiring JD and Stephen Drew just for the hell of it."

Clowns - Ruffins Engage in Trade

The Ruffins are not letting the Revenge take the easy road to victory. Swapping pitching and future for some hopeful recovering offense the Ruffins made this deal with the Clowns.

Ruffins send Mike Leake (.01 13+) and Arodys Vizcaino (.05 Mx) to the Clowns for Ubaldo Jimenez (.27 13+) and Carlos Gomez (.07 13+)

Recapping IFAB Day

The planets have aligned to make this years Interleague Free Agent Bid (IFAB) Day a little more complicated. On top of that, since we enter our own bids on OnRoto there's a wrinkle we need to work around.

Here's the deal. In a normal year the IFAB Day (August 1st) is the day after the Major League Trade Deadline (July 31st). Both of those are still true this year. Normally the ML Trade Deadline does not fall on our Transaction Day. This is not true this year. July 31st is this Sunday. So that means we have normal Transactions and Free Agent Bids on Sunday the 31st. THIS YEAR we have IFAB (Bids on players that have come over to the NL on the Trade Deadline Day) Day on Monday, August 1st.

Here's the wrinkle. OnRoto is set for us to make transactions on Sunday and Friday. We cannot add a Monday transaction day. Well, actually we can but not without screwing up other parts of player movement. I won't bore you with the details, but I will tell you that your EC has been hard at work weighing the options and your OnRoto Czar, M. Coulter, has been even harder at work trying to figure out how to make this all work.

Here's what we've come up with. Sunday is a normal transaction day where you can make changes to your roster and make free agent bids on any player OTHER THAN A PLAYER WHO WAS TRADED TO THE NL ON SUNDAY! I give you the Constitution:

"Interleague Free Agent Bid (IFAB) Day

On the day immediately following the MLB Interleague Trading Deadline, the CFCL will hold a special sealed bid auction. Players who were traded from the American League to the National League on the day of the trading deadline, as well as any other free agents, are eligible to be bid upon on IFAB Day.

Players who are traded from the American League to the National League on the same day as the MLB Interleague Trading Deadline (typically July 31) are not eligible to be bid upon until IFAB Day, even if the trading deadline occurs on a Sunday. In other words, if July 31 falls on a Sunday and an AL player is traded to the NL at 9:00 on Sunday morning, that player cannot be bid upon until the next day, even though he was in the NL prior to the 3:00 PM Sunday transaction deadline."

As you can see, Former Co-Commissioner and Current Owner Emeritus, David Mahlan, anticipated a year like this and has laid out in plain English how things will happen. The only thing he couldn't have anticipated is what stat service we would be using. So on Sunday you do what you always do. Make bids, don't make bids, make changes to your lineup. If a player is traded over to the NL on Sunday THEY ARE NOT ELIGIBLE TO BE BID ON.

On Monday (August 1st), here's what you need to do. Submit bids on ANY PLAYER (whether they were traded from the AL or not) to David's e-mail address. I'm not posting that information here, it has been included in an e-mail to you. You must submit your bids to David's e-mail address by 3pm Monday, August 1st.

Any e-mails David receives prior to 3pm, Monday August 1st will then be forwarded to OnRoto Czar Coulter who will sort through the bids and assign the players to the appropriate teams and e-mail the teams to let them know if they received the player.

Any e-mail getting to David's InBox after 3pm WILL NOT be forwarded to M. Coulter.

As you can see, there's a bunch of moving parts in a normal year. This year there's even more. Coupled with that, I will be heading out of town this Friday so other than updating the Excel Spreadsheet I won't be able to provide Mike much support in a timely manner.

I say all of that to say this. Please be judicious in your bidding. By that I mean, by all means place bids and contingency bids. But don't submit four e-mails saying "OK, follow the first two bids of the first e-mail, but change the third bid from the second e-mail so that I have the fourth bid in this e-mail." Mike has enough work to do without trying to decipher multi-layers of bids from one owner over several e-mails.

If you have any questions, please e-mail me before Friday. One last piece of information. Here are the remaining budgets for all the teams:

Revenge - .57; Killers - .85; Danger - .75; DoorMatts - .18; Dem Rebels - .64; Bulls - .35; Ruffins - .48; Clowns - .40; Red Hots - .40; Line - .58

Killers Keep Trading

The Killers keep acquiring inexpensive talent preparing for next year's draft. This time they picked up Aaron Harang (.01 13+) from the Bulls in exchange for the Killers' 7th Round Draft Pick.