Action Required - Please trade chat or sitemail me if you'd like to voice your support or opposition to the rule change. If you'd like to make your thoughts public, please feel free to post a reply to this post and it will appear on the blog.
As I originally stated, I feel that the world rules need to evolve as the league and HBD evolves. To be clear, I have ZERO interest in weakening the competitive requirements. I want to provide the opportunity for a good owner to have the choice to stay in the world if they don't hit the MWR and accept strong penalties which will still dissuade any tanking.
The other change I have decided to make after discussing with other commissioners is I am going to take the competition committee out of the process initially when someone hit 200 losses over 2 seasons. Now you'll automatically get probation, however the competition committee will retain the right to review all situations on a case by case basis and if there is documented issues with tanking (ie - throwing out fatigued pitchers for the last 2 weeks of the season to generate losses) then they can still be voted out. The process will be the competition committee voting on the situation and if its severe enough to bring to the world, then the world will vote.
Old Rule - 1. 200 losses or more over a two year period and the owner will be asked to state their case as to why they should be allowed to stay. If allowed to stay the owner must reach 70 wins or be replaced.
New Rule
1. 200 losses or more over a two season period and the owner will go on probation and have to hit 70 wins. If the owner does not hit 70 wins, then the owner has a choice of leaving the world or accepting the following penalties:
- Forfeiture of next season's first round pick by selecting a player chosen by the commissioner
- One season IFA ban on signing anyone for more than $1 million. IFA's under $1 million can be signed as minor league filler.
- If either of these rules are violated, the result is immediate expulsion from the world
- The competition committee reserves the right to vote on each MWR situation and if its severe enough, then the world will vote on the offending owner.
The last benefit to this rule change is it will allow me to set up a very clean spreadsheet on tracking MWR offenders for all of my worlds. Although I go out of my way to be unbiased when the competition committee votes, I felt that I wanted to make the process more objective than subjective and these rules reflect those changes while also allowing the world to retain good owners who want to stay in the world.
Thanks for being a part of this world and community,
Chris
