Hello League:
The attached workbook has everyone's team and a list of all players that were dropped. For what everyone is really waiting for, here is how the draft will work:
The draft will work on a weekly rotation and will last three weeks. Each round begins on Monday morning before I go to work (this could vary a little, but it should always be before 8:00 AM). I will post to the blog and send out an e-mail telling people which players will be bid on for that week. Everyone should send their bid for a player to the following e-mail address: uscgranbydraft@gmail.com. All bids that are received by midnight Thursday (Thursday night, not Wednesday night) count. The highest bid on each player will win the player and that bidder will pay the second highest bid plus $1.
The results of each round will be posted and e-mailed on Friday morning. Everyone then has until midnight Saturday night to e-mail the player they want to nominate for the next round to uscgranbydraft@gmail.com. Each round will have 14 players up for auction (1 from each team). I will only look at this e-mail on Friday mornings and on Sundays. I will send an e-mail that includes all information that I see, including every bid.
On Sunday, I will check the e-mail to make sure that two people don't nominate the same player for the coming week. If this does occur, then whoever nominated the player first (whoever's e-mail came in sooner as long as it came in after I announced the previous round's winners on Friday) will still nominate that player and I will contact the other person to get a new nominee. I will tell the entire league when this happens. If I ever nominate the same player as someone else, I will automatically defer to that person and nominate someone else myself so that I do not gain an unfair advantage from knowing exactly when I'm going to post results on Friday. Also, whenever someone has to nominate a new player they will get to see all the other players who have been nominated (because there is no way around me having that advantage in case this happens to me).
After the dust settles on Sunday, I will post the 14 players on Monday morning and thus begins the week.
The first round will begin on Monday, February 23. You may send in your nominee to uscgranbydraft@gmail.com at any time between now and Saturday night midnight, February 21. When you nominate a player, you are automatically bidding $1 on the player. You may choose in the e-mail to start the bidding higher than that, or you can start it at $1 and then send in your actual maximum bid during the week. The draft will end midnight March 12.
Please check your e-mail and join the league on yahoo! now that it is up.
Update:
Lance and Connor pointed out some errors in the roster that are now rectified. Lance also reminded me of a part of the draft rules that I forgot to mention in the earlier e-mail:
Firstly, I will announce the amount of money that you initially bid on a player that you nominate. Secondly, you may bid more money than you have at an aggregate level. If you are bidding more total money than you have, you must rank each of your bids in order of priority. If you fail to do so, it will be a headache for me but I will go by the order in which I see them.
Example:
I get so pissed off with A-Roids that I drop him and he enters the draft. I also drop Manny because I see him getting the Barry Bonds treatment (note: this is only hypothetical!). Suppose Lance has $500 and would love to have either A-Rror or Man-Ram. He can bid his full $500 on both A-Hole and Manuel individually, saying that his first priority is A-NusInjector (ok, that one's a stretch...). Then, if someone beats him out for Asswipe, he now has a $500 bid placed on the-greatest-right-handed-hitter-the-game-has-ever-seen-that-didn't-do-steroids. No one's second priority will be recognized until all first priorities have been executed or beaten out, no one's third will be recognized until all seconds are done, etc.
One last thing. Connor pointed out to me that Eric has no draft dollars. If at any point during the draft (or at the start) you run out of draft dollars, you are done with the draft. You no longer nominate anyone. During the draft, you may not exceed 27 players total on your roster. For everyone, this means that if you draft more than 3 players, you must immediately drop players to maintain your roster at no more than 27 players. Those players who are dropped MAY NOT be drafted. These players must go through the waiver process at the beginning of the season.
Remember that after this draft your dollars are worthless. Try to spend them all in the draft, because saving them will do you no good. Also note that if someone does take more than three players, this necessarily means that someone else will be short a player on his roster. We already know that Eric is going to start the season with three empty roster spots, and there may be others in a similar situation by the time the draft is over. So, the waiver battle at the very beginning should be interesting....
Also, in the uscgranbydraft@gmail.com address, I will not delete any e-mails and I will give everyone the password after the draft is over so that you may audit my work.
Happy drafting,
