Tim and I were discussing this subject today on ICQ.

This was Tim's suggestion (which I encourage him to reply to and make sure that I got it correct):

All picks currently owned by contracted teams are transferred to "THE LEAGUE."

There will be a "THE LEAGUE" draft list which includes horrible players. That way the draft structure is maintained.....allowing teams that traded for contracted picks to get them..... without having good players taken out of the player pool for everyone else.

So, for the rookie draft, every contracted team's draft list would like the same....it would be comprised of the worst possible players in the pool, that no team would ever want to own.

For each league's FA draft, the contracted teams draft lists would have to be created for each league (since the pools are all different). Mike would have to go through and make a horrible draft list for all 4 teams, only picking players that not even the worst team would want in the 8th round of the FA draft.

An alternative (which might be easier) would be to create 20-30 dummy/ficitional rookie players (5-7 for each team, depending on how many RK picks they have). Call them John Doe 001, John Doe 002, etc and give them one AB. Make the rookie list for the contracted teams only with John Doe players and either lock other teams from adding them to their list...or let them pick them up if an owner is foolish enough to do so.

Same thing with the FA draft, except that you'll need a total of 32 John Doe players (8 for each team).

Doing this would prevent contracted teams from picking up valuable rookie players that would end up back in the FA pool, and valuable free agents that would miss the 2002 season and end up in the 2003 FA pool.

Jon