Draft Rules and Procedures:

1. Formation Draft: This type of draft is used to start a perpetual or launch league. It is a one-time occurrence in the life of a league. The draft pool for this type of draft includes all players including those considered "rookies" for the season in which the draft is held. It does resemble a Reallocation Draft, which is used to redistribute talent if a league has several vacant franchises. The draft order in a formation draft is random. The order is inverted every round of the draft. The draft is held over a period of several days and uses preference lists provided by managers to determine players chosen. The draft module provides "conditional drops" of players so that more than one round of draft picks can be held on one day. One round of picks is scheduled for as many roster spots as are allowed by the league rules (35 for Traditional Perpetual Leagues and 40 for REAL TIME Leagues). The number of rounds of picks per day vary and are scheduled by the commissioner and available to all on the "schedule page".

2. Rookie Draft: This draft is only held in perpetual leagues. It includes any player who has made his first "major league" appearance in the most recent "major league" season. The Rookie draft is first held prior to the second season in a perpetual league's existence and prior to each of the following seasons. The Rookie Draft order is determined by inverse order of winning percentage, but the first 8 picks are re-ordered according to a lottery. The same draft order is followed in each round of the draft. The Draft order is made available in DRAFTS from the League page in Draft order/results. A Rookie draft consists of 5 rounds of picks. The draft is conducted in three successive days with one pick being made on each of the first two days of the draft and 3 rounds on the third day of the draft. All rosters must be cut to 27 players on the day after the last rounds of the Rookie Draft.

3. Yearly Free Agent Draft: All players released after the Rookie Draft, join all other un-owned players on the free agent draft to form the Free Agent draft pool. The draft order for the Free Agent draft is determined randomly on the morning after the last day of the Rookie Draft, just after the time all rosters have to be cut to 27 players. The draft is inverse order and lasts 8 rounds. One pick is made the first two days of the draft with 3 picks being made the last two days of the 4-day drafting period.The Draft order is made available in DRAFTS from the League page in Draft order/results.

4. Reallocation Draft: This draft is used to redistribute talent when there is need to even out the talent among vacant teams. Any managed team can participate in an announced Reallocation Draft by throwing their roster into the draft pool. The draft lasts 12 days with one pick being made the first day, four the last day, and 3 picks on all the other days of the draft. The Draft is run after the play-offs and before the Rookie draft. Teams joining this draft keep their rookie and free agent picks, but surrender all of their players. When all players in the draft are taken, the draft is over. Trading remains in force during this draft. The order is random and draft picks are inverse order every round.

5. Monthly Free Agent Drafts (Real-Time Leagues): These drafts will be scheduled on the first WEDNESDAY of every month during the regular season to help re-stock Real Time rosters.

Scheduling: The monthly free agent drafts (Real Time Leagues only) will be conducted on the first WEDNESDAY of each month of the season. Managers will have one week before the draft to designate the players you will cut to participate in the draft and prepare your draft list (Draft order and Draft will made available on approx. the last Tuesday of every month).

Which teams can draft? Mangers, who have a full 35 man-roster, will not get any picks in the draft. Teams will need to cut one (1) player (or be below 35 via trade) for every round in the draft they wish to participate in. Teams will be given a week before the draft to decide on players to be cut. Those players remain on the roster and available for games until the draft is run.

Draft Rules: There will be five rounds conducted in ONE day. Use of conditional drops is highly encouraged. Players who are cut will be added to the free agent draft AFTER the draft for which they were cut. The draft order will be serpentine (alternate each round) and will be announced on the Tuesday afternoon, one week before the draft. Draft picks in the monthly draft will not be available for trading.

NOTE: Draft picks in the monthly draft will not be available for trading.

Draft Order:  The Draft order will be determined in the following manner: The 24 teams will be put into four separate groups of teams according to lowest winning percentage (ties in winning percentage will be settled using lower total PB value on the roster). The 6 teams in group one will be the teams with the lowest winning percentage as of the last TUESDAY of the month before the scheduled draft. The 6 teams with the highest winning percentage will be in group four. If a team gets number 1 (one), that team will be assured of getting one of the first 6 picks in the first round. Those 6 teams in group one will be ordered according to total roster PB value on their team as of that Tuesday’s statistics a week before the actual draft. The draft order will be constructed in this way for each of the four groups, with those teams getting the number 4 (four) getting the last six picks in round one.Round 2 order will be in the inverse order of round one. The serpentine order will be observed throughout the draft, as it is in the spring FA draft.

Players eligible for the draft: Normally, non first year players* not on current rosters (free agents) and first year players who have met the following requirements are available in the draft:
--Position players: at least 150 plate appearances in this their first year (season) in the MLB.
--Pitchers: at least 50 innings pitched or 25 appearances in this their first year (season) in MLB

* In the first year of a REAL TIME team, all first year players are drafted in the formation draft if they have accumulated stats by the date on which the formation draft list is formed.

NOTE: The DRAFT ROBOT will make choices for teams whose list runs out or is not present. The ROBOT will choose the highest rated player relative to PB Value. 

NOTE #2: The mechanism whereby teams have to cut players BEFORE the draft is necessary for logistical reasons. We regret that it makes it inconvenient to draft players and then decide whom to keep, but it works 100% better than to have another deadline in force for cutting players. In the history of on-line baseball, those sorts of deadlines have been sheer AGONY. It's one thing for the commissioner to cut active rosters to 25, but quite another to decide which players a team wants to keep on its roster.

NOTE #3: Check player usage (for other team(s) prior to this draft) before picking them by looking at red print on their STAT line. It will show their total REAL plate appearances for position players/innings for pitchers and how many plate appearances/innings have been used. While in EDIT DRAFT click on a player name to bring up his stats and view RED print for usage information.