[Matteo]

After spending 10 hours finding answers for the conversion of my online league by talking to my co-commish, trying to understand the financial league setup description in v6 and doing lots of searchers between us, here is what the status quo is:

1) I am upset how online leagues are treated in the whole conversion process. There has been very little support so far. I understand that service days were not tracked in v5 and can live with that, as well as rating/ talent conversions and the deviations that come with that are also inevitable.

2) The conversion itself is a mess. Tracking years of pro-service as a function of age is shortsighted. There should be a way to count for years after the first year a player has minor league stats (or major league if they go straight to the majors). Now we have to do lots of manual editing. Even this I can live with somehow

3) What I cannot accept is that there is no guide how all the financial options work and how they influence things like arbitration etc. This is crucial when you try to manage a team, make long-term financial decisions etc. I know it is in the manual, but since it seems this is not a priority we are dependent from commissioners doing all sorts of research, trial and error etc.

I don't want my league going through the stress of uncertainty, so I decided to get to the bottom of this before we proceed.

4) Here are our current findings. Please add to this part when you feel we are wrong or you have additional information. Maybe this can then be a "conversion guide"...

i) MLB service days is counted whenever a player is on the active roster during the regular season after 4/1. I am not sure what the end date is the game stops counting MLB service days (end of regular season, end of playoffs???

ii) A player also accumulates MLB service days whenever he is on the DL, or optioned to the minors for less than 20 days??? (question: does the game adds these days to the player report? our guess is yes)

iii) The game counts the days as described in i) and ii) in the MLB service days this year, and stops whenever 172 days are reached.

iv) Years of MLB service is important for the contract status of a player. The term years is a bit misleading, because it is more like cumulative days on the active roster. Once this amount of days surpasses 3x172 days a player is eligible for arbitration, and once it surpasses 6x172 days he will be an unrestricted FA.

v) This means the contract status of a player can change during the season (eg. on 4/13 he has 1000 MLB service days, and is arbitration eligibe, but on 6/13 he has 1060 MLB service days (> 6x172) and will be an unrestricted FA.

So, in a nutshell, MLB service years is influencing the contractual status of a player, and can change DURING a season! Hence, an owner must be cautios and do a lot of manual stuff to do team management. It doesn't help that there is NO info like: potential unrestricted FA when accruing 32 more MLB service days.....

vi) The first thing I thought was: lets put a player in AAA just before he exceeds 6x172 or 3x172 MLB service days to avoid paying for him (when it is august or september, or depending of his ratings). To avoid this, there is the pro service counter....

vii) The years of pro service counter is pretty easy. Once a player turns pro (is on the active or minor league roster of a franchise), he will have a pro service year. It doesn't matter whether he plays or not..... Every subsequent year he is on the roster (active or minor league), he gets an additional pro service year....

viii) The conversion does a bad thing, it sees pro service as a function of age. Since this part is important for rule V draft, minor league FA, waivers etc., it must be accurate. The best thing is to look at the first year a player has minor league or major league stats, and substract that year from the current year.... This will mean a lot of manual editing....

ix) The pro service counter serves the following purpose:

a) A player with more than three, but less than 6 years of pro-service AND who is not on the 40-man roster is eligible for the rule V draft.

b) A player with more than 6 years of pro service AND who is not on the 40-man roster is eligble for minor league FA when they have a minor league contract. The description in the game is very cryptical: "minor league players with 6 years of minor league experience...." Minor league experience is NOT tracked, so I assume it would be pro service years???

x) The last part of the transaction primer is the waiver and minor league options procedure. The minore league options procedure is very unclear to us: "Allows a player to be optioned to the minor leagues 3 seperate years while on the 40-man roster. After 3 option years, he must stay on the active major league rosters, or clear waivers before demotion"

This raises a couple of questions:

a) Does this mean a player can only be send to the minor leagues from the active roster 3 times, 3 years, 1 time per year???

b) What about a player who is in AAA and on the 40-man roster. Can he be swapped between majors and minors as much as we want?

c) Is pro-service and mlb-service time irrelevant when demoting/promoting playes?

xi) If minor league options are enabled, players who are out of option years must clear waivers before they can be sent to the minor leagues.

How does this interfere with players that can refuse assignment. Is that the same, or can players refuse at will. The way I read this, a player doesn't has the right to refuse based on his personal wish, but more whether he is out of option years...

xii) How to handle waivers in online league. What should we use in waiver period considering we sim 10 days a sim...?

xiii) We haven't found a single reason why the service time on the 40-man roster is counted....Also, wouldn't it be enough to set a 40-man roster just at the end of the season?

5) I predict havoc if these issues are not cleared in the near future. Online leagues that are using v6 will have many disgruntled owners if the start realize they have made decision based on false or a lack of proper information hhow all rules exactly work. That is why we are commited getting all the answers before owners start making decision the would have never made when they had the full information they deserve....