Now, here is an idea for rule implementation. This is one of those things that I have kicked around for quite some time but could never think of a way to make it work, both in terms of realism in the context of real life and fairness in terms of the OOSL. I think that here I have struck the balance.

This would allow teams to choose to use both the pitching and batting cards for players that have both in the same season. It is set up in a way that, if anything, results in a competitive disadvantage for teams that choose to do it. But it will provide a fun new element to the league that I think manifests very realistically and does not change the balance of the league. The Executive Committee is unanimously in support of this idea.

1. The default method of handling players with separate pitching and hitting cards is that the owner of the team with the player in question chooses either the batting or pitching card to use for the duration of the year.

2. Conversely, an owner can elect to designate this sort of player as a two way player.

3. By designating someone a two way player, the team owner is forfeiting one of his two overusage slots for the year.

4. Further, the player being used as a two way player has his usage cut down to 384 at bats and 154 innings pitched. If the usage for either batting or pitching is at or below those numbers to begin with, then that number would remain the same. So, a Monte Ward would be reduced to 384 at bats and keep his 100 or so innings. A Bullet Joe Rogan would both have his AB's moved down to 384 and his innings moved down to 154.

5. The owner of such a player can choose to expend their second overusage slot to double either the at bats or the innings in normal fashion. Thus, if both overusage slots are spent on Leon Day, for example, his at bats are initially reduced to 384 and his innings to 154. Then, Day's owner could opt to either (not both) double his innings or his at bats, up to the full 300 IP or 600 AB. Leon Day would then occupy both overusage slots for the year.

6. The initial overusage slot does not count against the player. For example, were Babe Ruth to be used as a two way player (basic, 384 AB, 115 (or whatever) IP) in 2000, he could be overused as a pitcher only in 2001. However, if the second overusage slot, which actually is overusage in practice, is used in 2001 in conjunction with the two-way play, Ruth could not be overused in 2001, either independently or in conjunction with the two-way play.

7. For the purpose of statistics, all batting statistics earned by the player, with both his batting and pitching cards, are combined for the year-end statistics. This replicates the struggles of batting on top of playing the field and pitching both.

8. As a rule clarification, a player used in both ways during the game would do so in the following way: the batting card can pinch hit for the pitching card, eliminating the pitching card from the game. Or, the pitching card can enter the game in the same lineup slot as the hitting card, removing it from the game. There is no other way for the second card to enter a game that has begun with the first card. How this would be worked around in CPU managed games is, at present, unknown. The only work-around idea currently would be forcing the pitching cards of two-way players to be in the rotation and designated never relief which would eliminate over 90% of the problems. However, this is just one idea and not necessarily what will be used, if anything, as a control.

As a further point of clarification, I want to illustrate how this would effect a player and indeed the degree to which it does not offer a competitive advantage. The obvious case for this would be Babe Ruth. If Ruth were to be designated a two-way player it would cost Denis one overusage slot. Also, Ruth's AB's would drop to 384, eliminating about 30+% of his batting usage and making him eligible for the dread 15 game injury. This is in exchange for about 15 starts out of his low inning pitching card. If Denis chose to use the second overusage slot on Ruth, he could bump him back to 600 AB's but would have spent two overusage slots for 15 starts. (Conversely, he could overuse Three Finger Brown and Mortie Cooper with those same two overusage slots, a net gain of 50 starts). Clearly that is a bad value decision to use Ruth in that way. Of course, he could choose to overuse the pitching card of Ruth and gain 25 extra starts of his pitching card, but the 15 game injury and the loss of about 200 PA's with the best hitting card in the game would hardly justify, in a pure value sense, the expenditure of both of the valuable overusage designations.

Ruth is being used as the extreme example. You can imagine how much less the yield gets with players who are not of Ruth's unique ability level.

So, voting members of the OOSL, vote either yes or no on implementing the plan for two card players.

This Proposal has Passed!

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