Lineup Error Messages

Tom Kessenich · Post by **Tom Kessenich** » Fri Apr 09, 2004 7:23 am

We wanted to clarify the lineup issue that had come up this week. If an owner submits a lineup with fewer than 23 active players, that lineup will not be considered illegal or invalid. Instead, the owner will not receive any stats from that open position (s) during that weekly period, but the rest of his active players will continue to accumulate their stats.

An important note: When you submit a lineup on STATS and it has too few players, you will still receive an error message saying the lineup is invalid and provide an explanation why that is the case (not enough catchers or outfielders etc.). While technically your roster is not invalid, we wanted to continue to have a system in place where an owner who submitted a lineup with not enough active players would still be given an error message alerting them to the situation and providing an explanation why the roster was not correct. Again, the roster will not be ruled as being invalid, but it will provide the owner with the opportunity to make the necessary change.

Hope this is all clear.

Jon_Ashton · Post by **Jon_Ashton** » Fri Apr 09, 2004 9:51 am

Greg/Tom, You realize don't you that this ruling will stay on the message board for a day, and less than a majority of participants will see it or remember it? If it's important enough to announce on the message board, isn't it important enough to add to the Rules?

If you go back through the history of message board rulings such as this one, I'd guess there probably are close to a dozen rulings similar to this (some quite important!) that never get added to the Rules. Don't you want to eliminate confusion and have all entrants know these types of rulings? Don't you want Greg to have weekends and evenings with his family with peace of mind that no unclear rules issues are brewing on the NFBC messages boards, with people wanting to hear from him asap?

Please take a timeout and take a hard look at your procedures for making rulings. If you think you're doing things fine, please proceed as you have been, and that's fine with me. I'll just gain an advantage on the majority of the competitors by checking the message board every day to keep my own up-to-date list of the "Rules." Assuming Greg sticks to the rulings on the message board (not a safe assumption at all as the history clearly indicates!), I could possibly gain a significant advantage over competitiors who could be more in the dark than others about the Rules.

Wouldn't it make sense to at least add a miscellaneous "Rulings and Interpretations Section" to the official Rules at the NFBC website to add rulings to? If something is important enough to take the time to try to inform people about here, why not add it to the Rules, so participants don't feel Greg should be on call 24/7 on the message board to explain things they likely have missed? I think if this were done, it wouldn't be too long before close to all the important rules information (message board rulings/interpretations included) were actually all in the Rules for all participants to refer to with confidence that these actually are the Rules, as complete as possible, that we all are playing by.

I made a much shorter post last Sunday afternoon, trying to make this same point. Greg had a rather put-off reply about it being correct that not ALL rules were included in the Rules. Look at the history. Look at what happened Sunday. I have no interest in saying "I told you so." I'm more interested in you all changing your procedures, if you deem it necessary. If you don't deem it necessary or sensible, you'll probably be likely to have problems like last Sunday's issues erupt from time to time. Assuming you have an interest in avoiding that, maybe Greg will actually take a more serious interest in my comments at this time.

Tom Kessenich · Post by **Tom Kessenich** » Fri Apr 09, 2004 9:58 am

Jon, all updates are included in the e-mail newsletter that we send out each week. We also will update the rules section on the Web site when necessary. We will make sure to provide this information in all of the pertinent places so that everyone has access to everything and no one is at a competitive disadvantage.

Jon_Ashton · Post by **Jon_Ashton** » Fri Apr 09, 2004 10:09 am

Originally posted by Tom Kessenich:

Jon, all updates are included in the e-mail newsletter that we send out each week. We also will update the rules section on the Web site when necessary. We will make sure to provide this information in all of the pertinent places so that everyone has access to everything and no one is at a competitive disadvantage. I believe that policy is exactly what you should have in place. I'm very glad we're in full agreement on this. As the history clearly indicates, however, what you state is the current policy has not always been the policy, and it still remains to be seen whether or not you and Greg are going to be fully adopting this policy. I'll wait and see...

The proof will be in the pudding, so to speak.

LB Big Richards · Post by **LB Big Richards** » Fri Apr 09, 2004 11:24 am

Tom,

So you're telling me that I could carry only one catcher (and submit a starting lineup with just that one catcher), and stash an extra SP on my bench? I could conceivably bench that second catcher who is hurting my BA?

This makes no sense. STATS needs to strictly enforce the 23 player starting lineup rule. Why open this up to interpretations and loopholes. Please make a firm ruling now to avoid any future discrepancies. I'm sure others would hate to see the first place team in September bench Ausmus to gain an advantage in BA.

Am I completely off base here?

Please inform me if I am.

Hojin

Cellar Dwellers · Post by **Cellar Dwellers** » Fri Apr 09, 2004 11:35 am

I agree with LB here. If that's going to be the case, come September I'll know how to protect my ERA and Ratio by having a couple of open pitching slots. All 23 spots should be filled otherwise you open the door for some shady stuff.

Greg Ambrosius · Post by **Greg Ambrosius** » Fri Apr 09, 2004 11:36 am

Absolutely not and the system wouldn't even allow you to do that. You must always have a legal lineup, but if one of your two catchers is on the DL and you still have him in your starting lineup your lineup is certainly legal. Don't misinterpret this as a new rule or a changing of the rules or anything like that. We've had people calling us and e-mailing us about teams having illegal lineups and STATS was also unsure if a legal lineup meant that a team had a DL player in its starting lineup. The last thing I want to do is give a team a full week of zeros just because they failed to replace a DL player from their starting lineup.

Tom made this post today because there was confusion by some NFBC members. We also saw that some people acquired free agents on Sunday and then didn't enter them into their starting lineups before 1 p.m. on Monday, leaving them with a DL player instead. We also saw some of those teams try to make the switch later on Monday and unfortunately that move won't take affect until Week 2. So we made this post to let those teams know the situation right now and to assure all the team owners who are telling us about invalid lineups that we know what they look like.

As for Jon asking us to update the rules, we in fact did that yesterday and will take your suggestion and add a Rules Clarification area if that helps. But really, this isn't a new rule as STATS won't allow anyone to enter an ILLEGAL lineup (no catchers, 8 outfielders, for instance) and teams that have several DL players in their starting lineup won't benefit by having zeros from one or more players.

Greg Ambrosius · Post by **Greg Ambrosius** » Fri Apr 09, 2004 11:40 am

Andy, again all 23 spots will be filled by all NFBC teams. What Tom tried to say is that some NFBC teams (5 in fact during Week 1) had players who were on the DL within their starting lineups, not active players. In my interpretation of our rules, that's not illegal, just not smart.

Since we do not have a maximum or minimum innings pitched rule in the NFBC, come September if you want to protect your ERA and WHIP you can have nine DL'd pitchers in your starting lineup if you want. I don't think that will help your Ks or Ws, but that is definitely an allowed strategy here.

Greg Ambrosius · Post by **Greg Ambrosius** » Fri Apr 09, 2004 11:45 am

Having read Tom's initial paragraph, I can understand the confusion and I don't want to edit it for him. But again let me clarify this point. There were five teams in Week 1 that had 22 active players in their starting lineup and their 23rd player was on the DL. All five NFBC teams DID HAVE legal lineups of 23 players in the 23 required spots, something Tom did not initially state. Thus all five teams are accumulating stats from 22 active players and one player who is on a major-league DL. We just wanted to clarify that this is not an illegal lineup under the terms of our NFBC rules, although there was a question of that by some of our NFBC members. I apologize if our initial explanation opened a can of worms because we were only trying to clarify this situation, not make it less clear.

Cellar Dwellers · Post by **Cellar Dwellers** » Fri Apr 09, 2004 12:15 pm

OK, thanks. Tom's post made it a little confusing but it's clear now.

viper · Post by **viper** » Fri Apr 09, 2004 12:39 pm

Au contraire, mon capitan ...

in NY#4 there is a team with only 22 active players, a totally open slot in the SS position, and 7 (count them -7) players on the bench. I can also report that this illegal/invalid lineup is properly accumulating no stats for the 22 other players this week. For reasons best understood by this team's owner, he invalidated his lineup by removing Nomar from the SS position and placing him on the bench.

I have no problem with someone using a DLed/minor league/or dead player in his lineup but I think they damned well ought to have 23 active players.

[ April 09, 2004, 06:40 PM: Message edited by: viper ]

Greg Ambrosius · Post by **Greg Ambrosius** » Fri Apr 09, 2004 12:59 pm

Yes Viper this is the team you alerted us to earlier in the week and we looked at that roster. It's very possible that this owner put Nomar on his inactive list with the hope of acquiring a SS in FAAB and didn't get him. Technically Nomar is his SS this week and he's accumulating stats from 22 active players. STATS wasn't sure if this team should be acquiring stats from these 22 active players or should get all zeroes and we emphatically stated that the 22 active players should accumulate states, which is the reason we chose to explain all of this with this thread.

We could have changed Nomar from inactive to active for him, but that would only help him for Week 2. We left Nomar technically inactive on his Week 1 roster and will leave it up to him to put his status as Active or Inactive for Week 2, but again technically he has a legal lineup with one player at every required position, albeit his SS accumulating no stats.

[ April 09, 2004, 07:10 PM: Message edited by: Greg Ambrosius ]

Greg Ambrosius · Post by **Greg Ambrosius** » Fri Apr 09, 2004 1:07 pm

Hojin, I don't want to belabor this point but I wanted to add one more thought on this. In two instances that I'm aware of this week, an owner acquired a player via FAAB and cut a player who was technically active for Week 0. Then between 7 p.m. EST on Sunday and 1 p.m. EST on Monday those owners did not move the new player's status to Active. Whether those owners thought that player would automatically be listed as Active or they just got busy and didn't have time to do it, I'm not sure, but I believe there are two teams that this happened to this week. We allowed the programming to keep this team legal because you can acquire players via FAAB and stash them on your reserve roster. It is up to each owner to fill out a new 23-man starting lineup each week and having less than that in Week 1 certainly gives you no advantage at all.

But again, my original concern with having the FAAB deadline on Sunday night and the lineup changes due on Monday afternoon was that some teams wouldn't activate their new players in time. We'll do our best to keep reminding owners to do just that each week.

We will also try to remind all owners that their FAAB acquisitions will automatically be listed as inactive, so that if you cut an active player to make room for a new player (which was certainly possible with the short week we just had) that you need to activate a new player to your starting lineup. But as Tom said, should you somehow screw up and not do that, we are tallying your stats from your 22 active players and not just giving you zeros across the board for that week. That would be cruel and unusual punishment.

Hopefully this makes sense.

viper · Post by **viper** » Fri Apr 09, 2004 1:22 pm

Can I follow up on what I think I just read. It sounds as it that as long as I can create a legal lineup from my 29 man roster, I am allowed to actually not field a full 23 man lineup for my active players. Just as this NY4 team is accumulating stats for all his active players in spite of just 22 active players, I could, in fact, bench all of my pitchers and still accumulate stats for my hitters. I personally don't think this is the way you want to go but it is consistent with what you are saying about the NY4 team and their gathering of stats. The fact that they have a DLed SS should be besides the point as they could have a non-DLed SS on their bench (although that is not the case). I only ask so that I know what is and isn't legal. Heck, I may screw-up in future weeks but from what I read, I won't be hurt except for any lost stats accumulated by the bench player that could have been active.

Greg Ambrosius · Post by **Greg Ambrosius** » Fri Apr 09, 2004 3:00 pm

STATS had red-flagged any lineup that did not have 23 active players this week, but we knew that in this first week of dealing with FAAB and the early week games that there might be mistakes. So all teams this week with 22 starters will be allowed to accumulate stats as every single team has a legal lineup and for whatever reason didn't activate one more starter. Jim at STATS just e-mailed me and said that going forward the computer will post a message right away that says your lineup is not legal and will not allow you to submit a lineup with 22 players. So any player you take out of your starting lineup from here on out MUST be replaced by a new starter. If this team in your New York league doesn't change his lineup by Monday, we'll make Nomar active for him. Now are you square with this?

Do you really believe this owner should get all zeroes for Week 1 when he has 23 legal players, albeit Nomar on the DL?

viper · Post by **viper** » Fri Apr 09, 2004 3:32 pm

You seem to be making an issue of Nomar being on the DL. That isn't really the issue as I see it. If you look at the transaction log, he actually moved Nomar to his bench AFTER he had a perfectly legal lineup. I don't mind you giving him a "mulligan" but this isn't a matter of being confused on a FAAB pickup. He got a FAAB and then created a pefectly legal 23-man lneup and then he moved Nomar to the bench. I'm 99% sure that team had no stats acumulating yesterday but now it has a week's worth of stats. The issue is closed and I think I know what the rules are now. That team should thank you.

[ April 09, 2004, 09:35 PM: Message edited by: viper ]

Moneymaker · Post by **Moneymaker** » Fri Apr 09, 2004 3:49 pm

Do you really believe this owner should get all zeroes for Week 1 when he has 23 legal players, albeit Nomar on the DL? Greg, I'm one person who thinks that the NY4 owner should get all zeroes for the current week. I also think you should not submit his lineup for him if he continues to keep seven players on his bench. I suggest that going forward, you keep this simple and follow the rules to the letter. Don't try to please everyone. Otherwise, the owners who care about their teams start to wonder what the rules really are, and what they can and can not do to improve their position. It's not hard to submit a valid lineup -- just keep only six players on your bench. If two percent of the owners can't figure this out, too bad. Thanks for the $1250.

[ April 09, 2004, 10:01 PM: Message edited by: Moneymaker ]

Greg Ambrosius · Post by **Greg Ambrosius** » Fri Apr 09, 2004 4:30 pm

He doesn't need to thank me for anything as he's the one who for some reason kept 22 active players in his starting lineup and chose not to pick up an active SS. And as I said earlier, we have no intention of moving Nomar to his active list, nor did we, although that's the move that makes his lineup complete. It is certainly up to this owner to have 23 starters in his lineup for Week 2 and the computer won't allow him or any other team going forward to compete with less than 23 starting players. He's not getting a mulligan; in fact, he seems to have lost the first "skin."

[ April 09, 2004, 10:31 PM: Message edited by: Greg Ambrosius ]

Moneymaker · Post by **Moneymaker** » Fri Apr 09, 2004 4:45 pm

Greg, let me just say that I think you're doing a wonderful job in running this thing. But sometimes, you confuse the hell out of me.

Originally posted by Greg Ambrosius:

If this team in your New York league doesn't change his lineup by Monday, we'll make Nomar active for him. Originally posted by Greg Ambrosius:

And as I said earlier, we have no intention of moving Nomar to his active list, nor did we, although that's the move that makes his lineup complete.

viper · Post by **viper** » Fri Apr 09, 2004 4:48 pm

Bottom line nis that he is getting stats for a 22 man active lineup. Of that there can be no dispute.

Gordon Gekko · Post by **Gordon Gekko** » Tue Apr 13, 2004 2:48 pm

Greg: couple of questions

1) If my team has two catchers, and I lose one through FA, does my team accumulate stats for the other 22 active players? Or do they get zeros across the board? Or will KP void that FA transaction before line-ups are due on Monday?

2) If my team has two catchers, and I drop one to pick up another catcher, BUT I fail to activate the newly acquired catcher, does my team accumulate stats for the other 22 active players? Or do they get zeros across the board? Or will KP void that FA transaction before line-ups are due on Monday? Or will KP move the inactive catcher to my active roster?

1A & 2A)If a team can accumulate stats for the remaining 22 players, then a team can use the strategy of dumping one or both of their catchers, in hopes of saving their average at the end of the year. (I know someone already mentioned this, but it's important to bring up again.)

[ April 13, 2004, 09:00 PM: Message edited by: Gordon Gekko ]

Plymouth · Post by **Plymouth** » Tue Apr 13, 2004 3:00 pm

Gordie, I don't think you moves would allow for a legal line-up and thus could not be accomplished. Now if you want to get two DL'd catchers, then you can activate them both and have a legal line-up if that is your master plan to win the league. Maybe you should do it now and get a head start.

Gordon Gekko · Post by **Gordon Gekko** » Tue Apr 13, 2004 3:05 pm

Originally posted by Plymouth:

Gordie, I don't think you moves would allow for a legal line-up and thus could not be accomplished. Why wouldn't they be accomplished?????? A team (not necessarily mine) can drop a catcher for another catcher, and then forget to activate him. What happens in that case?

Sport, although I value your right to have an opinion, you should think about what you post. Could save you some embarrassment.

Then again, it does provide a few laughs at the "water cooler." Ah forget what I said about thinking before posting. Just post them all. Thanks.

[ April 13, 2004, 09:08 PM: Message edited by: Gordon Gekko ]

Greg Ambrosius · Post by **Greg Ambrosius** » Tue Apr 13, 2004 4:17 pm

Gordon, I'm not sure I can answer this one without checking with Jim at STATS first. We now have the lineups set where you MUST have 23 starters to be legal and every NFBC team and NFBC Auction League team had 23 starters for Week 2 as we checked every lineup. If you acquire a free agent catcher and cut your second catcher, I'm pretty sure that new acquisition will have an inactive status until you put him as "active." If you fail to do that, your lineup will not be legal.

KP certainly won't change anyone's lineup, so it's up to every owner to make sure you have 23 starters activated each week. I think we've made it pretty clear that 22 starters and seven inactives won't be allowed and illegal lineups could draw all zeroes going forward.

viper · Post by **viper** » Tue Apr 13, 2004 4:32 pm

"I think we've made it pretty clear that 22 starters and seven inactives won't be allowed and illegal lineups could draw all zeroes going forward." Greg

Of course, we all know that this exact situation occurred in week 1 but at SS. I am curious as to the answer because I felt the issue was skirted by Greg and Tom. I heard lots of things implying that it could not/would not happen but never heard of a penalty if it did. Cetrtainly in week one there was NO penalty and I sort of consider that a precidence. I can only presume that from week 2 forward the penalty is loss of stats but if it isn't, I can see teams playing the rules to add an additional position player and releasing a catcher - or at a minimum, not activating a non-disable cathcher in order to save BA assuming the quantity categories are not badly effected. This becomes more meaningful at pitching towards the end of the league if Wins and Ks were moderately solid but ERA & WHIP were volitile.

[ April 13, 2004, 10:36 PM: Message edited by: viper ]