Benchwarmer News Archive - 2005

12/20/05

• 2006 Salaries, Positions, and Salary Cap Figures updated.
  • 2006 Salary Cap = 44875 (44.875 Million) - New Teams in 2006 will start with 45 Million.
  • Each team got the same distribution - enough to get the team with the lowest balance up to the cap figure (so each league is different).
  • Any player with an "x" listed for their secondary position - these minor league players still must be verified for position - their primary position may change in January.
  • Player of the Year awards are not yet done, so some teams will get a small amount of additional cash in a couple weeks.
• LEAGUE CHAMPIONS - Your team is free in 2006 - you also may play a brand new team or Orphan Team for free in 2006.
• GORE CUP and BOTTOM FEEDER CHAMPS - You may play a brand new team or an Orphan Team for free in 2006

12/17/05

• Minor League Results posted

11/1/05

• The Benchwarmer Bash - It's our off-season tournament between all the league champions to crown an overall champion.  All five league champions will participate along with three wild card teams to create a bracket of eight.
• Teams are seeded based on Power Index Rating, with wild cards at the bottom of the list.
• Lineups (one submission for the whole tournament) are due Sunday night, November 6.  MLB Games will be randomly picked from throughout the season.  Results will show up later in the winter
• Participants in order of seeding:

  1. Boar's Nest (Hall of Fame) - Power Index: 2

  2. Asia (K Street) - PI: 6

  3. TRB (Shadowball) - PI: 10

  4. Carlisle (Beatleball) - PI: 17

  5. Rainy City (Longball) - PI: 31

  6. Milford (Hall of Fame) - Wild Card - PI: 1

  7. South Hill (Longball) - Wild Card - PI: 3

  8. NJ (Shadowball) - Wild Card - PI: 4

10/28/05

• Championship Series - Game 7

• Congratulations to our League Champions:

  • Hall of Fame League: Boar's Nest
  • Shadowball League: TRB Systems
  • Beatleball: Carlisle Thunderpants
  • Longball League: Rainy City Whiffleball Players
  • K Street League: Asia Analog Kid

10/19/05

• Championship Match-ups:
  • Hall of Fame: Oaxaca vs. Boar's Nest
  • Shadowball: Tombstone vs. TRB
  • Beatleball:  Carlisle vs.London
  • Longball:  Rainy City vs. Nokomis
  • K Street:  Dawns vs. Asia

6/18/05

• 2005 First Round Draft Picks - are now available as part of the player lists.  Use the "Other" filter to pull them out of the larger list.  First rounders must sign by the Rule V Draft in December or they are removed from the system (including your team if you still have him at that time) and do not get added again until they qualify by one of the normal ways or are drafted again.

6/1/05

• Minor League Schedule Update
  • In the last couple of years, I've been able to download all the stat files by organization off of Baseball America online and take a couple weeks to go through and pick out our stats for our minor league season.  That option isn't available this year - I can't take that snapshot in time and fill in the stats later.
  • I don't have time to run the Week 7 stats this week so my current plan (still subject to change):
    • Wait until Week 11 rosters are in to pull minor league stats - you'll get season-to-date stats for everyone on your minor league roster that week.
    • Anyone on your Week 7 minor league list who isn't there anymore in Week 11 will be included in the Week 11 update.

5/30/05

• Is your team losing a lot of 1-run and extra-inning games?  If so, you're coming close to winning those games - what can you do to help get you over the hump?
  • Try to reduce the number of Benchwarmer Batters - and the automatic 2 errors each one commits - Make sure your bench is full of players who are in the majors, not on the DL, and ideally are real-life starters.  In a perfect world you can cover each position, if needed.  Errors may mean the difference between a win or loss in a close game.
  • Make sure your bullpen is manned by 5 relievers getting regular duty.  The Pinesitter Pitcher in the bullpen is a killer this year and if you have more than one in a game, you're working uphill.
  • Keep 2 healthy major leaguers in your spot pitcher role - I'd still suggest 2 starters.  Despite allowing pitchers to move up in the rotation this year, you'll still be in trouble at some point without a start from the spot position if you have a member of the rotation miss a start or two.

5/22/05

• I think this is fairly bug-free - Check out the new Trade Rumors page.  (In the future, access it from the main transactions page).
• One new thing from last week - you're going to have to accept trades twice in order to prevent any quick-fingered mistakes (or protect you from your cat pressing the button - no lie - someone on ESPN once used that excuse on why we should all let him pick up his cut player first).

5/17/05

• Please take note of the "Transaction Warning" if it appears by your team name in the upper left corner of the screen - and fix any problems before the deadline.
• To clarify how I handle transactions that aren't complete:
  • If you don't indicate the type of cut - leaving it at "Choose type of cut" - I interpret that as an outright release.
  • If you don't indicate a round or type of signing - leaving the transaction type as just "Choose" - I ignore the request completely (I have given some new people the benefit of the doubt).
• But to make things crystal clear and avoid misinterpretations on my part (and it's too much work to change later, so you'll be stuck), please make sure you fully complete the transaction process - and if you have extra players - some of you seem to use the transaction list as a holding pen for players you don't eventually want to sign - please remove them from your transaction submission by using the far right column on the modify area - "Remove".  Choose "drop" and it will remove them from your transaction list.

5/16/05

• Due to some changes in the source of Minor League stats (Baseball America no longer has an agreement to publish them and they had a great format to use), I'm modifying the BWB Minor League season.  Stats will be checked now in weeks 7, 11, 15, 19, & 23.  This is still subject to change if it becomes too hard to look up.

5/9/05

• It's going to be a long time before I get the message boards up again - I had always intended to start up a group on Yahoo, but someone beat me to it - thanks to Anthony Citarella for taking the initiative - but sorry I didn't promote it sooner.  For those of you looking for an outlet to post messages and get a little of the back and forth: Click to join BenchwarmerBaseball Yahoo Group

5/7/05

• The Player of the Week is Back!  This year, you get 25K for having a player win a weekly category (up from 10K).  Winners for Weeks 1-3 are now posted (and money credited to your accounts).  In the future, you can access the page from your league home page or the statistics index.

4/18/05

• Don't forget, we've got a rule change if you don't have an available spot starter to fill in for your missing normal starter - we'll check down in the rotation to see if anyone can move up.  This may cause a little havoc with your rotation, but hopefully will avoid some Pinesitter Pitcher appearances (you'll eventually need to have a spot starter available to break the cycle of moving pitchers up).

4/3/05

• Benchwarmer Bash -  Game Six - Gorilla finishes off D-Town with a 7-2 triumph to become the first all-around BWB Champ.

3/28/05

• A couple rules questions -
  • I think I originally intended the 80% salary rebate to start on Week 1, but I previously published it starting on Week Zero - so it is now in effect (see 2005 Transaction Schedule)
  • New guys in Spring Training who aren't listed on the player lists (like, say, Iguchi) won't appear until they show up in a major league game.  Why?  Well, kind of "because".  So why are some A and AA players available?  See the rules page on player additions or some of the questions in the FAQs.
  • By the way, the written form of the rule book is for now the final arbiter - see page 32 - I actually eliminated the "non-roster invitees" part of the rule for adding players in December/January (eliminated the very first off season).  That's not to say there still aren't some errors - and I will have a list of errata soon.

3/9/05

• 2005 Rule Changes for our last updates before the season, including:
  • Quantifying the adjustment for hits and walks given up by a pitching staff and how it affects the game score.
  • A slight change in handling the pitching rotation - specifically if your scheduled starter misses a turn.

3/8/05

• Contract extensions are now active.  You can also access the form from your team sign/cut page and from the main Transactions link at the top of the page.
• Suggestion - Contract extensions are not due until the end of July.  Beatleball and Hall of Fame League owners can only take $5 million into the season and so for some of them now over that level, contract extensions now make sense.  But you potentially are wasting your money if a player gets a season-ending injury early in 2005.

1/11/05

• Are you getting email from Benchwarmer Baseball? - Email from this site gets forwarded using a server script - and may be interpreted by some systems as SPAM unless you add BWB as a trusted site.  You should have been getting many broadcast emails from us for the last few weeks.  If not, try going to your team page and send yourself an email - OR use this SPAM TESTER.
• We know when email gets returned due to a problem (and one current user has that situation), but we have no way to tell if our emails are blocked by spam filters.

1/10/05

• Redistribution Draft - Results posted

1/2/05

• New Players - The off-season player additions are complete and you can now choose them for your Startup or Redistribution Draft. Use the "New in 2005" filter at the top of the selection pages.
• At the same time, unsigned 2004 1st Round draft picks: Stephen Drew, Philip Humber, Jeff Niemann, Jared Weaver  have been eliminated from the player lists and were removed from any team that owned them or any draft list that included them.
• You'll find several new filter choices for viewing and picking available players.