New Position Assignments This Season

Players are assigned positions for the current season based on where they played the previous season in MLB games.  As new players are entered into the system during the winter or during the season, their listed position at Baseball America provides their initial authorized position.

For lineup purposes, a player cannot be placed in a fielding position for which he is not authorized.

During the regular season, positions can be added to hitters for one of two reasons:

• Plays 10 total games at a given position
• Plays 5 consecutive games at a given position (Games as DH, or as only a PH/PR do not break a 5-game streak)

Pitchers are listed as either SP or RP, but that position designation is only meant as a guideline.  To provide better guidance for lineups, BWB will update positions during the season for these situations:

• Starting Pitcher with 3 or more relief appearances will have "RP" added to his position
• Relief Pitcher with 2 or more starts will have "SP" added to his position
  • In a 2022 change, BWB will be looking more closely at relievers who have starts. In the age of the opener and the bullpen game, adding "SP" to bullpen guys who don't pitch more than an inning or two doesn't provide much help to you. It's not a perfect number, but for the most part we're looking for 2 or more starts that last greater than 2 IP.

New positions are typically updated for players every 2-3 days.  Players can only be placed into their new positions once the player list on the website has been updated - and only for the current week - they cannot retroactively be applied to previous weeks.  However, once the player qualifies for a new position, if he is listed as a bench player or your team's DH, he can sub into the lineup using the new position.

See BWB Rules on positions