"Expansion" dynasty, any interest? (feedback/help request)

[TheNemesis]

I've started and stopped a number of dynasties so far because I could never really get into them. starting with correct rosters got boring after a while because I liked to have a team I could tinker with, and most of the time there wasn't a lot I could do with the limited pieces I could consider moving. Fantasy draft dynasties are fun for a while, but it gets repetitive facing teams that (despite their rankings) are all fairly even in terms of talent.

So I'm considering resurrecting an idea I used for an NHL 05 dynasty: Taking an existing team and rebuilding it via a draft that is a modified version of an expansion draft.

I haven't finalized the "rules" I'd use for remaking the team yet, but the version I have right now is:

1) The team I choose would be rebuilt completely from AA up to the Majors (I'll leave A-ball alone just to save a little bit of trouble). All rosters would be based on Totte's Ultimate Rosters 7.3 (which I assume is coming in the next couple of days by the sounds of things) with only the possibility of a couple of minor tweaks.

2) The rebuilding team would be allowed to keep 6 players. 3 Major Leaguers making no more than a combined $8 million per year in salary, and 3 minor leaguers (any combination of AAA and AA players. No salary restriction)

3) All other clubs would have a protected list of up to 30 players from the Majors down to AA. I would not be able to pick players from these lists.

4) The protected lists would be subject to a few criteria:

a) No more than 18 Major Leaguers could be protected, with at least 3 pitchers (including at least 1 starter) and 3 position players (including at least 1 infielder and 1 outfielder) available

At least 6 available Major Leaguers would have to be below the age of 35

c) Players picked in the first-year player drafts of 2005 and 2006, as well as any players under the age of 19 are exempt from selection and don't need to be protected.

d) Teams can only lose 1 Major Leaguer to my team. If I want to pick a 2nd Major Leaguer from a team, I can do so by forfeiting the right to select any other players from that organization. Additionally, no team can lose more than 2 players from either of their AAA or AA teams.

I've narrowed down the teams I'd rebuild to 6 choices:

1 - Toronto

2 - Pittsburgh

3 - Colorado

4 - Arizona

5 - Tampa Bay

6 - Atlanta

I haven't decided who I'll take yet.

The big place I wanted input from you guys is in the area of protected lists for the 29 other teams. I can't rightfully draw up my own protected lists because even if I want to be unbiased, I don't know if I can trust myself. Therefore if there's enough interest in this idea, I'd love help from anyone who wants to draw up the protected lists that I'll use based on whatever my finalized critera are. Depending on the number of people, each person could be responsible for one or more teams' lists.

I would hopefully post about the dynasty as I play, assuming this idea goes ahead.

So, let me know what you think, what changes I could make and if you'd be willing to help out if I decide to do this.

Who knows, I might even combine it with another dynasty idea I had: allowing for readers to interact with the dynasty by helping make GM decisions.

Thanks for reading my long, rambling post.

[Totte]

Sounds like a good idea

Good luck!

Btw, I'll release UR tonight around between 5-6 pm ET.

[mdewals]

tampa bay....

[Myztery]

This sounds like a good idea. I completely understand the lack of interest in regards to facing teams of equal talent. I think I may draw up an Indians protected list for you when Totte releases the rosters. Good Luck. I hope this works. If it does, I'll probably try it out as well.

[TheNemesis]

Update:

I've decided to go with Tampa Bay as my rebuilding team. It works from a story perspective, given the struggles of baseball in florida, and there's a nice nucleus of young players for me to retain.

Right now, assuming there aren't an major changes to Tampa's rosters between 7.2 and 7.3, I'm looking at keeping:

Majors:

1) Scott Kazmir

2) B.J. Upton

3) Carl Crawford

Minors

1) Joel Guzman

2) Edwin Jackson

3) Delmon Young

I considered keeping Baldelli over Crawford, but his injury issues are a concern for me.

EDIT: I've since tweaked my rules further. The upper age limit is out, since there aren't enough older players on any team for me to worry about it.

As for the protected lists, I've done the first half or so, from LA Angels through Milwaukee. Since I don't know a ton about the minor leagues of most of those teams, I set myself a system to work from:

Any Minor leaguers who were top prospects were automatically protected (unless they were exempt for being too young or too recently drafted), then I went about finding the younger players on each team (working from the theory that very young players on those teams had to be pretty good or fairly highly regarded to be on AAA or AA teams). I also cut the protected list numbers down to 16 protected major leaguers and 24 protected players overall per organization. I had it higher, but I was honestly having trouble balancing the need to leave players exposed with selecting players appropriate to protect. I had several teams which had 2-4 protected spots empty, so I cut down the number of players protected to make things a little more interesting.

You'll find the lists attached in the zip file. The only catch is that I work in Microsoft Excel since it's a neater and more organized way of doing this. So I hope anyone who wants to add some input has Excel or something that can read .xls workbook files.