Tanking Poll

[St. Louis Cardinals (Andrew)]

Option 1

Draft Lottery. 30th gets 10 balls, 29th gets 9 balls, etc. 20th through to 1st in standings get their picks per normal. This way the team coming last gets 10 in 55 Balls (18% chance) of getting no.1 overall pick. It minimises the incentive for tanking to finish last.

Option 2

Draft pick penalty. If a team misses minimums, their first round pick in the following year drops one place. We will 'forgive' up to TWO discretions, from the third penalties apply.

For example : STL misses three rounds minimums in 2025. My 2026 first round pick gets designated with a +3 meaning that if I finish 23rd in 2026 (would normally be pick 8), my pick drops to 11 (8 + 3).

[St. Louis Cardinals (Andrew)]

Thank you to all who votes, I appreciate your input in the direction of this league.

With 27 votes, I think we'll take that as everyone has voted. The clear majority with 20 votes is a Draft Lottery.

I'll send out more details further down the track. Reds and Marlins use a Draft Lottery in another league they are in, I believe it is quite transparent so we'll probably go with that.

From the end of our 2025 season (after our playoffs and before Free Agency is held), we will hold the Draft lottery to ascertain the draft order for our bottom 10 teams. Last (30th) will get 10 balls, 29th will get 9 balls, etc. This will dictate the top 10 picks in our 2025 draft. No change to reverse order for those not in the draft lottery.

We will not implement any penalty for not meeting minimums now that there is no definitive 'reward' for finishing last. I think we would need to drop roster sizes to 35 + DL if we were going to penalise for not meeting minimum and the feedback from you is that you want to keep 40 man roster. With that being the case and in real life every MLB roster only holds 26 active players at any time, there's always going to be a shortfall in MLB FA talent. I don't want to force someone to acquire fodder just to get IP limits if guys are on the IL (which seems to be ever increasing). MLB roster sizes is a different conversation for a different day though.

Thank you for voting, I appreciate it.