Injured Reserve Proposal Discussion

[Andy Barnes]

The proposal is to remove the $1 compensation that is attached to the IR designation, as well as remove the IR designation altogether.

This will improve the league a couple of ways. First, it will reduce the need for LMs to continually balance the ledgers by manually awarding $1 to each IR assignment. Second, tracking and monitoring valid rosters will be less cumbersome without having to worry about this designation. Additionally, it means that players you would normally deactivate for the entire season, can now be used later in the year if they return. Also, these players can now be traded or bought out, whereas previously, the IR designation basically locked them until the rollover.


Each team has 5 IR spots that they can use as they see fit, as long as the player is listed as either on the 15-Day DL or 60-Day DL by their MLB organization.

Once a player is removed from the DL in real life, there will be a grace period on Fantrax to make an appropriate roster move to activate them. If they are not moved after that grace period ends, then the roster will become illegal and gain no stats until it is made legal again. The grace period will be set for 5 lineup periods, so if the player becomes healthy before Wednesday's lineup period you will have through Sunday's lineup period to make your appropriate moves before an illegal roster is declared. 

The floor is now open for discussion about this proposal and we will hold a vote in a few days, once we have had a good amount of feedback.

[Shelby Fike]

I would like to throw out for discussion whether suspended players should be eligible to be placed on reserve and open a spot for a replacement. That sort of fits this discussion. I do like the ability to trade any IR'ed player, so definitely think combining the IR with the IL makes a lot of sense. I think eliminating the $1 comp for an injured player is also appropriate and promotes budget management.

[Erik Troutman]

I would eliminate the $1 compensation, but I would probably leave 1-2 LTIR spots for players out for the season in the rare cases that someone loses more than 5 players to injury.

[Andy Barnes]

currently, Fantrax has an option for Suspended players to be included, however it is not checked, since we've never allowed it. But it is doable, if the vote to do so is passed.

We also have COVID opt-outs also checked for the DL because of last season, and we will keep that up again this year, but i doubt there will be any of note.

[Andy Barnes]

Feb 5, 2021 14:22:39 GMT -5 Erik Troutman said:

I would eliminate the $1 compensation, but I would probably leave 1-2 LTIR spots for players out for the season in the rare cases that someone loses more than 5 players to injury.

Well there is no designation besides 15D and 60D in the MLB. and when we merged the spreadsheet IR with the active roster DL it was agreed to be 5 spots for more flexibility.

But the guys that are out for long periods would fall under the 60D designation in real life. We also increased the roster to 26 spots to account for more bench depth as well.

[Joe McAteer]

I like the idea of getting rid of the $1 compensation and being able to trade, buyout, etc those players before the rollover period by combining the IL and IR. I think the proposal looks good.

I do not like the idea of allowing suspended players to be moved to reserve/IL. If a player is suspended, I like the idea of having it hurt a team as much as possible in every way possible, including sunk salary cap, wasting a roster spot, and a complete void of fantasy production from that player (and the potential positional hole created as a result).

[Andy Barnes]

Feb 5, 2021 16:16:56 GMT -5 Joe McAteer said:

I do not like the idea of allowing suspended players to be moved to reserve/IL. If a player is suspended, I like the idea of having it hurt a team as much as possible in every way possible, including sunk salary cap, wasting a roster spot, and a complete void of fantasy production from that player (and the potential positional hole created as a result).

I would tend to agree however I'm open to discussing it. We can't control suspensions just like we can't control injuries but they are definitely different things to be accounted for. I think we should continue to strive towards testing our GMs and making the decisions tough. Opening a DL spot for a suspended player removes that tough decision and makes it "easier". But, if the league wants it and votes for it, then I have no problem implementing it.

[Kody Siebers]

I wouldnt mind this proposal for our league. It could help owners that are rebuilding/retooling gather up pieces via trade from players that are out for the year if need be to possibly improve their roster for the following year. This also helps the stronger teams that lose a stud and try to help gain them that position back via trade to fill a void in their lineups. So I do like the idea of being able to trade IR/IL players if we did go through with this idea. I also don't mind necessarily about the $1 comp being taken off if that helps save the LM's time in the long run.

[Shelby Fike]

I believe suspensions are not the fault of the owners. If the MLB team gets to fill the roster slot with a replacement, I believe that our owners should have the same rights as the MLB owners.

[Andy Barnes]

From the wording of the Suspended List rule.

"An MLB player or minor league player who is placed on his league's Suspended List counts against his club's Reserve List and Active List, but an MLB player or minor league player who is placed on his club's Suspended List does not count against his club's Active List or Reserve List.

A player on the Suspended List is not paid while on the list but does continue to accrue MLB or minor league service time."

This means that if the mlb suspends the player they do count against their teams Active and Reserve rosters and they do accrue service time, they just don't earn any pay during that suspension.

If the team suspends the player then they don't count against the Active or Reserve roster. This is feasible in the mlb where they can simply access their 40-man roster, but we don't have that.

Since a player suspended by the league counts against Active and Reserve roster lists and accrues service time, it seems like the team does pay for that players mistake, just not financially. In terms of reducing their flexibility and costing them valuable service time towards arbitration, yes the team pays for it. That is the model we chose to follow when looking at suspended players and the roster construction.

If we wanted to look into implementing a 40-man roster, much like i set up in RDB years ago, that can be tweaked to fit the DLF system.... but that's a major larger discussion that prob won't happen this season.

So it's my opinion, that since the contracts are one lump and there's no way to compensate a team for a suspended player's salary, that the closest we can have to MLB and cost the team service time and roster space, is to not use the IL for suspended players.

[Shelby Fike]

That is a fair argument. I just don't believe that Fantasy owners should be penalized for the actions of a player they do not control. But, if Severino and other suspended players sat on other Deep League team rosters for the entire year or they cut him, I can understand the argument. Doesn't affect me since I doubt I will match on Cano anyway. But, I also think that Kody's point about rebuilding clubs being advantaged by allowing the slot to be taken by a suspended player is a good point. Since the number of slots is limited, if you place a suspended player in the slot, it takes up a slot you otherwise could have used for an injury. That should be a sufficient penalty for a fantasy league, in my view.

[Andy Barnes]

rosters are 26 players now. if you want to stash suspended players because you are rebuilding then use the active roster. as long as you field a complete team does it matter what your bench looks like? There's no reason to use the IL for a non injury stash. it's gaming the system in my opinion and not a viable strategy to us the IL.

[Shelby Fike]

Forgot about the extra roster slot.

[Ray Manning]

I'm for doing away with the IR and $1 compensation. I believe 5 DL spots are sufficient.

[Eric Siebers]

This seems to be a reasonable solution for injured players. I like the idea of doing away with the $1 compensation and the IR.