The Constitution of the
Planetary Extreme Baseball
Article
II League Play Schedule
Article VIII
Contribution Points
Article IX
Standard Contribution Points Rewards
The Preamble
The Planetary Extreme Baseball Alliance was formed as a twenty four-team
fictional baseball league. The league has been formed solely for the
enjoyment of its members. In order to
participate in PEBA, all members must agree to adhere to this Constitution. By doing so you are acknowledging certain
responsibilities involved with your participation in PEBA and are agreeing to
uphold them in an effort to make this playing experience as enjoyable as
possible for everyone involved.
PEBA’s Constitution will necessarily be a fluid document. The Commissioner reserves the right to change
any portion of this document as need arises.
Changes will not be made capriciously, and in-season changes will be
avoided at all costs. Owner opinion on
Constitutional changes will be solicited whenever it is feasible to do so. Owners will be expected to cast a vote on
proposed changes when one is called for.
Owner input is welcome, and there is a forum for
just this purpose. It should be noted,
however, that decisions by the Commissioner are final; no further debate
will be welcome once a decision is rendered.
Rather than a democracy, PEBA should be viewed as a benevolent
autocracy. Opinions are taken very seriously; in the interest of
maintaining stability and focus, however, owners hereby consent to accept
rulings from the Commissioner without argument.
Demands submitted in the guise of “suggestions” will not be
well-received.
Article I
League Governance
The Constitution
of the Planetary Extreme Baseball Alliance will be referred to for all
questions regarding the rules and regulations of PEBA. The Constitution
may be revised as necessary for the league to evolve. Changes to the
Constitution can be made by either amending or adding an Article.
Proposed changes should be presented in the appropriate
forum. The change will then be debated for a reasonable time, after
which the Commissioner will either render a judgment or call for a league
vote. In situations where a vote is called for, a majority of the
league’s owners must vote in the affirmative for the change to be
adopted. The Commissioner and League Presidents will convene to determine
a schedule for implementing the change. This will happen as quickly as
possible keeping in mind both feasibility and the best interest of the league.
The Commissioner
is responsible for running sims, keeping up the web site and making decisions
in the best interest of the league when questions and conflicts arise.
This is considered a lifetime post. The
Commissioner can resign if he so chooses, but not until a suitable replacement
is found.
An Imperial and
Sovereign League President will assist the Commissioner. The LPs will assist the Commissioner with his
duties as needed. When the Commissioner
is deadlocked on an issue (or must recuse himself from an issue he stands to be
personally affected by), the LPs will be responsible for setting policy. When the Commissioner is unavailable, rulings
by an LP will be treated as if they came from the Office of the
Commissioner. The Commissioner shall be
responsible for choosing the initial LPs.
The LP posts are considered to be season-to-season; however, their
positions will be automatically renewed at the start of each new season unless
relieved of their position by the Commissioner or a vote is called for by an
owner. Votes to replace LPs can only
occur during the off-season and require a majority to pass.
Article II League Play Schedule
Owners
must have their exports in at least one hour before a scheduled sim.
During the
regular season, sims will be scheduled each week on Monday and Thursday at 9 PM
ET. If agreed to in advance by the
Commissioner and a majority of owners, one additional sim will be scheduled for
the weekend (to be held at the same time as the normal sims). During the playoffs, the Commissioner will
consult with the participants to determine an optimal sim schedule.
Exports may be submitted at any time during a sim
cycle, even days before a sim is run. To
avoid last-second hang-ups that may prevent you from exporting, all owners are
advised to send in a “safety export”
immediately upon importing a new league file.
To do this you should quickly cover the four base responsibilities
outlined in Article III. There’s no need
to spend more than a few minutes doing this; you can re-import (erasing all
your moves) and take as much time as you need later before sending off your
final export. Getting into the habit of
sending a “safety export” is a good
plan, since it will insure that you will always be awarded your CPs for
exporting.
The Commissioner will consult with the League
Presidents and post an off-season schedule following the completion of the playoffs. The early off-season will be played through
at a reasonable pace to give owners a chance to react to players’ contract and
free agent negotiations. Following the Winter Meetings, sims will be
longer to quickly advance towards Spring Training. Off-season exports will be non-mandatory but
are highly encouraged. Owners are still
required to manage their DFA list and rosters during the off-season (see
Article III).
PEBA owners recognize that timely exporting is the
most basic and essential requisite of a smoothly running league. In turn, the Commissioner recognizes that
life responsibilities/emergencies can and do occasionally conflict with the
exporting process. Owners agree to post
notice via the appropriate forum if they will be
unable to make one or more exports.
Unexcused and excused missed exports will be handled thusly:
The All-Star game will be simmed live Owners of the teams with the best record in
each league will be selected as All-Star managers. They will be able to pass game strategy instructions
on the Commissioner, who will execute them on their behalf. An All-Star manager who cannot attend may
pass the honor on to the owner in his league with the next best record, and so
on until two managers are settled on.
Attendance at the All-Star game is encouraged but optional.
Planetary Extreme Championship games will also be
simmed live. Owners of the teams
participating will be able to pass game strategy instructions on the
Commissioner, who will execute them on their behalf. Attendance at PEC games is encouraged but
optional.
Article III
Responsibilities
There are four base responsibilities
involved with the export process: Ensuring your teams have a valid
lineup/rotation/depth chart, no players are left overlong on your DL or DFA list,
and roster within your organization has too many/few players. A CP penalty will be assessed to owners who
neglect these responsibilities, and additional action may be taken as noted
below.
Most special
events – including (but not limited to) the Amateur and Rule 5 Drafts – are
considered mandatory. The Commissioner
will spell out the participation requirements that must be met in advance of
these events. Important league votes are
also considered mandatory. These may
include (but are not limited to) votes on rule changes, All-Stars, seasonal
awards, and Hall of Famers. For both
special events and voting, a CP penalty will be assessed for failure to
participate.
Participants are expected to be both
competitive with and courteous to their fellow owners. PEBA is a league that rewards participation
and competitive play. All owners are
expected to live up to this standard and agree to do their utmost to put forth
the best franchise they possibly can. At
the same time, owners acknowledge that PEBA is a social experience as
well. Owners participate to have fun and
communicate with like-minded baseball aficionados. When the twin goals of competitiveness and
courtesy collide, owners are err on the side of courtesy.
You are expected
to politely respond to your fellow owners’ trade proposals (no matter how
unrealistic they may be). This can be as
simple as saying, “I am not interested at this time.” Owners are expected to respond to trade communications
– however briefly – within four days of their receipt. If you have sent a communication to a fellow
owner and received no response within this time frame, you may send a complaint
to the Commissioner. Owners excused from
exports are also excused from responding to trade communications.
PEBA puts a great
deal of value on creative writing submission from its owners. Although there is no minimum writing
requirement, owners who take the time to better the league with their writings
will receive a CP reward. CPs can be
exchanged for a variety of useful benefits (see below) and writing is the best
way to earn them, so contributing news articles is highly recommended for all owners. While
ownership of OOTP 2007/8 is not a requirement for membership in PEBA, it is
also highly recommended. Potential owner
candidates who enjoy writing and own or are willing to purchase the game will
receive favored consideration.
When a new version
of OOTP is released, the Commissioner will determine a schedule for
migration. This will not occur until a.)
PEBA is in the off-season, b.) the Commissioner has had time to review the new
version and determine its suitability for PEBA, and c.) a majority of owners
have voted to migrate. Once these three
conditions are met, all PEBA owners will be expected to purchase the new
version.
As Commissioner,
my responsibilities to you include timely sims, maintaining our website and
forums, fairness in addressing your desires/concerns regarding the league, and
clear communication if/when unforeseen events arise. Above all else I have a responsibility to
never abuse my status as Commissioner for personal gain. I am strictly prohibited from either altering/adjusting
sim results to favor my team or gleaning “inside information” that would lead
to a competitive advantage.
Article IV Financials
PEBA will open
play with an average attendance of 31,500 and an average ticket price of
$15. Away teams will take 20% of the
gate share. Ballpark capacities can be
increased through expenditure of CPs.
Ticket prices may be altered at owners’ discretion. The average media contract will be
$20,000,000. Media contracts will be
based on a team’s market size. Market
size will not be determined by an
owner’s franchise location; instead, it will be randomly assigned by the game
and automatically adjusted over time.
There will be no
salary cap. Owners are free to deficit
spend if they so choose; however, you are expected to steer your club towards
profitability. Losses beyond
-$25,000,000 will be erased upon the end of a season, but there will be a
penalty to fan interest for every $2.5M below -$25M in cash a team ends a
season with. There will also be a fan
interest penalty assessed to teams who end consecutive seasons with negative
total cash and who have failed to
make progress towards break-even in the previous year.
The maximum
amount of cash that any team can carry is $25,000,000. This total will be checked immediately upon
the conclusion of each season. Teams
with cash over $25,000,000 will have 50% of the excess total placed in their
private Ballpark Funds account. Funds in
this account can be used to purchase ballpark renovation/relocation awards (see
Article XI). This account may not exceed
$50,000,000. The remaining 50% will be
distributed amongst teams with negative cash on hand. For PEBA’s first two seasons, these distributions will
be proportional to teams’ total debt.
Beginning with the ’09 season, distributions will be proportional to
market size.
There are three
conditions that will trigger a review of newly-signed contracts. Contracts which violate these restrictions
are subject to review by the Commissioner, who reserves the right to cancel the
contract.
Article V
Drafts
The First-year
Player Draft (hereto referred to as the “Amateur Draft”) will be held on June 7th
of each season. It will be 10 rounds in
length. The Rule 5 Draft will be held in
early December of each season as part of the Winter Meetings. Each round teams will have the option of
either making a pick (if they have an available secondary roster slot) or
passing. The Rule 5 Draft will end when
all teams have passed in a round.
Prior to the
Amateur Draft, owners must insure they have enough open roster spots at A-ball
to allow room for new draftees to enter their system. Teams must have open spots on their 40-man
roster to be allowed to make Rule 5 selections.
For all drafts, order will be determined by record in the previous year
(from worst to best). Drafts will be in
“straight” order (with teams picking in the same slot each round).
The Amateur Draft
will be conducted as a live event and scheduled well in advance. We will use Getch’s
online draft utility to process picks.
This will provide owners an interface from which to make selections and
create pre-rankings lists. On draft
days, owners will gather in our league’s chat room (linked from the main page)
during active draft hours. Owners unable
to attend will be expected to have created a pre-ranking list sufficiently deep
to cover for however many picks they will be missing.
Owners should
submit lists of players they desire to select in the Rule 5 Draft to the
Commissioner, who will make the selections on their behalf during the
appropriate sim. There are certain rules
involving Rule 5 Draft selections:
Article VI
Trades
Players, draft
picks and cash are all viable items to trade; CPs aren’t. There are certain restrictions/qualifiers to
each kind of trade:
Once a trade has
been agreed to, notification of the agreement should be posted in the appropriate
league forum. One of the involved
parties should post a list of exactly what each team is receiving. Please hyperlink players’ names to their
HTML player pages. Minor
leaguers should have their current level noted.
The second party must then confirm the trade by reprinting the full list
of what’s being traded (links not necessary).
Both owners may include simple instructions on where to assign acquired
players in advance of the upcoming simmed games (please keep these brief to
keep the workload reasonable). Please
format your thread headers thusly: “Trade
between ARL and AUR”.
Any two owners
may agree to a trade. Trades involving
more than two owners must be executed as a series of two-team trades. Each of these must be posted with a header
which indicates both that they are part of a multi-team trade and the order in
which they should be processed (e.g. “CAN-OMA-YUM:
Trade between CAN and OMA (Part 1 of 2)”).
The Commissioner
must review all trades and sign off on them before they become official. This will be done within three days of the
trade announcement. Once approval has been
given, the trade will become final and will be reflected in the next sim. Most trades will be passed without
question. Factors which may hold up a
trade include (but are not limited to) a.) a massive and patently obvious
imbalance in returns, b.) extremely unusual structuring (i.e. 1 player for 10),
or c.) suspected collusion. In these
instances the Commissioner will work with the owners involved to mediate a
satisfactory deal.
Individual owners
who feel a trade meets the criteria for disallowing should PM the Commissioner privately to express their opinion. If a sufficient number of complaints are
registered, the Commissioner and League Presidents will discuss the matter in
closed session before making a final determination on the fate of the trade. Public complaints of trades will not be
tolerated.
If one of the LPs
is involved in a disputed trade, they will recuse themselves from deliberation
on the fate of the trade. If the
Commissioner is involved in a trade, the LPs will act in his place when
determining whether the trade is to be allowed.
Special:
Trade Waivers
Players on the 40-man roster can be traded
after the July 31st deadline if they clear Trade Waivers. Players not on the 40-man roster, draft picks
and cash can be traded after the July 31st deadline without having to clear
Trade Waivers. Here is how the system
works:
Article VII
Waivers
All
waiver claims and new personnel hires are handled out-of-game via the PEBA
forums. There are two forums set up for this purpose:
the Player Waiver Claim and Personnel Waiver Claim
forums. Claims must be posted by 3 PM ET on sim days to be processed for
the next upcoming sim. Editing of waiver posts is not allowed. If you wish to retract a claim, please reply
to your original post. If you wish to
place a new claim, please create a separate thread.
When a player is placed on waivers, he
may be claimed in the appropriate forum. Claims will be entered by the Commissioner
and processed automatically by the game.
Priority is determined by league standings on the in-game date the claim
is processed. Claim post titles should include your team name plus the name
and position of the player you're claiming.
The body of your post should repeat the claim. Please hyperlink the player's name to his
HTML player page.
Between the passing of the Trade
Deadline and the end of the season, all players on a 40-man roster must pass
through Trade Waiver. See Article VI for details.
All new personnel hires should be handled by making
a waiver claim post in the appropriate forum. A waiver priority list will be maintained
there by the Commissioner. Claims by
teams at the top of the list will have priority over those at the bottom. A winning claim will send your team to the
bottom of the list. It is the
responsibility of owners to make sure they have enough budget room for the hire
and that the staff member wants the job.
Owners
MUST create a vacancy in the position their hiring for. Winning claims that cannot be executed due to
the aforementioned reasons will still result in being sent to the bottom of the
waiver priority list.
The subject headers of claim posts should be in
this format: Team Abbreviation – Personnel Name – Position Being Filled –
Priority (only needed if multiple claims are being made). The body of your post should repeat the claim
and may include up to three alternates for the position.
Article VIII Contribution
Points
Owners may earn
Contribution Points (or CPs) which can be exchanged during PEBA’s Winter
Meetings for a variety of benefits. For
PEBA’s inaugural season, timely exports will be the main method of earning CPs. Altering the system to more heavily favor
posting/writing is an option that will be evaluated during each
off-season. CPs can be earned in several
ways:
Standard Awards
Bonus Awards*
* Unlike standard
awards, bonus awards allow owners to recoup CP penalties
There are a few
circumstances under which owners can lose CPs. These include: