Owners are General Managers as well as Managers.  As a Manager, you must maintain an active roster of 23-25 players.  In September, you may expand your roster up to 40 players.  You must have enough players for a full team in the field.  Relief pitchers cannot be placed into the rotation unless they have a duration as a starter.  You have the option of using a 4-man or 5-man rotation during the season and you have the option of using a 3-man rotation in the postseason.

All teams are required to carry 25 men on there Major League roster.  Any owner who fields less than 25 players for more than a single sim will be fined 5 million dollars per sim. If the roster is not corrected after 3 sims the owner will be fired. All owners are required to send in at least 2 lineup roster Exports per real calendar month.  Any owner who does not send in 2 roster exports per month will be terminated.

No team can stockpile Free Agents and Minor leaguers by continuously signing Free Agents after they have filled each of there 3 Minor League teams (25 players per roster).  They are granted 5 over the maximum (80 players total).  This is more than enough for any team.  Teams that carry more than 80 players will be warned. If they are not below 80 after the first warning from the commissioner then they will be terminated.

Owners will be rewarded for overall activity.  Points can be redeemed for various improvements.

POINT SYSTEM

2 - Lineup Submission/Draft Presence or List/etc.
5 - Team News

10 - Feature Story   For instance: Top prospects, Silver Sluggers, MVP candidates, Playoff Races, ETC. (One per week posted on the message board or emailed to the commissioner)
15 - Power rankings or Special Feature (One per week posted on the message board or emailed to the commissioner)

Team news, league news, and updates to special features can be done only once per calendar week.  Other points may be awarded by the Commissioner. 

 

REDEMPTIONS

 

Player upgrades

• RATINGS INCREASES CAN ONLY BE USED ON PLAYERS 26 years old or younger.               

• Only batters Contact, Power and Eye rating can be upgraded.

• Only a Pitchers Stuff, Movement, and Control ratings can be upgraded.

• Players will only be allowed to be upgraded to a combination of 9-8-7 (in any order).

• Player upgrades are only allowed during the Off-season and the ISBL schedule month of July (see below).

Other upgrades

 

10 - Add 1,000 seats (stadium max of 65,000)

40 - Increase Market Size 1 value (Max. of Good)
40 - Increase Fan Loyalty 1 value (Max. of Good)
90 - $10,000,000

OWNER POINT COMPUTATION

Bad teams will have the chance to get more points than a good team for the same activity because accumulated points are based on a weighted formula:

Owner Points = (.500- Previous Season Win pct+1) x Virtual owner points.

OTHER OWNER POINT RULES

• Teams will not be allowed to trade owner points.

• Teams can only collect up to 150 owner points. If a team goes over 150 points when points are awarded, any points over 150 will be awarded to the current worst team in the standings. During the off-season award period, these points will go to the team that finished the previous season with the overall worst record. During the July 1 award period, these points will go to the team with the overall worst record on July 1st.

• In the event that more than 1 team has the worst record during the points to be divided equally

The Commissioner will only improve an amateur draft to allow teams who lost 96 games (or more) to get at least a 4.0 star prospect, otherwise the available player list will not be modified.

REDEMPTIONS PERIODS

Owner points will be awarded just two times a year:

• When the season ends through the entire off-season.

• During the season from July 1st through July 31st on the ISBL schedule.

PLAYER UPGRADES

Only Talent ratings are upgraded.  There is no guarentee that a player real ratings Upgrades will be applied in multiples of 10 (only).  The Maximum player upgrade for any player is 9-8-7 (any order). For example.  A batter can be upgraded to Contact=9, Power=8, Eye=7 or he could be made  Contact=8, Power=9, Eye=7 etc.  The same applies to pitchers STUFF, MOVEMENT and CONTROL ratings.

• There is one exception to the above.  If a player was drafted who is already a rating of 10 in one of the three categories, then his other two ratings can still be upgraded to 8-7.  thus he could be made into a

Owners MUST submit a least 2 Roster Exports per calendar month.   Lineup Exports are recorded and posted on the ISBL website on the Lineup Exports page.  There is a link to this page on the Main page, look at the left side menu in the lower left hand corner.  Any owner can verify there export by looking at the Last Export page.

 

Any owner who does not submit at least two (2) lineup Roster Exports for any calendar month will be automatically fired.

At any time during the season, owners may make offers to their potential free agents.  Most players in the league will not sign until at least May or June.  Each owner may make as many offers as they would like until the player either signs or breaks off negotiations.  Each player that does not resign becomes a free agent at the end of the season and goes into the free agent pool.  Contract extensions are done on the league message board.

Amendment 2-16-05: There is no guarantee that players who signed a Minor League Contract will stay with your team over the off season.  If they are not on your 40 man roster when the off-season starts, they will automatically walk.  It is the responsibility of each team Owner to make sure that any players they wish to keep over the off-season, are placed on that teams 40 man roster.  

Amendment 4-27-06:  All Contract Extensions must be submitted through the message board on or before October 1 of the ISBL season schedule.  Any owner who submits, or attempts to submit offers after October 1st will be fined 2 million dollars per offer.  There will be no exceptions to the rule.  The Commissioner has the right to not sign any players after October 1^st.  Owners generally have more than two months to get contracts done and that's plenty of time.

Any contract that is posted on or before October 1st, can continue to be negotiated up until the first sim of the World Series, but the conclusion of negotiations must occur before the World Series is decided.

Stay on top of your finances.  You have the option of setting ticket prices between $1 and $20.  Be careful when doing this because the higher you set your prices the more fans will shy away.  The average is $10.  If your team slips into debt, you will have trouble resigning your free agents.  Your options will become limited as a result and the only way to fix this is to cut payroll.  If you lose more money than the cash you have available, you will be removed as the owner of your team and put on the waiting list.  Please do not let this happen.

M. FREE AGENT SIGNINGS IN-SEASON

          In season Free Agents go to the highest bidder at the scheduled simulation time and day.  Only one free agent signing is allowed per sim date.

A. FREE AGENT SIGNINGS

Free agency consists of a 30-day signing period.  Each owner can make offers as long as they have the money to cover them.  Players will sign based on certain conditions:

1. Contract Length - The veteran players will want longer deals.  The younger players want shorter deals.

2. Winning Teams - This is only slightly taken into consideration, but older players who have been on a losing team their entire career, will want some glory before they retire and are more likely to sign to a winning team.

3. Team Reputations - If you were poor in your attempts to sign players, that gets you a bad reputation and other players hear about it.

Every year, there is a rookie draft.  You may submit your own draft list for at least the first round and/or show up to the live rookie draft.  The first 4 rounds will be live (two rounds per day for 2 days) and the remaining 4 will be finished by the computer.

During Spring Training you can help to develop your players more towards their strengths or try to improve their weaknesses.  Each player has 20 Spring Training points.  These points are allocated to Contact, Power, Eye, and Defense for hitters, and allocated to Power, Control, Stuff, and Endurance for pitchers.  Note that ratings WILL LIKELY GO DOWN if you put the level below the average 5.  SO if you want to improve something, be ready to sacrifice something.  You can not set any ratings below 2.  You can ask your coaches what ratings to use.  You can also teach players a new position or role for 5 points.  You can try to teach as many players new positions as you want, but you may only try to teach one pitcher a new role (this is something that can be manipulated if not enforced).  The younger the player is, the more likely he is to convert.

Each team may submit up to 15 players by e-mail or may do as many as you wish if you use the game.  If you use the game, you must email the ST file to the commissioner as the game does not upload to ftp.

-	Contact	Power	Eye	Defense	Defense (need 5)	Total
Hitter #1 (C)	5	5	5	5	0	20
Hitter #2 (3B)	4	4	3	4	5 (1B)	20
-	-	-	-	-	-	-
	Stuff	Velocity	Control	Endurance	Stamina (need 5)	Total
Pitcher #1 (SP)	5	5	5	5	0	20
Pitcher #2 (MR)	4	3	4	4	5 (SP)	20

Due to many facts, there may be a time that a franchise may have to relocate for their best interest.  This may be due to poor fan support, a small or diminishing fan base, poor TV broadcasting area, or other financial constraints.  So the best thing turns out to be to move the team. We will however not allow a team to just "Relocate".

The Commissioner will put out a list of cities seeking teams.  The list will include financial data of the city (Merchandising Revenue, Broadcasting revenue) the size of the market and fan interest in obtaining a team (Loyalty).  Along with how much money a team will give to build a stadium.  The Commissioner will determine your Attendance Revenue based on Fan Loyalty, Market, and your previous Attendance Revenue.

You may keep your current name with your new city or you may chose to apply for a new one.  To apply, you must send 3 potential names to the Commissioner.  The names will have to be in good taste and traditional to baseball (you may use a minor league teams name or a major league teams name past or present that is not in use).  The Commissioner has final say on ALL team names.

Teams must prove that they have a need to move (financial problems, small market, poor attendance, low TV contract, merchandising revenue, ext.)  Owner activity and reliability will also be considered in moving a franchise.

It will cost $10,000,000 to apply for relocation.  If the Commissioner approves your move, you may select one of the potential cities.  If he chooses to decline your move, you lose your $10,000,000 and it will go into the league pot.  Once you move, you must pay for the lease on the stadium.  Therefore, you must have $10,000,000 plus the stadium lease before you attempt to move.

If you are not happy with your stadium, you may build a new one.  You must remain in the stadium for at least 10 years before you can consider building a new one.  Stadiums cost $1,000,000 for every 1,000 seats.  An open air stadium costs $2,500,000, a dome costs $5,000,000, and a retractable roof costs $ 7,500,000.  A grass surface costs $2,500,000 and a turf surface costs $5,000,000.  Stadiums can have between 40,000 and 65,000,000 seats.  The cheapest stadium (40,000 seats, open air, grass) costs $45,000,000 and the most expensive stadium (65,000, retractable, turf) costs $77,500,000.  Owners may set the dimensions of the field and must be approved by the commissioner.

If you are close to sellouts every game and you'd like to increase your seating, you can add in increments of 500 seats for $1,000,000.  Every time you add seats there will be an additional $1,000,000 in fees.  You can increase your seating to 65,000.