Our APBA league’s approach to the 2020 shortened season

Our league, the Illowa APBA League, is in its last month of the 2020 season. After a month off, we will be drafting for our 2021 season based on 2020 MLB season. The IAL is a 10-team continuous ownership league which plays 162 games each year. This year will be its 47th year of existence.

The ten managers of the IAL have been engrossed in a fair amount of discussion about how to handle the 60-game season in the upcoming year. In addition, there are certain usages in the majors especially when it comes to pitchers, that prompted some discussion.

For some background, here was our limits section from the IAL constitution going into last year’s season…

A. Limits
1) Non-Pitchers shall be restricted to their actual number of games and at-bats for the season being played.
2) Players are restricted to positions in the following manner.
a) The first position listed on a player’s card is unlimited except for Rule 4.B.1.
b) If a player played 20 games (inclusive) or more at a position he is unlimited except for Rule 4.B.1.
c) If a player played 10 to 19 games (inclusive) at a position he may play 40 games at that position except for Rule 4.B.1.
d) If a player played 1 to 9 games (inclusive) at a position he may play 10 games at that position except for Rule 4.B.1.
e) If a player has a position on his card that he did not play he may play 1 game at that position.
f) If a player played a position not listed on his card, he is rated according to the “APBA” boards and is limited by rules 4.B.1,4.B.2.a,4.B.2.b,4.B.2.c and 4.B.2.d.
g) If due to an injury a player is required to play a position not on his card he is allowed to play without penalty at the lowest rating for that position.

3) Pitchers are restricted as follows
a) Graded pitchers are limited to their actual number of starts, relief appearances, and innings pitched.
b) “D” pitchers are limited to double their games and innings with a max limit of 150 innings.
c) “D*” pitchers are limited to double their games and innings with a max limit of 150 innings. They may only appear in relief.
d) Pitchers are limited to one start in each half of a 6 game series. In a 9 game series a pitcher can start games 1 and 5 in the 5-game portion of the series with a maximum of 42 starts for “D” pitchers.
e) Due to injury a starting pitcher may be used in relief (If no other relievers are available) without penalty, this does count against his limits. No abuse of these rules will be tolerated.

Some say that our player usage limit system is a bit say, involved. It works well for us though.

Because of the shortened season, the unconventional usage of a full staff throughout the season and some players not playing at all, our league found that we were not going to be able to cover our games, at-bats, and innings limits in order to play a full season.

Several proposals were submitted and three were passed. Well, four actually. One was a given. It was this…

All limit categories would be pro-rated for a 162-game season

Put simply, each player’s limits would be calculated for a 162-game season based on the amount of games their MLB team played.

The IAL prides itself on being free of labor disputes and when those have happened and the season was shortened, we still played 162 games. We have the same approach when it comes to the virus. We are here to play baseball!

For the 2021 season only Pitchers limits will be increased by 10%

Even with pro-rating the limits, we found some teams would be hard-pressed to cover their limits for this coming year. The 10% boost will help. This would be a one-time rule (we hope!).

D pitchers limits are capped at 200 innings

As you saw above, we do allow D pitchers to pitch double their games and innings up to a limit of 150 innings. On a similar vein, this rule is to curb those who had poor seasons from racking up stats simply because they can pitch a lot of innings.

Supplemental draft

The supplemental draft proposal was discussed quite a lot. Here is the full final text…

For the 2021 season only there will be a supplemental draft to expand roster to 31 players. The players eligible for this supplemental draft will be players not in or edible for the Illowa League who hit below .240 with less than the equivalent of 2.5 power numbers. The draft order is the same as the Rookie draft. These players will be dropped from the league at the end of the 2021 season.

This is probably be seen as an imperfect solution but one we can live with. I tend to like the guys on my team so hopefully, he does poorly so I won’t have any problem giving him back when the season is up.

IAL proposals shot down

There were a few proposals that didn’t get passed.

One proposal would have given an extra draft pick if a player on the team opted-out of the 2020 season and did not receive a card. The original player would have remained protected and could return the year later. That did not pass.

A few proposals were not related to the shortened season. Two attempted to pass the Designated Hitter. I have Luke Voit and Eric Hosmer on my team so it probably would have been in my best interests to vote yes. I still voted thumbs down on both. Neither passed.

The use of the Unusual Play Card was proposed and did not pass. Our league has been moving towards an “out-of-the-box” mentality over the past decade. It got my vote but did not pass.

Other perspectives

I reached out to the APBA community about how they were going to approach the 2020 season. I received a few replies.

GMABT’s Rich Zawadzki

Along with all previous champions, all 2020 MLB clubs are permanently “retired” from the Annual Greater Michigan APBA Baseball Tournament.
Sample size is just too small.

Doug Burg

We play a 100 game season. We are just prorating games played, pitcher starts and innings pitched to 100 games. No other changes. May vote on using the relief pitcher has to face 3 batters rule.

Chris Proffitt

We are meshing the 2019 and 2020 seasons together. You can take the 2019 or 2020 card of a player you have on your team or drop a current player on your team and take an undrafted 2020 player. For example, I have Machado, Ketel Marte, and Omar Narvaez on my team. I am dropping Machado’s 2019 card and will take his 2020 card. I am keeping Marte’s 2019 card, and will be dropping Narvaez to draft any available 2020 card.

I would love to hear from others how the 2020 shortened season will affect your league (or tournament) play. How are you handling the situation?