In today’s meeting, the Wolverines needed to put someone on the VIL to accommodate their acquisition of Victor Robles. Woefully unprepared for this draft, they scrambled to figure out which of their injured players to name. The Wolverine owner suggested that maybe he could name someone at that moment and then, before the roster deadline, switch to someone else if he discovered a different player on the MLB IL was more likely to stay injured all month. No one protested, nor did they clearly affirm, this proposal, so the Wolverines put Jared Jones on the VIL.
Question presented: can the W’s substitute some other MLB IL listee for Jones if they do it before the roster deadline?
The ruling of this tribunal: No.
The relevant rule reads as follows:
B. VotawmaCare: The EFL VIL:
- Each EFL team roster can include a Virtual Injured List (VIL).
- Additions to the VIL
a. must be announced before before a beginning-of-the-month roster allocation deadline
b. take effect at the first of the month;
c. can only include players who
(1) will have been on the non-VIL roster for at least one season segment by the time the VIL placement takes effect, and,
(2) are on an MLB IL when their addition to the VIL is announced. - Players on the VIL
a. must stay on the VIL for at least one season segment;
b. must be paid their contracted EFL salaries, which count against the team’s salary cap;
c. do not count against their team’s roster limit; and
d. must come off the VIL at the end of the month in which they come off the MLB IL. - When a player goes on the VIL, his team may acquire a substitute player to fill his roster spot. The substitute player counts toward the team’s roster limit, and his salary counts toward the team’s salary cap.
- When a player comes off the VIL, either he must be DFA’d or room must be made on the roster to include him before the roster allocation deadline.
Paragraph 2 seems to detach the announcement of a VIL allocation from when it takes effect. An owner could announce the VILanization of a player days or weeks before it occurs, but it doesn’t take effect until the first day of the new month (which everyone understands isn’t necessarily the first day of an actual month — ie, August does not start on August 1 in EFL-land, but on July 31, according to our schedule.
If we just read Paragraph 2, it seems to leave room to revoke a VIL announcement if done before the beginning of a month.
But Paragraph three ties the benefit of the VIL (injured players not counting against the 30-man roster limit) to being on the VIL. The Wolverines got the benefit of the VIL (the ability to get back under the 30-man roster limit) at the draft. So for practical purposes Old Detroit had already put the player on the VIL when they announced his identity (Jared Jones). The Wolverines did not in fact draft anyone else, but they had the benefit of being able to roster Victor Robles, which they could not have done had Jones still been an active player.
Paragraph 3 also says once a player has been put on the VIL, he must stay there for one season segment — in this case, for the entire month of August (as the EFL defines “August”). This means Jones will be eligible to come off the VIL after Week 23 — ie., on September 2 on the real-world calendar.
Readers are reminded that the EFL exists on its own timeline. Actions taken on a particular real-world date may occur on a different EFL-world date, and vice versa. Jared Jones’ tenure on the VIL was announced on July 29 in the real world, but immediately took effect on the first day of August (EFL) which is actually July 31st in the real world.
Once a player goes on the VIL he cannot come off until a season segment has passed. While an early announcement of a VIL posting may not be final, and may be revoked, once the team has taken advantage of the roster flexibility created by a VIL posting, that posting has to have taken effect, and cannot be fairly revoked. So at the moment a team adds what would be a 31st player, a VIL announcement has to be deemed to have taken effect, and he cannot be swapped off the list for another player until a season segment has passed.
Therefor, Jared Jones is already on the August VIL, and arrived there the moment he was announced during the draft on July 29, so Robles could be added to the roster and the draft could continue. He may not be removed from the VIL until the first day of September (EFL) which will occur on Sept 2 (real world)… but, of course, that event will occur for draft purposes on whatever day we hold our August/September manager’s meeting.
This opinion is binding until at least three owners object and a majority of owners vote to overrule it.
In re-reading these VIL rules, I shouldn’t have been able to move Justin Slaten to the VIL since I just re-acquired him today (I had him on my roster for a couple months earlier before trading him to FH). Do I need to make any changes?
Our practice, used by many (I would guess well over 50%), is not the sequence I read in the rule. We have drafted to player #31 first, then designated someone to the VIL. I think I have done this almost always, though perhaps others have not been so egregious. I believe your designation of Jones actually came AFTER you had drafted Robles, not before. Therefore I do not think it is inconsistent with how we have been applying the rule to designate someone other than Jones before the deadline to begin the next “season segment.” Do we want to write the rule to follow our practice? Insist on practicing the rule as written by placing someone on the VIL before we draft a player? Or am I reading the rule incorrectly? In any case, for now, I support giving Old Detroit the option to place a different player on the VIL.
Both Dustin and Mark bring up wrinkles that illustrate how rule-writing is a demanding art, as complex and sensitive as any other. Songwriting (even like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvWRMAU6V-c) has got nothing on rule-writing.
Parts of our rules sing almost as much as “We Don’t Talk About Bruno”– at least in its simplest moments. That song may be perfect. (At least I don’t detect any flaws.) Our rules are not.
—
I don’t remember why we wrote the rule to bar a newly-rostered player from going immediately to the VIL. It may have been to deter people from hoarding injured players. In theory a team could draft 100 injured minimum wage players and still have over $40,000,000 to spend on its active roster. Having to roster them for a month would prevent that. The VIL was supposed to help mitigate the crippling effects of bad luck, not enable someone to build a Branch Rickey-like farm system out of hoarded injured players.
So I suppose the Glaciers can’t legally draft a player and put him on the IL immediately, even though they clearly weren’t trying to hoard players (…yet).
—
Mark is absolutely correct that, according to the letter of our rules, you have to have space on the roster to legally draft a player.
However, we have TWO limits on rosters: 30 roster slots, and our salary cap. So consider Section III.A.4.a.5), about roster requirements:
“(Each roster) does not exceed the Salary Cap or roster limit. A team may not draft or otherwise acquire a player in a transaction that puts the team over the salary cap, without immediately making another transaction to bring the roster back into compliance.”
The first sentence refers to both roster limit and salary cap, but the second sentence only allows for drafting (or trading) to go over the salary cap as long as there’s a transaction immediately afterward to bring things back into compliance. We have always treated this rule as if it also applies to the roster limit, but that is not what the rule says.
I would be in favor of amending Section III.A.4.a.5) to add “and/or roster limit” after the phrase “over the salary cap.” We could act on that at our next meeting.
(Have I ever mentioned the extra dimension of fun I get out of just writing and tweaking our rules?)
I will say I didn’t draft Justin Slaten last night, he was re-acquired in a trade with FH earlier in the day. But I certainly understand the point about not hoarding VIL players (glad we can agree that wasn’t my intent). So, final ruling? Slaten can stay on the VIL or needs to be activated and I make a roster move? Just want to make sure I make adjustments accordingly today.
DUSTIN:
You have lawyer potential. I hope this isn’t devastating news.
You point out you didn’t draft Slaten. And he had been on an active roster for more than a month when you put him on the VIL — just not YOUR active roster.
So now I think you’re fine.
I believe we can trade players on the VIL. Tommy Edman was just traded from the Cardinals to the Giants while he was on the MLB IL.
So why couldn’t we trade a player just about to go on the VIL? I can’t think of a reason.
Leave Slaten in peace to rest and recover on the VIL. If someone has a different reading of the rule, let him speak now or forever hold his peace.