@peter: Me too! Whatever happened to that 35 homer a year hyped player?

@zk: @smokey: Officially, those stats aren’t credited towards a player’s minor league contributions. Strictly meaning players like Strasburg, Dustin Ackley, Donavan Tate, Zach Wheeler can’t be drafted based upon your requirements either. Same can be said for Aroldis Chapman. I believe Tate was injured and wasn’t playing in the AFL.

Conversly, the Arizona Fall League Eligibility Rules states that, “No players with more than one year of credited Major League service as of August 31 are eligible, except a team may select one player picked in the most recently concluded Major League Rule 5 Draft. ” Also, these players that you are looking at drafting are oftentimes placed on the 40 man roster, they aren’t major leaguers until they are placed on the 25-man roster. Thus, there is an argument that could be waged for the support of drafting these players.

Smokey’s argument doesn’t quite qualify for one could state that Caribbean Winter league has stats tracked by MLB too. His statement on the other hand, which stated that the, “AFL does not count as minor league experience, officially,” is completely correct.

I am not sure why the owner that has the first pick would object to drafting Strasburg. If you want these players to be eligible for your draft, the best argument for support would be the “spirit of the law” premise. Your intentions where for all MLB Rule-4 Amateur Drafted players, however, this wasn’t explicitly stated.

In fairness, you may have to remove these players (one’s who haven’t played in an actual regulation minor league game) from the pool of draft eligible players and place them on the wavier wire after the draft. In that case, the team with the lowest waiver claim made out like bandits. This scenario is nasty too.

You’re going to want to augment your clause for next year, but this year, honestly, this can go both way. I would say that you should stick to your clause, but I am always very legal in my ways of interpreting rules. Subsequently, there should be many players that are undrafted that have high upside. If I was in your league, I would prefer for these players to be eligible for the draft though.

We have a separate Minor League draft in my league. We added a clause two years ago to prevent the guy with the #1 pick from taking Kosuke Fukudome (I know, I know, but at the time he looked like a lock to at least be a regular player). That clause says that a player must have Minor League experience (like one AB or IP) to be selected. Maybe you can guess where this is going, but Strasburg is about to be selected first overall, and that owner is objecting. We meant for the rule to include players drafted in the Amateur draft, but we didn’t spell it out in writing.

My question: does the Arizona Fall League count as minor league experience?

Meep! Meep!