Proposal for Changing Overusage Penalties

by Vaughn Nuest

I will be proposing that we make some modifications to the player overusage penalty system this off-season. I believe our system carried too heavy a fine for the cases of modest overuse of medicore players and is about right for the gross, negligent (intentional?) overuse of players by dozens of PA or IP.

I will propose that we continue to fine the gross overuse at a rate that is consistent with the BRASS tradition in order to preserve the disincentive we now employ to discourage this practice. We want to continue to make it unattractive for someone to pay a small fine for overusing players by say 100 PA each in order to avoid the costs of assembling enough players to fill their full roster of needs.

My proposal will focus on the smaller-scale overuse and adjusting those fines so that the penalty more closely fits the relatively small rules infraction.

I'd preserve the 10 PA and 5 IP usage buffer, designed to cover us from unexpected events or small calculation errors. After these buffers, the responsibility is all on us, as it should be.

I'll be proposing a graduated, increasing scale that fines overuse as follows:

Position Players:
11-15 PA over the limit: $500,000
16-20 PA over the limit: $1,000,000
21-25 PA over the limit: $1,500,000
26-30 PA over the limit: $2,000,000
31+ PA over the limt: $2,500,000

Pitchers:
6-9 IP over the limit: $500,000
10-12 IP over the limit: $1,000,000
13-15 IP over the limit: $1,500,000
16-18 IP over the limit: $2,000,000
19+ IP over the limit: $2,500,000

Here are some examples of how this year's overuse fines would have been affected with this new system. As you can see, the graduated scale preserves traditional penalties for gross overuse and adjusts downward the penalties for small-scale overuse to where they are about half or one fourth of the old amounts. The message here is that small scale mis-steps now are met with small scale penalties. Large-scale overuse is not encouraged by reducing the fine for it. Those fines are preserved.

Belfast: Currently fined $12,000,000, would be penalized $12,500,000 mostly because overusage was extreme.

East Lyme: Currently fined $2,000,000, would be penalized $1,000,000 under the proposed change.

Hoth: Currently fined $2,000,000, would be penalized $500,000 under proposed change.

I would leave untouched the text in the constitution that provides for replays for overuse of star players in order to gain post-season advantage. We still need to have a provision that allows us to overturn any intentional strategy to overuse say a Barry Bonds style card by 100 or 150 PA and just accept the fine. The fine should still be assessed and the damage of the unscrupulous overuse should be undone so no benefit is ever gained.I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts on these ideas.

Thanks! Vaughn