I am writing this here because it will be too long to write in the chat room. I am also writing this opinion because my team, being where it is, is the one least affected by everything that has transpired in our league this week. The commissioner has acted, Mr.Sparks has acted and everything that I say here might be a moot point but I am going ahead to say it. First thing first. I feel neither Jimi or Barry is at fault here. Jimi, as commissioner, gave us all a warning as to about what was likely going to happen because Barry did reach out to him and told him what he was planning to do. Most of us, myself included, either ignored the warning or were not smart enough to figure out what was about to happen. In my own case, I am guilty on both counts. This lead me to go back to the "Special Rules for Pitchers": "Pitchers that are listed at both SP and RP can only be used at the position they actually play. For instance, you can NOT start a pitcher at RP if he is a starting pitcher for his MLB team". What happened is that Tampa Bay threw us all a curve; technically, they started using RPs as SP, but they were not considered technically an SP because they were not starting in the first inning. I can see in the future, if this trend continues, that the terms SP and RP will be substituted for terms like LDP ( long distance pitcher ) and
SDP ( short distance pitcher) or something along those lines. To me our law says that even if a pitcher has 2 classifications, SP and RP, he can only accumulate point as one or the other, not both. Just like we are all O.K. with the situations that have risen in the past when a SP has come in to relief in a game, but in our league the owner of that pitcher does not get credit for whatever he did in that relief appearance; just like when in a game a manager puts a position player to pitch in a game, the position player does not get credit for the points he might accumulate as a pitcher. To me clearly "the spirit of the law" is not to let any player in our game to accumulate points wearing 2 different hats. I was going to suggest that if anyone wants to do what Barry did, then we should count that as 1 of the 8 SP appearances for the week; if Barry decides to keep Mr. Yarbrough, but Mr. Yarbrough keeps starting in the 2nd inning, we should let him but we should count it as 1 of the 8 allowable starts that we all have. By the way to be fair about it, if the guy pitches 6 innings or more and allows 3 or less earned runs, we should also credit him with a QS. QS may be changed in the future for QA, quality appearance. One more thing, I do not like this league to be described as "a gentlemen's league" because that would automatically disqualify me as a member. Hope to see some feedback here. Thank you.
I think Jimi nailed it when he said that we don't need an addendum to the existing rule when we all know that it is wrong to try and bend it to squeeze "starter type" points out of the relief slot without it getting charged as one of the weekly 8 starts.
Tampa Bay and soon other teams (Mets) will probably start using this new wrinkle, at least as long as they consider it effective.
It shouldn't affect the way we do business here as long as we follow the unwritten standards that we have for the past eleven years of this (and I like the term) gentleman's league. Actually, we are such gentlemen that we even made an exception and let Jose join. :joy:
______________2008 - 2018______________