Special Rules for Shortened Seasons

The following rules are special rules put in place for the shortened 2020 season. This section will be ineffective after the 2025 season. However, these contingency rules will serve as a roadmap for any subsequent shortened season. They will be adapted as appropriate to fit the league’s rules and structure at that juncture.

2021 Draft

The 2021 AA Draft will consist of a single round. At the time of the passage of this rule, each team will be given one pick in the draft as well as an additional $10M for the 2021 season to spend as they see fit. The draft order will be determined by a lottery drawing, which will be held on Sunday, February 22, and each team will receive one free "entry" for the drawing. Teams will be able to purchase up to 15 additional entries for the drawing at the cost of $1M per ball. The purchase of entries will be conducted blindly, and each team must send an email to an email address TBD stating how many entries they intend to purchase by 10 PM ET on Friday, February 20. The AA Draft will begin on Monday, March 1 at noon ET and will be conducted under normal AA rules.

Entries and rights to purchase entries will not be tradable or transferable assets, and are tied specifically to each individual's picks. However, once the draft order is set, teams may trade picks as normal.

H/S Contracts

All players having H2-4 and S1-4 contracts for the 2020 season remain unchanged going into the 2021 season.

All AA players promoted to the Majors following the conclusion of the 2019 season may retain their AA contract status.

K/HTH Contracts

Teams may keep any five eligible keepers (and/or HTHs) from their roster prior to the 2020 Keeper Deadline going into the 2021 LDB Majors draft. Those keepers/HTHs need not be the originally named keepers carried into the 2020 season. The 2020 season has no impact on those players’ contract status. I.e., contracts that would have been K2, K3 and HTH contracts going into 2020 remain the same going into 2021.

Teams have the option of keeping one of the players drafted as a K1 in the 2020 Majors draft as one of their five keepers. The new keeper will carry a K2 contract into the 2021 season.

Teams may not keep a K1 that they traded for during the 2020 season. The K1 must have been drafted by the original GM in order to be kept into the 2021 season.

No midseason pickup (MS) from the 2020 season may be kept as an HTH for the 2021 season.

Teams who selected players in the 2020 auction will get priority to keep those players over owners who owned those players in 2019 and declined to keep them at the 2020 keeper deadline. This will necessitate the need for two keeper deadlines, the first of which will occur 24 hours prior to the second, where the first keeper deadline will involve owners declaring intention to keep players selected in the 2020 auction, and the second declaring players owned at the 2020 keeper deadline.

Preference for keepers drafted in 2020 will also apply to homegrowns who were non-tendered at the 2020 keeper deadline should we vote to allow owners to reconsider those decisions.

Should this proposal fail, 2019 owners will instead receive preference and will declare their keepers 24 hours prior to declaration of the 2020 owners.

RFA Contracts/Rights

A player drafted on an RFA contract in 2020 may not be kept in 2021. Instead, that player remains an RFA going into 2021, and the RFA rights for that player remain with the GM that owned the rights when the player went up for auction in the 2020 LDB Majors Draft.

If a player is auctioned as a K1 that could have potentially been drafted on an RFA contract, the winning GM has priority to keep the player as a K2 over the prior 2020 RFA rights owner. If that player is not kept as a K1, the RFA rights revert back to the GM that owned the rights when the player went up for auction in the 2020 LDB Majors Draft

Trades

All trades made after the start of the 2020 LDB Majors Draft are nullified and reversed (except in the situation described below), and the state of the 2021 LDB rosters/future AA draft picks/team salaries are otherwise as they were prior to the beginning of the 2020 LDB Majors Draft.

Provided, however, that if both/all teams involved in a trade after the start of the 2020 LDB Majors Draft agree to keep their trade as valid going into the 2021 LDB season, they may choose to do so.

McQueeney Penalties

There are no McQueeney penalties applied for the 2020 season. However, McQueeney penalties accrued during the 2019 LDB season carry over to 2021.

Roster Requirements

There were no roster penalties applied during the 2020 season. However, any roster roster penalties accrued during the 2019 LDB season carry over to 2021.

2021 positional eligibility based on 2020 playing time will be prorated based on the shortened 2020 season. As such, instead of the usual 17 games required for eligibility, for the 2021 LDB season only, players will only have had to have played 7 games at a position in 2020 to be eligible at that position for 2021.