Friday, April 11, 2008

FAD Refresher

For the sake of Mayer (our new team owner) and those forgetful souls, I wanted to take a moment to provide a quick little refresher about our weekly FAD (Free Agent Draft) process.
 
What is the FAD?
 
The FAD is our weekly Free Agent Draft. The purpose of the FAD is to enable HARL teams to pickup new players from the current free agent pool of unowned players. These players can be added to your Reserve List, Disabled List (if they're injured and on the MLB disabled list), or inserted into your Active Roster to replace another player who you wish to reserve, DL, trade, or waive.
 
When is the FAD held?
 
The FAD is held every SUNDAY night at 8 PM. The FAD is NOT a live event. Rather, FAD Picks are submitted to the commissioner (me) via email by the HARL team owners. Your picks remain confidential until I process the FAD Results on Sunday Night. 
 
How does the FAD work? 
 
Each week, you may attempt to acquire up to 3 free agents during the FAD. You do this by making a pick-list (or multiple lists -- up to 3 of them) of players that you want to acquire. Beside the name of each player on your picklist, you write a BID PRICE. This bid is the highest price you are willing to pay to acquire that free agent player.
 
Players on your picklist must be ranked in the order that you want them, and players must be ordered from the HIGHEST BID to the LOWEST BID. For example, here's a sample list: 
 
LIST-A (want 1 hitter from this list)
  1. Fred Lewis       OF-SF   .75  
  2. Darren Erstad    OF-HOU  .55
  3. Aaron Miles      2B-STL  .45 
  4. Jose Cruz        OF-HOU  .40
  5. Mike Fontenot    2B-CHC  .35
  6. Damian Easley    2B-NYM  .25    
  7. Josh Phelps      1B-STL  .05       
During the FAD process, you will be awarded the first player on your list for which you have the highest bid price.
 
If you want multiple players from your pick list, you must specify how many you want (1, 2, or 3). If you fail to specify how many players you want from a list, the commissioner will assume that you only want 1 player.
 
If you want, you may submit multiple picklists. For instance, if you wanted an Outfielder first and then a 2B next, you could submit two lists as in the following example:
 
LIST-A (want 1 OF from this list)
  1. Fred Lewis       OF-SF   .75  
  2. Darren Erstad    OF-HOU  .55
  3. Jose Cruz        OF-HOU  .40
  4. Nyjer Morgan     OF-PIT  .40     
LIST-B (want 1 2B from this list)
  1. Aaron Miles      2B-STL  .40
  2. Mike Fontenot    2B-CHC  .35
  3. Damian Easley    2B-NYM  .25            
The commissioner will process LIST-A first. Once you get a player from LIST-A, or run out picks because all those players have already been taken by other bidders, the commissioner will then move on to your LIST-B.
 
How Bid Prices work?
 
The final sale price of a player taken in the FAD works much like eBay. The person who submitted the HIGHEST BID for a given drafted player wins that player. The final sale price is 5 cents higher than the bid of the runnerup bidder. For instance, if the three people bid on Aaron Miles with bids of 55, 40, and 20 cents, Miles would go to the person who bid 55 cents, and his final sale price would be 45 cents (5 cents more than the 2nd highest bidder). 
 
There are 2 special cases:
  • If two people TIE on the high bid on a given player, the HARL team ranked lower in the current standings wins the bid. And in this case, the final sale price of the player simply equals the high bid price.  
  • If you have the high bid on a given player and nobody else bid on that player, you get him for a nickel.
When are FAD Results published?
 
In most cases, the weekly FAD results are published late on Sunday Night. In rare cases, such as when I'm out-of-town, away on vacation, or tied up with an emergency, results will be posted on Monday morning. Trust me, I do my best to get the results out on Sundays if at all possible, because I'm typically very very busy on Monday mornings. 
 
And that's the scoop. If you need more information about the FADs, please refer to the current HARL Rulebook.
 

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