Proposed New Penalties for the MWR

For this post, I would like to talk about the existing Minimum Win Requirement (MWR) penalties and what I think would be a better solution going forward.  Note, this post is not intended to call out anyone for the past.  Rather, I just want to explain how things have been done in the past, and how I'd like to do things going forward.

First let's talk about the history - why do we have the MWR?  I've been in KML since its inception, and for the first 15 seasons we didn't have a MWR rule.  We really didn't need it because teams that had bad years generally bounced back within a couple seasons.  Around season 10, there were a few teams that stayed bad for 3+ seasons with win totals under 60 each year.  That led to some animosity with a select group of owners, throwing out the dreaded "T word" (tanking).  Thus, in season 15 we established the current required MWR rules: a ML team must win 180 games over 3 seasons and cannot win fewer than 55 games in consecutive seasons or the owner will not be invited back.

Why hasn't this been enforced?  I took over as commissioner in Season 16 rather abruptly.  The old commissioner, Jperiodj had unfortunately disappeared for over a week when we were trying to fill the world, so I stepped in unexpectedly.  We had already lost some owners, so I didn't want to disrupt things by enforcing the MWR.  This has caused some teams to skirt by without punishment.  However, I think only one team has been truly uncompetitive to the detriment of the league and that owner left on his own accord this season.

I don't see any issues with the current group of owners, but I still think we need to enforce MWR rules so that we keep a competitive balance within the league.  However, I'm not a fan of removing owners, so I would like to revise the punishment for missing the MWR.

My new proposed penalties are as follows:

• Missing the 3-year, 180 win rule will require an owner to not exceed a prospect budget of $15 million for the following season.  This cannot be exceeded even via a transfer of money from one of the other budgets.
• Missing the consecutive seasons of 55 wins will require an owner to not exceed a prospect budget of $8 million for the following season.  This cannot be exceeded even via a transfer of money from one of the other budgets.
• If an owner exceeds their set Prospect budget, they will be warned to transfer money out of their Prospect budget until they reach the required threshold.  If they have already spent more money on prospects than would be allowed, they must release prospects in the amount they exceeded their required budget.  For example, if a team spent $16 million on prospects and had a maximum budget of $15 million, they must release a prospect for which they spent at least $1 million to sign said prospect, or any combination of prospects that would add up to $1 million while also not hurting their minor league squad.  If this is not done then the owner will not be invited back for the following season.

The point of these proposals is so that owners cannot double-dip and acquire talent via draft picks and international free agents.  I know some leagues require teams to either release their 1st round pick or draft a 2-pitch reliever, but that's more convoluted than I want to administer.  I also don't want to punish teams unfairly for one bad season.  Another reason I don't necessarily like removing an owner is that the next owner gets a fresh start at the MWR requirements, so they can continue keep the team bad for an extra season or two and then reap the rewards.

I'm interested to hear thoughts on this, so please leave comments below if you feel strongly one way or another.

Thanks for reading!

Nick