Mariners receive penalty

[Colby]

The Seattle Mariners, who have been warned repeatedly about their roster violations, are receiving a penalty.  Matt still needs to release a player to be at 40 players.  The penalty is 10% of the salary cap which equates to $10.5m in 2011.  Please keep your roster legal at all times.  Whenever making moves, make sure you have the drops ready ahead of time.

[rcankosy]

How would a team at the cap or near the cap get under the cap with a 10% penalty?  Would it make more sense to apply the penalty to the season following the one in which the infraction occurred?

[Colby]

How would a team at the cap or near the cap get under the cap with a 10% penalty?  Would it make more sense to apply the penalty to the season following the one in which the infraction occurred?

It is what we have had in the rules.  I do think that part of the rulebook could be cleaned up for the better.  GMs receive warning and then if they do not comply within 24 hours, penalties hit - that's fine, but the actual penalties could be better.  The GM's roster should be automatically corrected to fix the roster violation on top of the penalty. 

The automatic fix could be the release of players in the following priority order.
1) Expiring contract -> long-term contract, players with 2011/P-2011 contracts would be dropped before 2012+ contracts
2) Salary lowest -> highest, players with $500k contracts would be dropped before $5m contracts
3) Prospects -> prospect contracts which can be dropped for free would be released free
4) Points scored -> if there are two expiring prospect contracts and the roster violation is a 41-player roster $500k over cap then the player with less total points for the season will be released
5) In the event of a tie in deciding which player needs to be dropped, drop in alphabetical order A-Z, last name then first name, so an example of Evan Meek would be released before Henry Rodriguez.

[Brewers GM]

I don't think automatically cutting someone is a good idea.  It is very easy to mistakingly think your roster will be ok after a flurry of trades and miss by 0.5M or so, and it can sometime take a week or longer until rosters are updated to confirm.  By then, you may not be able to respond within 24-hours simply because you're not by a computer.

I do think it's the owner's responsibility to check carefully themselves so penalties are good, but I don't think we need to make it worse by automatically cutting someone the owner might have wanted to keep.

[Colby]

Giving out repeated 10% cap penalties is brutal though.

[h4cheng]

rather than losing cap or players, how about the offending team start lose draft picks?

[28]

i like that. they just lose the lowest pick

[Colby]

rather than losing cap or players, how about the offending team start lose draft picks?

I thought about that... Easier to administer.  This is what we did before.... And I would rather go that route here.  A contingency plan will be needed when picks run out though.

[Brewers GM]

I would be in favor of draft picks as well.

[28]

if they run out of all 10 picks they should be replaced because 10 days to fix your roster is plenty of time