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Benchwarmer Baseball Rules

14.0 Schedule and Deadlines

There's a double bind in setting the transaction dates.  By conducting the transactions at the beginning of each Major League week (starting with Opening Day), early-season off dates and rainouts cause the Benchwarmer season to be delayed at times.  The effect is that the gap between when lineups are issued and when they actually count grows pretty large.

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On the reverse side, to start transactions a week later would mean that at the end of the season, by the time the Major League games catch up, Benchwarmer lineups would be due after the actual games that they use are already played.

 

BWB is played in 6-game weeks.  MLB teams often play 7 games in a week, so it wouldn't take long for BWB's transaction date to get out of whack with the real schedule if we were to use the same deadline throughout the season.

 

To try to be fairer to owners at both ends of the season, Benchwarmer Baseball changes the deadline day throughout the season.

  • The first week's deadline will be on the first Sunday after the MLB season begins
    • This is roughly about the day most MLB teams will be playing game 3 or 4.
    • Some pitching performances will already be known, but that shouldn't have too much of an effect.
    • The deadline will remain on Sunday for the next four weeks after that.
  • Then, for weeks 6-10, the deadline will be on Saturday.
  • For each fifth of the season, the deadline will move one day earlier until, by the final five weeks of the season, Wednesday will be used for the deadline day.

Note - this has been changed in 2023. Previously, the Week 1 deadline was on Wednesday or Thursday after the MLB season began and teams were playing game 5, 6, or 7. While we have taken steps to prevent the use of known starting pitching performances in the past, we haven't dealt with relief pitchers. Moving the first deadline 3-4 days earlier along with the ripple effect for the remainder of the season will move more of the relief pitching stats into the unknown.

 

 

Deadline times are generally set up to be at the time of the first MLB game of the day, but to get some consistency, starting in 2016 we'll have a consistent time by day:

  • For Saturday and Sunday deadlines, many or most (on Sundays) teams play at around 1 PM local time, so the deadline time will be 1 PM Eastern.
  • For Wednesday-Friday deadlines, all deadline times will be set no earlier than 7 PM Eastern.  There will often be afternoon games, but since it's not a perfect match anyway, we'll opt for consistency.
  • In some situations (e.g., trade deadline, extension deadline), deadline times may be moved back to later in the day/evening.
  • Note - after looking through all MLB schedules, in 2021 the deadline times for Saturdays and Sundays will also be at 7 PM Eastern.  So unless there are any deadline extensions or unusual situations, 7 PM Eastern will be the deadline time for all 25 week.

 

Each season, the schedule will be posted both for all the games and for the transaction and lineup deadlines that occur throughout the summer. See the Transaction Deadlines page for more details.

Key Schedule and Deadline points

Transaction/Lineup Week Event
0 Teams in returning leagues must have cash balance at or below 5000
0 Transaction order shifts back to pre-season order
0 Teams must have a complete roster after this week's transactions
1 Lineups required for first games
15 Final week for salary rebate for cut players
15 Prorated salary for free agent signings does not decrease after this week - you pay 40% of the salary for signings the remainder of the season.
17 Final week for multiyear contract signings.  (Changed in 2015 - had been final week in July)
20 Final week for trades.  (Changed in 2015 - had been final week in August)
24 Final week for free agent signings
25 Cuts/IR moves only
26 In preparation for playoffs, cuts and IR moves are now allowed (as of 2015 season)

 

 

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Next: 15.0 Player Salaries and Salary Cap >

 
 
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