These are the procedural rules of simbase v3, current as of year 66.

• Schedule: We have 16 teams in 3 divisions of 6 teams each. The schedule comprises 24 games, two per non-divisional opponent, then 26 games against the division, five against four teams and then six against the fifth team. Five-game series are at the home of one of the combatants, while six-game series are played 3-3.
• Games will be played at 4 AM and 4 PM every day, barring irregularities.
• There are no off-days. The schedule has a template and will be permuted each season by a random member of the group of automorphisms of the league (currently S_3 x S_6).
• Playoffs: Six teams make the playoffs: three division winners D1, D2, D3 and three wild cards WC4, WC5, WC6, where the number represents the seeding. The first round is three games: WC6 at D3 with D3 hosting all three games and WC5 at WC4 with WC4 hosting games 1 and 3. The second round is five games, with D1 hosting the worst remaining seed in games 1, 2, 5 and visiting them in 3, 4 and D2 doing the same cadence with the best remaining seed. World Series is seven games with best remaining team hosting 1, 2, 6, and 7. Any games that cannot affect the series outcome will not be played. There is an off day between the regular season and the first day of the playoffs unless extra games are required.
• Tiebreakers: Tiebreakers are used to determine seeding if both teams are definitely in the playoffs, and home-field for extra games if the tied teams are not necessarily making the playoffs (extra games are only played if there is doubt about playoff membership, and not for seeding only). Here are the tiebreakers with order:
  1. Division record, only if the winner of a division is at stake -- note that this does not apply if teams from the same division are competing for a wild card spot.
  2. Head-to-head series wins among all tied teams, with a 1-1 result counting as a win for the road team. Example: Team A beats team B 5-0 at home, team A ties 1-1 with team C at home, team B ties 1-1 with team C at home. Team C wins by virtue of two positive results (each 1-1 on the road).
  3. Repeat tiebreaker 2 among all remaining tied teams if any progress has been made.
  4. Randomly break any remaining ties among remaining tied teams.
• Extra Games: If two or more teams are tied, where the tie is such that some teams will make the playoffs and some won't, extra games are played. These games count as regular season gmaes for the purposes of stat-keeping, and any eliminated team(s) are considered to not have made the playoffs. Seeding for this mini-tournament is governed by the tiebreakers above, and no team is guaranteed to make it or fail without playing at least one game. One road game is considered to be more desirable than two home games. If a division title is at stake, its tiebreaker game(s) are played first (only in the case where the teams might not make the playoffs -- if two known playoff teams tie for a division, the division title is determined first logically). Here are some examples, where in all cases the team earlier alphabetically is higher in the tiebreak order.
  1. Teams A, B, and C tie for one wild-card spot. Team C plays at team B and the winner hosts team A, with the winner of that game advancing.
  2. Teams A, B, and C tie for two wild-card spots. Team B plays at team A with the winner anointed seed WC5. The loser travels to team C to play for WC6.
  3. Teams A, B, and C tie for the title of a division that A and B are both in and C is not in, and for a wild-card spot. B plays at A to determine the division. The loser then gets tiebroken with C (do *not* use the results of the 3-way tiebreak or the divisional play-in game) with a game at appropriate site.
  4. Teams A, B, C, and D tie for the title of a division that A and B are both in and C and D are not, and for a wild-card spot. B plays at A to determine the division, and D plays at C. The loser of the A-B game and winner of the C-D game play for the wild-card spot at the home stadium of the C-D winner.
• The trading deadline takes place immediately following day 35's games; in other words, the last trades are the ones consummated between days 34 and 35. There will be no trades allowed between then and the end of the World Series (trades are allowed for the following season during the playoffs), and no waiver claims; however, you may shuffle players to and from the minors (respecting the 10-day rule). Trade discussion is permitted at all times.
• Any player demoted to the minors must stay down for at least 10 games before getting called up. This does not include players demoted at the beginning of the season, and does not include players traded or waived. You may set your roster for the first postseason series respecting the 10-game rule (the first day of the playoffs is considered day 52 for all intents and purposes) and may set each subsequent round's roster freely. Roster moves are not permitted during a playoff round.
• All trades and managerial changes are made using the on-line webtool, with the exception of trades made during the draft.
• We no longer have a cap on number of managerial moves, but we ask that owners respect the intent of the rule, which is not to micromanage (e.g. to put a flyball defense in when your flyball pitcher starts). Exceptions to micromanaging are allowed for very important games, like the deciding game of a playoff series. Moves are tracked, although imprecisely, and further investigation may be made if abuse of the system is suspected.
• Waivers: instructions to claim players (waiving as appropriate) are processed immediately following each day's games. The first process happens after day 2, and the last after day 36. This does not include beginning-of-season waivers to get down to the roster limit, which is 21 for the major league roster and 6 for the minor league roster; these happen immediately before day 1. Waiver priority is determined by the intrinsic draft order (see below)
• Position and pitching role changes will be possible once a season, immediately before aging and scouting reports are generated. You can submit these at any time, but they only take effect after the season. The deadline for changes to take effect in a given year is the end of the regular season of the previous year.
• The draft will be four full rounds. The draftpool will consist of [5 times the number of teams] randomly generated players with random ages between 17 and 21 (uniform). You will get a personalized scouting report on the draftpool. You may NOT share this information with anyone else privately or publicly until after the draft, even implicitly; it's highly illegal collusion. We have developed the convention that we wait five full years before sharing scouting information on players we don't own.
• Intrinsic draft order: The so-called intrinsic draft order is determined with highest rank given to the team that has made the playoffs least recently, tiebroken by the team that garnered the higher seed in that year (so, the current six playoff teams are 13-18 in seed order in the intrinsic draft order). The Circus and Tribe are considered to have made the playoffs in year 60 for the purposes of this until they do make it. This intrinsic draft order determines waiver priority in the following season, and also informs the
• Actual draft order: The order for the draft is determined as follows. Each round's initial state follows the intrinsic draft order, then undergoes 70 random transpositions to determine the final draft order (to give you a sense of the randomness involved, intrinsic 1 gets the first pick 27% of the time, then 24-19-13-8-4-2-1 with about a 1% chance of getting pick 9 or lower.) Finally, any trades involving picks in the draft are executed.
• Thor Rule: At any point, a team may only be two full drafts in the hole as far as future traded draft picks. For the purposes of this rule, a traded away pick (say, a first-rounder) counts as its stated round, but incoming picks count as one round lower (so an incoming 1R counts as a net positive 2R on our ledger). This is lexicographic; so, for instance, a team can't have traded away 3 first-rounders even if it's picked up an infinite number of picks (all of which count as a second rounder or lower). The only other rule governing trades is that you may not trade picks more than 10 years in the future.
• Catch-all irregularities meta-rule: In case of irregularities (e.g. bugs), the most common thing is that the most recent day will be replayed, assuming the bug in question affected the last day's game play. At the commissioner's discretion, there may be cases where this is not the outcome, e.g.:
  • The bug was untargeted and affected most teams similarly: For instance, it's discovered that there are more bloop singles than intended. This bug would be fixed at the end of the season, and nothing would be replayed.
  • Commissioner was non-responsive to a significant, mid-term recurring bug: For instance, Mike was on vacation away from computer and the wrong playoff matchups happened due to a bug. The entire playoff round would start over with the right matchups.