2026 Rule Changes

Topic: 2026 Rule Changes (Read 242 times) previous topic - next topic

2026 Rule Changes

November 27, 2025, 10:39:53 PM

All,

First of all, I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving yesterday. I spent mine in central London which is where I moved to in early November for work. I don't see this impacting the league at all but hopefully you'll forgive me when you receive emails in the middle of the night.

We have gone through our rule changes for 2026 and most of them are not significant. Most of them were designed to increase roster flexibility a little bit. The rulebook (both in track changes and clean format) is attached to this post. Happy to walk through those edits with anyone.

1. We are adding 2 extra spots on each team for players who were injured 100% of the prior season. This is designed to give owners a little bit of extra flexibility and to stash players who have no chance of playing in the upcoming season. Demoting your player to this list does not require a waiver and therefore does not expose them to waiver claims.
2. We are also going to allow demotions to one's minor league team during the season. Currently you can only demote during the off-season which we think is too restrictive. This should add another little wrinkle of flexibility though note that demotions to the minor league squad still require a waiver to be made and exposes that player to a claim.
3. While we sort of liked the way that cash trading worked last year, we realize that it does allow teams to go way over the cap in a single year. To address this, we are eliminating cash-trading but increasing the in-season salary cap to $95mn. This will give every team a bit of extra space in which to make trades, take on players, and otherwise manage their cash level without allowing for teams to excessively exceed the salary cap (which could eventually create a situation where a team ends up with more than $90mn at the start of the following season).
4. We've removed the 110% playing time limit for splits and just made both total and splits an even 100%. Given all of the changes we've made to increase flexibility during the season, we believe that owners have plenty of players to manage their PTL.
5. We are adding a modest requirement that starting pitching in the playoffs require a certain number of games started in real life. Any pitcher who will start one game in the playoffs needs 1+ GS in real life, two playoff games requires 11+ GS in real life and, on the off chance you want to start someone three times, they will need 21+ GS in real life.
6. We've modified the round 7 rules for free agency to clarify that it will not be a snake style draft but rather follow regular draft rules (like our minor league draft).
7. We are eliminating the $50mn cap on free agency spending in a single season. This was a relic from years ago and none of us could even remember why we had it.
8. We have added a tweak to the minor league draft rules to clarify that the CO will select players for owners who go MIA for the first three rounds of the playoffs. While we hope this is never again an issue, we do want to plan for that eventuality.
9. We've clarified the language around seeding the playoffs. This does not have any practical impact and seeding is not changing.
10. We will be giving teams every Sunday off. This will allow teams to set their lineups for 6 game weeks and also push out our season again until the end of September. That should bring the in-season dates of our trade deadline and promotions period back into line with the rulebook.

Re: 2026 Rule Changes

Reply #1 – November 28, 2025, 11:15:11 AM

The 110% split change is a bummer because I know better than these guys real managers but its fine. Managing all that is part of the fun.
Thanks CO for taking the time to keep things clean and updated.

Re: 2026 Rule Changes

Reply #2 – November 28, 2025, 11:57:59 AM

Quote from: David Johnson – on November 27, 2025, 10:39:53 PM

All,

First of all, I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving yesterday. I spent mine in central London which is where I moved to in early November for work. I don't see this impacting the league at all but hopefully you'll forgive me when you receive emails in the middle of the night.

4. We've removed the 110% playing time limit for splits and just made both total and splits an even 100%. Given all of the changes we've made to increase flexibility during the season, we believe that owners have plenty of players to manage their PTL.

First, congratulations on your move to London. I hope that's gone smoothly for you and your family and that you have been enjoying your time there.

As for the rule changes, they seem fine in general, clear up some issues, and provide additional flexibility during the year. I do like the extra two roster spots for players who are injured for the entire season, though I was wondering if there was any discussion of setting a low playing-time limit for players who could be put on that list due to injury. For example, last season I kept Senga on my roster, and I think he pitched 3.1 innings. The spirit of the rule would seem to apply to players with fewer than, say, five appearances, but I do understand there might be a bookkeeping issue (if a player is placed on that 2-man injury roster, they should not be allowed to play for the entire season).

My concern is about the playing time limits. While we know going into a year how many plate appearances our players have against LHP and RHP, it is much harder to control what our opponents in a season are doing. Moreover, we can have players who are basically full-time players who might fall well short of having enough PAs against either LHP or RHP.

Last season, 27.23% of all plate appearances were against LHP, while 72.77% were against RHP. If we assume those percentages are what a team might face in Mutiny this season, 61 players could fall more than 30 plate appearances short against LHP, while 54 players would fall more than 30 plate appearances short against RHP. Some of the players that could fall more than 30 PAs short against LHP include Taylor Ward (663 PA), Jose Altuve (654), Maikel Garcia (666) and Bobby Witt (687). Against RHP, some of the players that fall 30 PAs short of that target are Kyle Schwarber (724), Juan Soto (715), Shohei Ohtani (727), James Wood (689) and Rafael Devers (729). These calculations include the fact that we are playing less games in Mutiny. Even with that application, you could find yourself 74 PAs short on Schwarber (if he encounters 27.23% lefties, instead of the 38.1% he faced in real life). I think we all agre that Schwarber is a full-time player and should be able to start every game for the team he plays for without incurring any penalties.

Under the old system (100% overall, but 110% against LHP and RHP), players would still fall short, but instead of 61 players falling short against LHP, now only 38 fall short. Against RHP, only 23 players are short from 54. Thinking about players with over 600 PA, only 3 are short by more than 30 PAs against LHP (Ward, Altuve and Lawrence Butler) and only one is short against RHP (Kyle Schwarber).

I understand that there is no perfect system for playing time. And I do think over the past few seasons, there has been greater flexibility in terms of roster management. I also would agree with how DMB is setup, you can't have a system where you say that playing time limits don't matter if you have over 600 PAs or some limit like that. However, I would like to encourage the commissioners to consider not changing the playing time limits against LHP and RHP to 100%, and instead keep them at 110%. By moving the limits down to 100%, the league potentially penalizes players who are what we would consider full-time, but for whatever reason has an imbalance in how many lefties and righties they see.

Re: 2026 Rule Changes

Reply #3 – November 28, 2025, 12:15:47 PM

In the spirit of transparency, I'm attaching the spreadsheet I used to calculate these numbers for all players in the 2025 MLB season. The deficit/surplus column is how many plate appearances a player would be short (negative value) or over (positive value) if they face the average of 27% of plate appearances against LHP and 73% against RHP. I then recalculated those columns using 110% of playing time against LHP and RHP to show how that would change. I used those deficit columns to see how many had values under -30, since those are players that could fall 10 or more games short against a particular handedness of pitcher. Some of these players are clear platoon players, so I'm not concerned as much about them, but I'm more concerned about the players that are over 600 PA, who are basically full-time players. Of course, if you think the percentage of facing LHP and RHP is different, then your mileage could vary.

Re: 2026 Rule Changes

Reply #4 – November 28, 2025, 01:15:48 PM

Thank you for doing that work Jason! I'd like to make that argument but didn't have the time to show it.

Re: 2026 Rule Changes

Reply #5 – November 28, 2025, 01:43:11 PM

Hello

Thanksgiving hello to everyone.

I have a question on one of the points.   #3 on trading cash. That was a new change for last year that allowed that action.   Yes it did allow teams to greatly exceed the salary cap.    Last year the league as a whole has a $1,800,000,000 salary cap that can never be exceeded.   20 teams at $90 million each. But last year any one team could go over that amount by receiving unused salary cap space from another team.   While I took advantage of that new rule I wondered myself if that was too much of a change.   So for this year that has been eliminated entirely. The salary cap is again a hard cap. I guess the pro-ration of salaries will be reapplied for this year?
One possible half measure to help facilitate trading but keep the hard cap in place is to allow trading of already cut players salary obligations.   This will help teams acquire players mid season but still keep that hard salary cap in place.

The new rule as posted if read it correctly has the salary cap at $90 million during the preseason auction but then once the season starts the cap moves up to $95 million?    I do like that. Trading already cut players (their salary obligation) should be considered too.


3. While we sort of liked the way that cash trading worked last year, we realize that it does allow teams to go way over the cap in a single year. To address this, we are eliminating cash-trading but increasing the in-season salary cap to $95mn. This will give every team a bit of extra space in which to make trades, take on players, and otherwise manage their cash level without allowing for teams to excessively exceed the salary cap (which could eventually create a situation where a team ends up with more than $90mn at the start of the following season).

Re: 2026 Rule Changes

Reply #6 – December 01, 2025, 11:31:32 PM

@Bob Miller - we are not bringing back pro-rating of salaries during trade. The cap is back to being a “hard-cap”, but we are increasing the cap $5M after free agency (to $95M) to help facilitate trades. Being totally transparent, there was some debate about what was the right number to increase the cap by? Ultimately we settled on a $5M increase and we’ll see how that goes.

Re: 2026 Rule Changes

Reply #7 – December 01, 2025, 11:42:02 PM

@profjason - appreciate the debate regarding the splits usage. I need another day or so to review your numbers though. Just been a busy couple of days with Thanksgiving travel and such. More to come.

Re: 2026 Rule Changes

Reply #8 – December 05, 2025, 01:23:14 PM

I posted a MUCH larger post last night regarding the change to a flat 100% usage across the board. If you saw it - I apologize to your eyes (and my thumbs)

Instead I’m going to repeat what David said above:
Given all of the changes we've made to increase flexibility during the season, we believe that owners have plenty of players to manage their PTL.

Re: 2026 Rule Changes

Reply #9 – December 05, 2025, 04:16:32 PM

Rod,

I'm not sure why you took down your original post. I was glad to see you dig into the numbers a bit, and you gave me some ideas of different ways to think about this issue. Plus, I think for the league, it is better to have at least some discussion of changes like this. I know the commissioners have been working to balance the playing time limits over the years, and it seems like every year there is a new adjustment to them. It would be nice to be stable there and see how the limits impacted the season. I was trying to be productive to the discussion of how the playing time limits are working by bringing data to the discussion. And again, that's where your original reply was great, since it gave me a new idea of how to approach the question.

Unfortunately, the edited response reads like you and David don't want to discuss the issue or examine the impacts of the decision. The response is just we've given you some flexibility to deal with this change, and if this hurts your ability to play some players, that's the way the chips fall.

I'm just really disappointed by the edited response. The response seems to be to shut down the conversation, rather than to think about playing time and to work on showing why changing the rule is in the best interest of the league.

I've worked on an updated spreadsheet using last year's Mutiny data to examine the potential impacts of the change and why we should consider keeping the handedness limits at either 105% or 110%. I want to get dinner before posting that and my additional thoughts, but I wanted to put these initial thoughts out here now.

Re: 2026 Rule Changes

Reply #10 – December 05, 2025, 05:07:53 PM

David and I didn’t speak about my post. On reread I just thought I was rambling (a lot). That’s why I made the decision to simplify.

So I sincerely appreciate that you liked the effort as I did try to dig into the numbers. There’s just a lot of factors at play, some I can’t explain.

Re: 2026 Rule Changes

Reply #11 – December 05, 2025, 05:12:18 PM

Also - I look forward to the continued discussion. Hopefully we can all come to an agreement on this.

Re: 2026 Rule Changes

Reply #12 – December 06, 2025, 05:15:47 AM

@profjason I truly think we’re a lot closer aligned on this than you think.

I firmly believe Kyle Schwarber should be able to play every game and every PA - however Brent chooses to use him. But there isn’t a way in the system to exclude him from PTL.

What your analysis showed is this change is going to impact some people who we all would consider to be a full-time player. What I tried to show is even with the existing rules (due to roster/lineup configurations, year over year variance, some unknown game mechanic, random luck, etc) it’s also true that the existing rules plausibly weren’t sufficient either.

What I don’t want to do is try to manipulate and increase the PTL rules to allow for Schwarber to not be impacted by PTL - which therefore allows a low usage player to be more valuable than they really are. A flat 100% usage impacts everyone exactly the same way. You get to use your players in the sim EXACTLY how they were used in real-life. But random luck, game mechanics, etc might mean that Schwarber doesn’t face RHP the final week of the season.

Ultimately the CO felt comfortable making this change based on the number of ways we’ve increased roster flexibility and the reduction of games on the schedule.

Re: 2026 Rule Changes

Reply #13 – December 06, 2025, 07:59:50 AM

Yeah, I am not sure why you deleted the post; I read it and appreciated the discussion of Schwarber and didn't think it was "rambling". But it is fine because I needed to look into this more. I know that I complained about LHP ABs last offseason because I seem to be fighting with it every year but the conclusion was that it was only me (and maybe I should sign some LHP so I don't have to face them) .... so having come up again I needed to put some simple numbers behind it.
So in MLB in 2024 (baseball reference)
119659 RHP ABs / 44028 LHP ABs = 2.72 RHP to LHP
in 2025 (baseball reference)
119065 / 44599 = 2.67 RHP to LHP
in DMB "all database" (somehow database is not all players?)
107809 / 39166 = 2.75 RHP to LHP
in DMB mutiny season
74943 / 27703 = 2.705 RHP to LHP

So my conclusion is that it is just me. I think I try to be as efficient as possible with platoons and that involves not pitching players against their weak side as much as they do in the real world. I can really hunt the good matchups and avoid the bad matchups better than real world managers can because of the flexibility in our rosters.

With the vsRHP to vsLHP ratio being roughly the same in DMB as real world I retract my complaint. Sure, if you have 100% cutoffs then you wont be able to perfectly hit 100% on both sides in the same game but it won't effect that many games and, if anything, advantages very engaged GMs for a few ABs a year.

Re: 2026 Rule Changes

Reply #14 – December 06, 2025, 06:46:52 PM

I'm sorry about the length of this. I should have been grading or something else, but bring me some spreadsheets and a tricky question, and I'm off to the races.

There's a lot here, but I think it goes to the heart of the question of playing time and limits.

Quote from: Scurvy Dogs – on December 06, 2025, 05:15:47 AM

@profjason I truly think we’re a lot closer aligned on this than you think.

You could be right that we might be closer, but I would like to suggest, both theoretically and with data, why I think, as a league, we would be better off using 105% or 110% for a playing time limit against LHP and RHP than going down to 100%. And before I get started, I do want to thank you for having this discussion. I believe that discussing these types of changes is a positive for the league.

I also want to state that I fully understand the need for playing time limits and the limitations we have, given how DMB handles players who exceed them. In my second year of using DMB for a fantasy league (back in 1994), a team used Chip Hale against LHP. That season, Hale had 7 PAs against lefties, got 3 hits, had 8 total bases, and had an OPS of 1.571. Needless to say, Hale was a monster that season, and the following season, we put in limits based on handedness. I think some of the differences come from balancing full-time players and those who don't have as many plate appearances. I think I'm more concerned about the full-time players, while some of the commissioners' focus is on players with limited plate appearances. Finally, I do agree that no system can completely address these problems, and no matter what, there will be some imbalance in what we need.

My theoretical argument is that it will be nearly impossible to reach 100% playing time without exceeding 100% against either LHP or RHP. Unless you are micromanaging your team (and I don't think anyone is making daily lineup changes or playing the games live), I believe it will be very difficult to get a player to 100% playing time in total and against LHP and RHP. I made a new spreadsheet (after your example using last season's data with Schwarber), and tried to answer that question. I looked at players with more than 600 PA (my cutoff for being a full-time player), and 57% of them had usage against either LHP or RHP that was 5% or more above their overall usage. Some of these players are platoon players, but I think it also shows that trying to get to 100% balanced is just impossible.

Personally, having a 100% limit on overall PA and then 105% or 110% against LHP and RHP is a better solution. It would allow more full-time players to reach their full PAs without being penalized at some point. Going to 105% or 110% means a team won't need to worry about facing a few more lefties or righties and then getting penalized at the end of the season. I think we all agree that we cannot control what we face as a team, so giving the flexibility to go slightly over against LHP or RHP is beneficial to all teams. If you are concerned about players with fewer PAs, allowing players 5% or 10% more PAs against a particular handedness of pitcher might mean 1 or 2 additional games without a penalty. I'd rather give the benefit of the doubt to the full-time players than worry about a handful of non-penalized PAs for part-time players.

Quote

I firmly believe Kyle Schwarber should be able to play every game and every PA - however Brent chooses to use him. But there isn’t a way in the system to exclude him from PTL.

What your analysis showed is this change is going to impact some people who we all would consider to be a full-time player. What I tried to show is even with the existing rules (due to roster/lineup configurations, year over year variance, some unknown game mechanic, random luck, etc) it’s also true that the existing rules plausibly weren’t sufficient either.

What I don’t want to do is try to manipulate and increase the PTL rules to allow for Schwarber to not be impacted by PTL - which therefore allows a low usage player to be more valuable than they really are. A flat 100% usage impacts everyone exactly the same way. You get to use your players in the sim EXACTLY how they were used in real-life. But random luck, game mechanics, etc might mean that Schwarber doesn’t face RHP the final week of the season.

Ultimately the CO felt comfortable making this change based on the number of ways we’ve increased roster flexibility and the reduction of games on the schedule.

I've attached my spreadsheet, since I do want to address the issue and have us see how the different limits 100%, 105% and 110% impact players. If you go through the AM and AN columns, I have many of my conclusions there. If you change the cell in AN16, you can change the percent that players can go over against LHP and RHP (I have 100% for the total limit, since that's not what we are exploring). Columns U & V show how many PAs a player would be over or under against a handedness if we use 100%, while columns W & X show how many PAs they would be over or under with the extra playing time.

Columns AG & AH show a player's usage when prorated to 100% of their playing time. Columns AI & AJ show what a player's usage would be if they were prorated to 152 games. With columns AG & AH, you can see that every player will be over 100% against either LHP or RHP if they were to reach 100% overall. Based on last year and assuming that full-time players will get 100% of playing time (which might not be the best assumption), we find that 57 will face a penalty (AN63). If we set the handedness limit to 105%, we cut it in half to 28 players (AN68). If the limit is 110%, the number is reduced to 18 (AN73).

If you think prorating is too much and would instead like to use last year's values, we can see the following results. This is for all players and full-time players. I tried to put in a table into here, but that did not work. I have included a screenshot of the results for looking at last year's values. I'm sorry I couldn't have it in the message.

Personally, I think 110% allows full-time players to be full-time players (with only 7 last year facing challenges). By going down to 100%, we have 37 players affected, for a 428% increase in full-time players facing challenges. Of course, some teams will change their usage, so the total numbers are lower, but that has a huge impact. The additional flexibility can be nice, but it means finding subs for 30 additional players who are affected, or dealing with your player not being as good, even though he has the plate appearances overall. If you want to change it to 105% and see how it affects the game, that might be appropriate, as we have a 171% increase in the number of full-time players affected (7 to 19).

Again, I do understand that keeping the limit at 110% or dropping it to 105% means some players who are limited in their playing time get some extra plate appearances against one hand or another. However, they are still limited to 100% overall. They don't get to play anymore with the penalty, but teams have some flexibility to deal with the randomness of who they play and who that player faced in real life. Going to 100% gives you NO flexibility to deal with that randomness. This does acknowledge that some full-time players will be impacted even at 110% (Bobby Witt and Vladdy Junior, I'm looking at you), but it doesn't affect the mass of full-time players.

The argument that making it 100% impacts every team the same way is not a great argument, since making the handedness limit be 110% also impacts every team the same way. I also don't see how the additional flexibility actually addresses the issue. In the end, with a 100% limit on handedness, any player that you want to play to 100% of their overall playing time will be impacted. We know this because that's how math works.

I also don't see a strong argument about why the 110% we used last year didn't work. This solution seems to be still looking for a real problem to solve (unlike the trading money, which allowed teams to be well over the salary cap). This isn't like the Chip Hale example I mentioned at the beginning. And I'm not seeing how allowing a player to be used at 110% of his handedness (with 100% overall) was hurting the league's competitive balance.

Lastly, I don't think we are too far apart, but changing to 100% is overcorrecting for a problem that does not appear to be there. And making that change has a much larger and more profound impact than you are making it to be. Maybe I am missing something here, but I think this change hurts the league overall.