The IIBL Player Draft is conducted prior to the start of every season, usually in January. Dates and times are posted.
Any manager unable or unwilling to attend may submit a list to the Commissioner of desired picks and have the Commissioner act as proxy. Any manager who does not submit a list or participate in the conference will have his team drafted by the League Office to the best of their judgment. Please be as specific and organized as possible if you send a list. You can also have a friend or fellow owner draft for you if you so desire.
The order of the draft will be determined by the team’s final [home] W-L record. The 35 rounds will then be as follows:
- Rounds 1-12 : Already done by virtue of the minimum 12 signed players.
- Round 13 : Each team gets one pick. The team with the best record that did not make the playoff drafts 1st, the non-playoff team with the second best record drafts 2nd, and so on and so forth. Playoff teams will draft 19th through 26th, with the first round playoff loser with the worst regular season record drafting 19th. The Conference championship losers will draft 21st and 22nd, the World Series loser 23rd and the World Series Winner 24th.
- Rounds 14-19 : The order of drafting follows the ‘normal’ order, i.e. the team with the worst record drafts first. This order for playoff teams is as above. Team participation depends upon how many signed players are on the roster. A team signing 12 players (based on final lists at S2) will draft in each round. A team signing 14 players will skip rounds 14 and 15 (the two players over the 12 minimum are considered “drafted” in these slots). A team that signs the maximum 18 players will skip all six of these rounds. These rounds are locked in by the original signed rosters; teams ending the season with less signed players than they started the season with do NOT improve draft status. Teams who add signed players do not lose their picks.
- Rounds 20-35 : All teams participate until they reach 35 players.
- Supplemental: All teams who have not yet reached 35 players through round 35 will continue to draft in the same order until their rosters are full. Teams who through trade ended up with less than 12 signed players or teams who traded signed players or multiple picks for single picks or unsigned players will fall into this category.
- If a team reaches its 35-player limit before Round 35, it will stop drafting at that point.
The draft will usual begin prior to the scheduled draft date. Two picks will be scheduled per day, each occurring 12 hours apart. They will be announced via e-mail to all league members. As soon as the previous pick is announced, it is allowable and encouraged that the next pick will be made as soon as possible. Often it may happen that 6-7 picks are made in a day. This does not mean that the owner drafting next has until their scheduled date/time to make the pick, but neither are they required to make their pick within 12 hours which would normally be the case had the pick before theirs been made at its scheduled date time. They are encouraged to make their pick within a reasonable amount of time.
There will be a live draft conducted to get through about round 20 or 21. It will be conducted in an internet chat room. In order to get the live draft done quickly and efficiently, there will be a trading blackout of picks in rounds 13-19 starting 6 hours prior to the draft until the conclusion of the live draft. The remaining rounds will be via draft lists, with 29 picks taking place each day. In this way, the team with the worst record is not leading off each round. The DMB computer drafting system will pick for all teams not submitting lists.