The Amateur Draft and alternate leagues

[RMc]

I like creating alternate historical major leagues. Like, say, the Federal League survives past 1915, or the Continental League actually makes it to the field and becomes to MLB what the old AFL was to the NFL in the 1960s. The problem is that only the "real" MLB can draft real major leaguers, while other leagues have to draft fictionals.

So here's an idea: allow all leagues designated as "Major League" (real and fictional) to participate in the draft for real major leaguers. You can tweak it by using a percentage: 100 means alternate leagues can draft as many players as the real MLB, while 50 would means the real teams get twice as many draft picks, and 0 means only MLB teams can draft real major leaguers.

Thoughts?

[bwburke94]

Integrate the FL or CL into the real MLB by adding 4 of its teams to each league.

[RMc]

Integrate the FL or CL into the real MLB by adding 4 of its teams to each league.

No, the whole idea is to keep the alternate leagues seperate from MLB, but with access to the same (real) players.

Historically, there have been leagues that could've been considered de facto "major": the Negro Leagues, the PCL, the Japanese and Mexican leagues. (And that's not even counting the 19th century alphabet soup of the NL, NA, AA, PL and UA!)

See, we're used to having all the major league-quality players in one organization: MLB. But what if they weren't? What if Congress declared MLB a monopoly, and suddenly there were several "major leagues" spread across the landscape, like the independent leagues? What if they agreed to stay seperate, except for a national championship and a common draft?

Hmmmm...

[Kelric]

As a work around, you can try dropping everyone to free agency rather than having a draft.