clarification about roster size issues
This came up in hockey. As far as i understand it, teams that over roster in the pre-season can continue to be so but cannot add additional players to go over roster. in other words, any trade must reduce the # of players or be neutral. During the regular season, a corresponding move needs to be when the trade goes through. I can't remember the exact instance but something happened in hockey where a guy was sitting as a FA for a week or more and not added from trade. They have to be added in a reasonable time period from the transaction. Teams can't be over roster for weeks or months just because they didnt make a call up or additional move. Maybe someone from hockey can remember exactly what happened. But it was brought to my attention that it happened here in baseball as well and it shouldn't be.
I think what happened in hockey is that Oilers made a trade and the player sat in FA for like 1-2 weeks.
But yes, the over roster rules that we currently have is that Yahoo allows teams to play over roster. If you have a player stashed in a IL spot and the player loses the IL status, you can keep the player stashed there as long as you want. But once you move the player out of the IL spot, he can't go back in.
Preseason IL works the same way.
If a player has IL or O or DTD status in Yahoo, then the player is eligible to be put on preseason IL. Also, if Yahoo is dumb and theres a player that's clearly hurt and will not be ready to play by opening day, that player can be added to preseason IL also.
So in preseason, if you have a player stashed in preseason IL, but the player no longer has injured status in Yahoo, you can leave the player stashed in preseason IL as long as you want.
However, if you are over roster, that means you can't add any players in FA. That goes for the FA Draft and once FA opens, when signing players.
But, if you are over roster, you can still select players in the prospect draft and can still make trades, whether in Yahoo or add/drop trades.
These are the over roster rules that we currently have.
The league has never had a deadline on how long a team needs to add a player from a trade because it's never been an issue. What I normally do is give guys 2-3 days, sometimes a 4th day to add a player and its never been a problem. So not sure if we need to vote on a hard deadline or not, up to you guys, I'm fine either way on that.
I do think if you're over roster and you make a trade, that you need to make space on your Yahoo roster to add the player. And that teams don't get an unlimited amount of time to let the traded player sit in FA forever.