The Planetary Extreme Baseball Alliance

12/31/18
I've (Mike) updated this post to insert a new Winter Ball Registry. Please refer to this before selecting a player to send to Winter Ball.
Also refer to the following from the Constitution:

To be eligible for winter ball, a player must meet all of the following criteria:
- Must be between the ages of 20 and 26 years old.
- Players drafted out of a college must have at least 1 year of professional service time. All other players must have at least 2 years of professional service time.
- Must not have more than 1 year of major league service time. EXCEPTION: If the player spent time on the 60-day DL during their first year of major league service time and remained injured at the end of the winter meetings, the major league service time restriction may be waived the following off-season if they have at least a “Normal” rating in both “Loyalty” and “Work Ethic”.
- Must not have previously been selected for any off-season improvement.
- Must not be injured as of the conclusion of the Winter Meetings.

In addition to this thread

Borealis wrote:In addition to this thread

Yes, the log is largely an aggregation of Mike's work.

This is a thing of beauty. I appreciate the opportunities for me to learn of the league and player histories.

Small correction: The PDF has Richard Reynolds as being with Amsterdam rather than Reno.

Nice to see you again Frank

Please note that the lead posting of this forum has been updated with 2026 Winter Ball information.

Commish wrote: Also refer to the following from the Constitution:

To be eligible for winter ball, a player must meet all of the following criteria:
- Players drafted out of a college must have at least 1 year of professional service time.

I will seek some guidance from other on this - Hazen technically can't have a full years worth of professional time as he was a 2027 draftee - yet OOTP credits him with a year. Do we want to follow the spirit of the rule, or let the vagrancies of the game dictate how we proceed? I feel this is a precedence setter.

I hate when OOTP does stupid stuff like this...

Borealis wrote:

Commish wrote: Also refer to the following from the Constitution:

To be eligible for winter ball, a player must meet all of the following criteria:
- Players drafted out of a college must have at least 1 year of professional service time.

I will seek some guidance from other on this - Hazen technically can't have a full years worth of professional time as he was a 2027 draftee - yet OOTP credits him with a year. Do we want to follow the spirit of the rule, or let the vagrancies of the game dictate how we proceed? I feel this is a precedence setter.

I hate when OOTP does stupid stuff like this...

I'd go with the OOTP listing just for the sake of clarity when considering future eligibility. It's a simple reference that everyone can follow easily even if it's not 100% accurate.

Leones wrote:

Borealis wrote:

Commish wrote: Also refer to the following from the Constitution:

To be eligible for winter ball, a player must meet all of the following criteria:
- Players drafted out of a college must have at least 1 year of professional service time.

I will seek some guidance from other on this - Hazen technically can't have a full years worth of professional time as he was a 2027 draftee - yet OOTP credits him with a year. Do we want to follow the spirit of the rule, or let the vagrancies of the game dictate how we proceed? I feel this is a precedence setter.

I hate when OOTP does stupid stuff like this...

I'd go with the OOTP listing just for the sake of clarity when considering future eligibility. It's a simple reference that everyone can follow easily even if it's not 100% accurate.

I agree with Patrick....there are enough other make-work spots which OOTP does not automatically handle for us (option year buyouts, etc.) that it's not worth bothering about something minor like this in my opinion.

I see where you guys are coming from, and it makes sense, from a simplicity side, but on the other hand, draftees have never been Winter Ball eligible, so that should be one easy requirement to maintain. A quick look at their record is all it takes. Ditto first-year free-agents... we've already slimmed down requirements, I think we should maintain some limits...

We don't have a clear definition of what one year of professional service time is if not going by OOTP. As Constitution is written, high school draftees clearly are not eligible as they require two but it's not clear. I checked before making the proposal although a moot point unless someone trades me cash.

Coqui wrote:We don't have a clear definition of what one year of professional service time is if not going by OOTP.

I concur Mike. In the past, it was all kind of moot because originally (I believe) a player had to have had a certain amount of time at AA to qualify, then it was (more) recently changed to the current wording. I think we need to work on clarity, if we aren't going to use what OOTP says. I'm going to do some research, because I can't figure out why OOTP thinks they've had a years service when they've only been in Pro ball for 6-7 months.

For the record, I was going to go ahead (I actually had punched it all in) and process this, until I noticed the cash deficiency, with the plan of revisiting this.

I have updated the Winter Ball Log and have a complete file - 2007-2029, PEBA only (for the LRS, see my link in comment #2 of this thread). The only year we are missing is 2017, which coincided with a regime change and there were no reward selections. Attached is my Excel file, with the data in Alpha, Team, Year and Position formats. There's some interesting things there. It was interesting looking back at the earlier years (2015 and earlier), and the great names that went through Winter Ball. 341 players have attended Winter Ball in the 22 years (15.5/year) of this PEBA Tradition!!

Here's an updated PDF of the Historic Winter Ball list. There were a few names that missed the previous list.