Hello Griffle nerds. It's been a long time since the last pitch of the 2018 GBL season. Congrats again to the Taka Drivers (Happy, Voges?). In the past 3.5 months, GBL administration has been toying with the idea of making serious changes for the 2019 season. Mainly to balance the competitiveness of the league, but to also add a new level of excitement to Griffleball. And after months of deep thought, and weighing out the pros and cons of making a big change to Griffleball as we know it, I am here to officially announce that for the 2019 season, the GBL will undergo a complete re-draft, and each team will have a salary cap.
Since the salaries of each player and the cap of each team still have a few kinks that need to be worked out, we cannot share that information just yet. But we have given ourselves a deadline of February 1st to have that completed, so check back soon!
What I can share right now is some of the new features that will come along with our new league format. The six managers have been decided upon, and they are as follows:
- Jeremy Ratajczyk
- Ryan Voges
- Jackson Buzea
- Mike Kubacki
- Kyle Gagliardi
- Greg Gierling
With the draft approaching, players and managers now have a chance to discuss the opportunity of being teammates with each other. The draft order will be determined by a lottery in which the manager with the lowest personal salary will have the most lottery balls, and so on.
Another aspect of our old league format that needed to be addressed was the fact that so many teams played games with just two players last year. In 2019, it will still be allowed, as we don't want forfeits, but every time a team plays a game with just two players, it will be penalized with a salary cap hit that could eventually lead to having to release a good player from its roster.
Speaking of us wanting to see more three-man lineups, no team will be allowed to play a postseason game with a two-man lineup this year.
Lastly, another change that will be made in 2019 is that we will be playing on Saturdays for two weeks. Rather than having bye weeks for Mother's Day and Father's Day, we decided that we will just play on those respective Saturdays instead.
That's about it from Day 1 of the winter meetings. Check back soon for more info after our next meeting!
Sincerely,
Commish
