Draft Wrap

Now that everyone has recovered from the draft, teams are setting their initial lineups for the opening of Spring Training on Wednesday. All players have already reported to camp and have been getting to know their new teammates.

The 2008 draft was probably one of the longest in league history, stretching out for around five hours. Most of the blame fell on Stump Matiash as usual, but it's more fun to pick on him than the other guilty parties. Vegas owner Eric Wickstrom was effective at cracking the whip and getting the draft moving along. Thanks go out to Eric and the Pucci brothers for keeping the draft board up to date. Maybe we can start a new tradition of rotating draft locations each year.

Almost all rule changes were soundly defeated. Custom stadiums were nearly banned but were voted to remain by one vote. The lone rule change that made it through the cracks was the 2-year stadium lease. Curiously the 3-year lease was also defeated, but what a difference a year makes! The new rule locks the owner into a stadium for a minimum two year contract starting this season. If a team folds or gets new ownership, the lease is voided. A team picking a custom stadium can update their stadium next season when the new disk comes out. This is only an option for teams choosing a current stadium (i.e. 2007 Yankee stadium, but not 1999 Yankee Stadium). Teams cannot upgrade from a 1955 version of their stadium to a 1972 version or a 2008 version.

Look for the round-by-round draft recap to be posted by next weekend. We'll look at some of the more questionable picks at that point and try to find out who will likely get the Kei Igawa Award this year for biggest (and most overhyped, espeically by their owner) bust! If you don't know who we award the pick to for the '07 draft, well...take a guess.