Statheads Gameplay: Acquiring Free Agents
Free agents are available to be added to your roster during the course of the season. Free agents must be in the major leagues to be claimed and cannot be on the major league team's disabled list.
Claims for free agents can only be submitted on-line using the "Claim Players" feature. Email, message board posts and phone calls are not sufficient to make a claim for a player.
Three types of claims are available for leagues: automatic claims, 24-hour claims and Free Agent Bidding Bucks (FABB) claims.
- Automatic claims: Free agent claims clear immediately and may be assigned to a spot on the next game day's roster.
- Free Agent Bidding Bucks claims: With the FABB claim system, teams are alloted a free agent budget to spend throughout the season on free agent claims. To claim a player a team owner enters a blind bid for an available free agent. After 24 hours all bids for the player are evaluated and the player is awarded to the team who made the highest bid. The cost of the bid is debited from the team's FABB balance. In the event two teams bid an identical winning amount for the same player, the player is awarded to the team who placed the earlier bid.
- 24-hour claims: Free agent claims must stand for 24 hours before the player is awarded to a team and available for the next game day's roster. If more than one team claims the same player in this period, the team with the worst record gains the rights to the player.
For 24-hour or FABB claims, a claim can be withdrawn by any of the claiming teams before the player is awarded. Even if all parties drop their claim, another team can claim that player in the initial 24-hour period; the claim will clear as if the original claim were still active. If there are no active claims when the 24 hours are up, the player remains a free agent.
Once a claim is awarded, the team must take possession of the free agent and can adjust his roster accordingly. All claims require a drop player or roster adjustment to make room for the new player. The claimed free agent can be dropped, but only after the claim is completed and the team's roster is adjusted to accomodate him.
Claims made during the pre-season use the current season's draft order to determine ownership. A team can only have one open claim at a time during the pre-season. In case of a tie (identical win-loss records), the player is awarded to the team with the earliest claim.
Claimed players who are not assigned to the roster will remain on a team's Active Players list for seven days before being dropped automatically. These players impact a team's ability to make new claims (they count in the total of players on your team, and no team may have more than 25 players on their roster, excluding the RL). If a team is prevented from making a new claim due to an unwanted player on their Active List, they must either roster the player as required or wait the remaining time for the player to be dropped by the system.
Teams are not allowed to intentionally claim players and keep them on their active lists without assigning them to roster positions as a means of preventing other teams from acquiring them. Active lists are not roster positions and reports of anti-competitive use of the active list will be considered cheating.
Free Agent Pitchers
Scores that pitchers earn are only eligible to be used in Statheads matches when they are made while the player is on an active roster in the league or has been successfully claimed. Only starts made the day after a claim is submitted are eligible; this rule applies to automatic RL claims as well. Pitchers who are dropped from a team and are successfully claimed the same day do not miss any eligible days.
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