Summary of the Upcoming Update

For those of you who didn't read about it on the HBD Forum, there's a pretty significant update coming next week. Here are the high points:

1) Hall of Fame: worlds will now be able to start electing retired players to their (the world's) HOF. Players will be automatically nominated if they've hit certain (very lofty) career numbers, and owners will also be able to nominate other players. The nominations and voting will take place during Spring Training each year, which to me is the biggest plus of the whole thing.

As a world that will be starting its 15th season next year when we have our first HOF nominations, we're likely to have some inductees. Should make the chat a lot more lively during ST.

2) 40-Man Roster Update: pretty big change here - up until now, we could remove players with options from the 40-man roster at will. No more...now we'll have to expose ANY player to waivers to remove from the 40-man roster. All kinds of minor impacts here: teams will probably think twice about giving ML contracts to desirable IFA's; more fringe minor-leaguers will probably show up on waivers instead of hanging out on 40-man rosters until they're 34; more, for a couple.

3) HR update: WIS says they over-corrected with the HR update and will (try to) adjust so HR's go up again. HR's/game were 2.8 before the last update, and have fallen to 2.00 after. They say they're shooting for 2.4.

4) Prospect Budgets: There was a lot of talk in recent weeks about capping the amount of $$ teams could spend from prospect budget to $30MM. Even though the forum chat was close to unanimous in favor of the move, WIS pulled this change with no explanation.