Announcement: 2010 UPL Baseball Draft Lottery

Alright folks. Just like what we did with UPL Basketball, we're going to have a draft lottery. And following the NBA tradition, as well as the UPL Baseball tradition, everyone's eligible for the first pick.

Top 3 draft positions go via lottery, and then the remaining slots (4 through 11) will go in reverse order of finish. Tiebreakers will be settled by reverse order of finish the prior UPL Baseball season, with the team finishing lower getting preference. If needed, further tiebreakers will look back at prior UPL Basketball seasons.

Here's how the lottery works. I've given each team a set number of "lottery tickets," each of which correspond to one of the 10,000 possible 4-digit combinations (i.e., 0000 through 9999). Each team received an allotment of numerical combinations, corresponding to their order of finish. Specifically, their final rank was divided by 78, and then multiplied by 10,000.

Here's a reminder of the order of finish from last season, and the corresponding "tickets" assigned to each team.

Rank	Team	Tickets
1	'90 Reds	128
2	IamJabrone	256
3	Westy's Sluggers	385
4	O.N. Thugs	513
5	SuckMyknuckleballs	641
6	Cheeseheads	769
7	Phatsnapper	897
8	Black Sox	1026
9	Muddy Mush Heads	1154
10.5	TheJimmyDixLongballs	1346
10.5	Hats for Bats	1346
12	Benver Droncos	1539
78	TOTAL	10000

Just like in UPL Basketball, each team receives a number of lottery tickets, according to their order of finish. The number received is equal to their rank, divided by the total number of ranking points. Last year we had 12 teams, so the 1st place '90 Reds receive a 1 in 78 chance to win lottery, 7th place Phatsnapper receives a 7 in 78 chance, and 12th place Benver Droncos receive a 12 in 78 chance.

The specific number on each lottery ticket was randomly assigned. I will send out this master list to all of the UPL owners as a .pdf file that is password protected, and will provide the password to everyone once the lottery is completed. This ensures that no one gets to see the results beforehand, and also that whatever results I report are on the up and up.

The next step is to figure out which number combinations. Obviously, since I'm the only one who knows the list, I can't have anything to do with the number combinations. I will ask OD, Westy, CJ, and C-Lauff to randomly generate 30 digits between 0 and 9, (http://www.random.org), and e-mail them to me. The first digit that each one sends will make up the winner of the lottery. Specifically, the first digit will be OD's number, the 2nd digit will be Westy's number, the 3rd digit will be CJ's number, and the 4th digit will be C-Lauff's number.

The next number in each person's list of numbers will be used to determine the 2nd and 3rd overall picks, with repeat winners discarded (i.e., if the recipient of the 1st overall pick is selected, their winning combinations are then discarded, and replaced with the next number on the list).

If there are expansion teams, they will be assigned a slot at the end of the first round.

In any case, I'm looking forward to seeing everyone sign up, and announcing the draft lottery results.

-Chairman (aka O.N. Thugs)