Are you experienced?

If experience means anything, then the level of play should be up in the Frontier League this season.

The league changed some of its player eligibility requirements during the offseason to make them less restrictive, and the result has been filled with more-experienced players, including several with more than 2,000 career at-bats as a professional, something almost unheard of in past seasons. Heck, one team even signed a player who had multiple at-bats against the Phillies' Roy Halladay this spring in a major-league spring training game.

In recent years, the Frontier League classified players as either Rookie, L1, L2 or Veteran, based on the number of the professional seasons they played. Rookies had less than one full year of experience, an L1 had one full season, an L2 had two years and a Veteran had at least three years. A full season was any in which a hitter accumulated more than 150 at-bats. For a pitcher, it was more than 30 appearances or more than 60 innings.

Teams were limited to 7 L1 players, 3 L2s and three Veterans, which included no more than one Super Vet.

There were some other rules, but these were the basic guidelines.

As you can see, it was hard to keep a team together. If you had seven good Rookies one year, you had to get rid of at least four the next season, and more if you signed an L1 released from an affiliated team.

This year, the Frontier league did away with the L1, L2 and Veteran classifications and replaced them with a class called Experienced. Teams are limited to 14 Experienced players. You can have 14 guys who were Veterans under the old system, if you can sign 'em and stay under the salary cap.

So with nothing better in my life to do, I recently spent one afternoon checking all Frontier League team rosters and seeing what they would look like under the old roster system. What I discovered is, most teams signed two more "Veterans" than in the past and one or two additional L2. The teams that stocked up on "old-system Veterans" are Rockford, Evansville and Southern Illinois. Rockford and Southern Illinois are the only teams with six "old-system Veterans" on their current active roster. Evansville started the season with six and has since released one, a pitcher who was Cleveland's 4th-round draft pick in 2006. The Otters also have two "old- system Veterans" on their disabled list.

Managers and coaches used to say that your L2s and Vets were the players who had to carry their ballclub. The teams currently with the most combined L2 and Vets under the former eligibility system are Rockford and Gateway.

Here's a look at what each team's current roster would look like under the old classification system:

East Division
Joliet
L1: 4
L2: 3
Veteran: 5

Lake Erie
L1: 3
L2: 4
Veteran: 4

Rockford
L1: 3
L2: 4
Veteran: 6
On DL: L2

Traverse City
L1: 2
L2: 3
Veteran: 5
DL: L1

WashingtonL1: 3
L2: 4
Veteran: 5
DL: L2

Windy CityL1: 5
L2: 5
Veteran: 3
DL: L1, 2 L2s

West Division
Evansville
L1: 3
L2: 4
Veteran: 5
DL: 2 Veterans

Florence
L1: 2
L2: 2
Veteran: 5
DL: Veteran

Gateway
L1: 1
L2: 5
Veteran: 5

Normal
L1: 4
L2: 2
Veteran: 5

River CityL1: 4
L2: 3
Veteran: 4

Southern IllinoisL1: 4
L2: 1
Veteran: 6
DL: 2 L1s, L2