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Post by Former Sneaker Pimps (Graham) on Mar 8, 2007 15:58:07 GMT -5
Sho' thing, bass
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Post by Former MaybeNextYear (Chad) on Mar 9, 2007 0:14:31 GMT -5
Sounds like a plan.
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Post by Guru's Island BP (Cory) on Mar 9, 2007 23:08:49 GMT -5
Hey, I'm Cory and I'm the last expansion team I think. Anyway looking forward to this league which seems like it will be a very competitive one. Can't wait to get this season going.
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Post by Former I'm Not Creative (INC) on Mar 12, 2007 9:49:34 GMT -5
I have to be honest, I'm getting very frustrated with the constant expansion and rule changes.
I didn't put up a huge objection to expansion last year because for some reason people want it (however if you remember I was against the expansion last year) but if I knew you were going to change the rules like this I would have pushed a lot harder against it. This is a keeper league and one of the most important things to a keeper league is consistency.
For instance I went into last years off season with the assumption that I would be able to keep as many players as I want and I was thinking I would keep 20 or 21 players. Now I'm finding out that I can't keep more than 15 people. If I had known last season that there was a 15 keeper limit I would have handled things much differently going into the off-season. In theory I would have done a few 2 for 1 type trades with weaker teams to increase the talent of my top 15. Now I'm going to have to let 5 or 6 players I think have good value go for nothing and those owners won't be able to get them with those later picks because they will likely be gone.
I say in theory I would have done those things because there were quite a number of teams last season that 1) Wouldn't set their rosters often. They would keep guys on the DL in their starting lineup and 2) Wouldn't respond to trade offers.
Because of all those things last year I had a hard finding a full time RFer on my roster. Now that doesn't seem like a league that is a good candidate for expansion. We now have 16 teams each with 25 man rosters and DL and I guarantee you there will be more than a few people who will be unable to recover from injuries in some positions because there just aren't enough full time players in MLB. I don't want to have to watch the lineup announcements for random teams just so I can set my roster every night before the games start.
We already have people hording top prospects on their bench even though they were never going to start full time (let alone be productive) for over a full calendar year. The rule is a huge change to the way the league works and I don't think owners were given nearly enough time to plan for that.
Similarly the changes to the RP. Personally this doesn't influence my roster much but I'm sure there are 1 or two teams out there that have strength in RP. Now due to a rule change they just lost a significant amount of value on their roster. It really isn't fair to those owners to make that change just because you don't like it.
I personally don't like the SP stats. I think they are horrible. How can things like W, L, and CG be there when things like H, BB, and SO aren't? Does that mean I'm in favor of changing it? No. I have guys like Wang and Zambrano on my roster who that would be hurt if BB or SO starting counting. If you made that change suddenly those two pitchers are now significantly worse.
When you want owners to remain interested year after year you can't keep changing the assumptions year after year.
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Post by SultansOfSquat (Man) on Mar 12, 2007 11:43:41 GMT -5
Well, all of these changes, which are actually rather few, were up for discussion for quite a while though, except perhaps the modest change to RP value. If people feel the change to RP is bad, we can go back to the previous setting. I'm ok w/ that.
Honestly, I don't see that this expansion and the "keep 15" rule (just for this one time) hurts a team that has so much of its talent focused on their top 15-16 players nearly as much as some others that have talent a bit more spread out (like my team).
In any case, part of the reason for expansion is to help increase trade activity, which was something most complained about in the last couple years. Most (good) team owners don't simply make trades just for the heck of it. They usually do it for a need. If most every team has its active lineup easily filled by solid/good MLB regulars while the FA pool remains filled w/ solid backups, spot starters and injury replacements, where is the incentive for trading? I would think expansion actually benefits a few of the top teams (like yours) the most while also making things more interesting for you. Yes, your team will lose some talent to the draft initially, but the loss is probably greater (percentage-wise) for the mid-level teams like mine where our talent is more spread out. And in a league that's 33% larger, the demand for a well proven top stud like ARod or Ortiz or whoever else in your top 15 will probably be much greater. Meanwhile, there will be more teams willing to take risks w/ trades whether involving studs, merely solid players or unproven, but promising, youngsters.
If I thought it'd actually help the league, I'd rather keep 25 so I don't have to lose any of my youngsters since my team is still in the rebuilding phase and could use the young talent, instead of losing them. But if we stick w/ status quo, how can we expect to attract any new expansion owners? We'd be asking them to spend several years building and waiting for ARod and Ortiz to retire before they have a remote shot to contend, and then, in the meantime, what can we expect them to offer for trades? All they would become are just relatively dead teams doing the occasional add/drop of youngsters and/or sleepers -- that is, if they can stay interested enough to even do that much.
Yes, expansion (w/ a keep 15) does indeed mean for every existing owner to take some risk in order to help make the league livelier. But if risk (and challenge) is not desired, then where is the fun in all this? Keep 15 is not exactly a great risk, particularly for the top teams, anyway. I'd say my team is one of the few that will be taking the greatest risk w/ this.
Also, while one might *wish* to do some 2-for-1 trades to prepare for a keep 15, that's actually not too likely in a league filled w/ solid team owners anyhow unless you're the only one who knows that it's going to be keep 15.
But again, the whole subject had been open for discussion for a long time, and I did try to remind everyone to revisit the discussion from time to time before we finally decided to go w/ keep 15. Some of the initial suggestions would've been far worse for the top teams, and I did what I could to protect you guys w/out making it too unattractive for the weaker teams and expansion owners.
And well, at least I didn't suddenly turn this into a salary league that could seriously put a crimp on the top teams. :-p
Anyway, I'm not trying to change the assumptions year-to-year just for the heck of it. And all of these things were up for discussion -- and I try my best to get a practically unanimous consensus before adopting any changes. And it also seemed that there was a general consensus that the league could be better, and that's the reason for considering changes. And really, expansion is not exactly something that is unheard of even in real life. In my mind, a large part of the goal of this league was to come reasonably close to simulating real life while still trying to keep it as simple as possible. In real life, change happens and things evolve. That's how you get progress for the most part. Unless we really felt the league was as perfect as it could be, there would always be some consideration for change, but yes, we should try to plan out the changes and keep them as minimal as possible (and sensible)...
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Post by The Birds (Davey Johnson) on Mar 12, 2007 11:53:15 GMT -5
You make some fair points regarding the constant expansion and rule changes in this league. In a well run established keeper league, these kind of things should not happen.
However, this league is only 2 1/2 years old and the scoring system was newly created, not adopted from a well established system used by other leagues. Under these circumstances, some amount of growing pain is to be expected. I believe that the league with the expansion is better today than it was a year ago, and that it was better a year ago than it was two years ago. My hope is that the latest round of changes will make the league that much more stable in future years, and I'm optimistic that it can happen.
Now that we have 16 teams, we should not need any more expansion, and so no more "expansion drafts" or equivalent that will force teams to lose players they had planned to keep. As far as the point value changes are concerned, maybe we can make all such future point value changes be lagged once they are agreed upon, that they take effect in a future season, not immediately, so that player values do not shift suddenly and managers can plan appropriately.
Having said all this, I have to say that it will be a little painful to have to strip my roster down to 15.
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Post by SultansOfSquat (Man) on Mar 12, 2007 12:12:56 GMT -5
That is correct. I also do not forsee further expansion now that we have 16. I (and some others here) am currently in a few other 20-plus-team salary dynasty leagues, but I think 16 teams should be large enough. If team owners go MIA (and thus reduce league activity), then it would be much better to just replace them in a 16-team league -- too bad there's no easy way to do this midseason or around Sept in Yahoo.
RE: the RP value change, it was only pushed through so quickly in order to help synch up w/ expansion (and the keep 15 rule) as I tried to point out. And actually, the change is really more of a finetuning of something that we had been trying to work on since the beginning. We have not changed any other point values since the league began, and there has not been *any* other suggestions for point value changes that I know of either. I certainly would not normally want such a change so suddenly, if at all, which is why I'm very open to reversing the decision, if this is a real problem for anyone.
And yes, I do want to keep the league as stable as possible.
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Post by Former I'm Not Creative (INC) on Mar 12, 2007 12:47:58 GMT -5
The 15 keeping thing was brought up a week and a half ago. This is our second straight year of expansion and I just assumed that this year would be handled like last year. When I signed up for the league this season I took a look at the posts from last off-season but this wasn't brought up yet. I've been busy the last few weeks so I didn't make an effort to check this site often especially since the last time I looked there were still 2 or 3 rosters that weren't even posted yet. Even if I did it's not like having the extra 7-10 days would have enabled me to do anything.
My complaint about expanding the league last year and again this year was due to the current owners. You talk about needed the 15 keeper rule to help attract new owners and keep them active but that was already a problem in the current league. We have about 6-8 owners that are active all year long and the rest disappear during the season. I think the league would have been better severed finding owners that pay attention and keep up with their team all year long even if they don't have a shot of winning it all. I think that was a lot of the reason behind the "no trade activity" complaints. With more active owners it might not have been a problem.
But in the event that changes need to be made you need to give people as much advanced notice as possible and I'm talking more like a full season than a week and a half. For instance, I have Jeff Kent on my team. He is getting old and I knew that eventually I would need a replacement for him so last season I picked up Kendrick. In a league with the rules we were using last year that makes a lot of sense. In a league where you can only keep 15 players over the off-season you don't have room to keep both an aging all star and a young stud in the making for the same position. A similar thing can be said about catchers. Last year it made sense to keep two catchers given the fact that we have a 162 game limit. Since catchers get so many days off trying to get as many games played from 2 good options is a nice luxury however if you can only keep 15 players it makes no sense to keep them both going into the off-season. All 4 of those players I talked about should be drafted in the first 240 (15*16) picks so those are players that have a place on other player's teams as keepers but it takes time to work out a deal with the right team.
I also honestly feel like there will be a problem with the number of every day players available especially for positions like C, CF, RF, 3B, and SS. Not all 30 MLB teams have established regulars at every position. Some teams have guys that platoon or the starters will change 2 or 3 times during the year. We have 16 teams with 5 bench and 3 DL slots so I worry that when the season starts and some players go down with injury that there will be a lot of cases where you are going to have to follow platoon players and emergency call ups in order to fill roster spots. Not many have the time necessary to follow all 30 MLB teams and their minor league systems that closely.
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Post by SultansOfSquat (Man) on Mar 12, 2007 14:00:08 GMT -5
I must say that I'm not sure I understand the logic there. It sounds like you do not wish to be all that active -- in order to follow what's going on and make lineup changes frequently -- but yet feel that the teams w/ nothing to play for in the current year should be extremely active in order to make the moves to build better teams for future contention. Yes, you are correct that the "keep 15" rule was not ironed out until ~2 weeks ago. However, the actual concept of doing something along those lines has indeed been discussed for a long time. And in fact, the exact suggestion (w/ an as-yet-undetermined number) was made ~1 year ago over here: htfbaseball.proboards23.com/index.cgi?board=rulestalk&action=display&thread=1140042748&page=1#1140115814And nobody had ever objected to that suggestion AFAIK -- and I did ask people to revisit that thread even at the beginning of discussions in this thread. Also, it's not quite accurate to simply say this is the 2nd straight year of expansion. We didn't actually start expanding until Sept of last year when 2 expansion owners were recruited, and it was also quite clear from the start of the 2006 season that we were looking at expansion to 16 as the likely goal to shoot for (though no guarantees were made). Yes, we probably could've done a bit better job of making expansion go more smoothly, but none of this was done all that suddenly though. The expansion that's going on is essentially still just 1 expansion (that spanned ~1/2 year and only a couple months worth of actual league activity) though it did take a bit longer than ideal. As for having enough solid everyday players to go around for all the positions, if the thought is that the 25-man roster is too deep, then I don't see why it's such a problem for some teams to go w/ platoons until they can eventually settle on solid regulars, especially if teams are also hanging on to some good prospects. I'd think the shortage of good everyday players for certain positions should fuel the desire/need to make trades, which is something you wanted, no? Anyway, you can't have it both ways for every concern. If you don't expect to be very active (in order to follow things up), then you can't expect to have much trade activity. You also can't expect the league to be all that interesting for anybody. Team rosters will end the season much the same as they begin the season, if that's the case. RE: the particular players you mentioned, yes, they should easily be part of the top 240. But that doesn't mean they all make particularly great trade bait though. Even if I gave you a full year to make trades, could you really have dealt Kent for a *better* "keep 15" player? I seriously doubt that given his age and his contract status especially if you're dealing to a weak team that needs rebuilding, and probably likewise for Johjima IMHO. If you're offering Brain Mccann or Kendricks, I suspect you won't need quite that long to make a deal, if they are indeed all that valuable to enough team owners. But even then, you might actually need to deal *both* of them together to land 1 player who's clearly better than your current 15th best player. But again, changes were being discussed (on and off) for a full year, and there was no indication at all that something along the lines of "keep 15" would not happen. As I pointed out, the original suggestion for "keep N" (w/ 15 <= N <= 20) was proposed ~1 year ago, and in all that time, whenever we discussed expansion, the concept of something like that was brought up, so it should not be a complete surprise to anyone that we would actually implement that unless you somehow expected it to happen another year after the league already expanded to 16. And would it really make much sense to drag all this out another year before implementing, especially since nobody seemed to object in all that time? Anyway, if people really feel they need a bit more time to make trades before stripping down to 15, I guess we could extend the deadline by a few days. I'll put up a poll for that right now.
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Post by Former I'm Not Creative (INC) on Mar 12, 2007 14:54:01 GMT -5
"I must say that I'm not sure I understand the logic there. It sounds like you do not wish to be all that active -- in order to follow what's going on and make lineup changes frequently -- but yet feel that the teams w/ nothing to play for in the current year should be extremely active in order to make the moves to build better teams for future contention."There is a different level of commitment between taking 15 minutes a few times a week to set my line-up and also taking a look at the waiver a few times a week than me having to follow the AA and AAA teams, platoon situations, and daily lineup postings (typically 5-15 minutes before the start of each real game) of 30 MLB teams every night in order to set my lineup and pick up free agents to fill in for injuries. Injuries happen, that is part of fantasy baseball and real baseball but when the waiver wire is stripped clean of any reasonable player or even players that get consistent playing time you have almost no chance to adjust and recover. We aren't real GMs. We can't decide that since A-Rod went down with an injury that I'll call up one of the minor league prospects on my bench. That prospect will be kept in the minors because their real team doesn't need them. I'm left to looking at what emergency starters are on teams AA and AAA rosters even if they aren't top prospects in that position. I'm left to look at the platoon situation of certain teams and that puts me at a HUGE disadvantage. "Yes, you are correct that the "keep 15" rule was not ironed out until ~2 weeks ago. However, the actual concept of doing something along those lines has indeed been discussed for a long time. And in fact, the exact suggestion (w/ an as-yet-undetermined number) was made ~1 year ago over here:
htfbaseball.proboards23.com/index.cgi?board=rulestalk&action=display&thread=1140042748&page=1#1140115814
And nobody had ever objected to that suggestion AFAIK -- and I did ask people to revisit that thread even at the beginning of discussions in this thread."The suggestion was made but dismissed. We ended up going with the draft system from last year instead and that seemed to work out well. From you... "Also, what did you guys think of the new draft system we went w/ this year? If we stick w/ it, that would probably work well for the expansion teams much like it has worked well for those who took over dead teams going into this year."From Center for Ants... "I like the expansion idea. And I really liked the draft system from last year. If it can help a team like mine with practically no talent become a serious contender within one year, it worked. I think the expansion draft could be worked into our regular draft. Most of the top free agents this year would be gone by the time the "old guard" owners drafted, but it would give the expansion teams the opportunity to get some top talent without diluting the talent from existing teams as much. In fact, some existing teams might not lose any players that they truly wanted with this system.
So, I would say yes, but with the caveat that there probably is no need for a separate expansion draft."The serious consideration of an expansion draft/keeper limit started a few weeks ago at which point it's already too late to adjust your roster while you had people's attention. "RE: the particular players you mentioned, yes, they should easily be part of the top 240. But that doesn't mean they all make particularly great trade bait though. Even if I gave you a full year to make trades, could you really have dealt Kent for a *better* "keep 15" player? I seriously doubt that given his age and his contract status especially if you're dealing to a weak team that needs rebuilding, and probably likewise for Johjima IMHO. If you're offering Brain Mccann or Kendricks, I suspect you won't need quite that long to make a deal, if they are indeed all that valuable to enough team owners. But even then, you might actually need to deal *both* of them together to land 1 player who's clearly better than your current 15th best player."Trade Kent or Johjima for someone better, you are right, that probably wouldn't happen. Trading Kent and a pitcher for a better pitcher? That might happen. Trading Johjima and Giambi for a younger 1b man might happen. There are also intermediate trades I could have made to facilitate a trade. In an active multi-year league you can talk to owners and see what they are looking for in return for a certain player. When you find out what they want you can try to acquire that in another trade to set up future trades. I am honestly always looking to balance short term and long term. I'm trying to convert a surplus of strength in one area to cover a weakness in another area. I try and think "What will my roster look like a year or two down the line?" "How can I expect this player to produce a year or two from now?" "I'll need to find a replacement for player X by 2008 so what players via trade, free agents or prospects should I target?" Things like that can't be addressed in a week or two. Holes like that are best filled over a season when you have time to plan for major changes in the league like "You can only keep 15 players this year." When the assumptions of the league change drastically and unexpectedly it makes thinking like that pointless because it negates all those decisions after the fact and I find that very frustrating.
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Post by SultansOfSquat (Man) on Mar 12, 2007 15:50:04 GMT -5
Again, I can't understand the logic about commitment vs the complaints about lack of trade activity and relegating the weaker teams (w/ new owners) to the task of generating all the extra activity needed for rebuilding while still expecting them to trade w/ you so that you can afford to remain less active. You can't have it both ways. If ARod goes down, well, that's a risk we all have to take no? It's not specific to you. At least w/ the rules we have, you get to keep some of your studs longer than in many other leagues that allow that many keepers. You already have the luxury of not needing to regularly look for good players to replace guys like ARod and Ortiz long term. I must say I cannot really sympathize about needing to resort to platoon players to address injuries. If the teams who already need to use platoon players regularly thought this to be a real problem, that might be different.
RE: the "serious consideration of an expansion draft/keeper limit", I will also have to disagree. No, we did not agree to something until 2 weeks ago. But it's inaccurate to say that was not seriously considered. Also, we are actually still using the same draft system as suggested in the quotes you provided. The only thing added is the mandatory stripdown to 15 keepers. And the quotes you provided did not actually imply that we would not make such a change. Given the context of the posts (and what little indications there are in those quotes), it was quite likely that something extra would be done on top to the existing draft system. A "keep N" rule is probably the simplest way to go under the circumstance. I do wish that you had offered some feedback on the matter at some point in the talks, but you did not. Maybe the N number would've been increased if someone pushed for that, but nobody did. And it's probably too late to turn back and rehash this now.
RE: the trading/preparing issue, there's a catch-22 there. You presented a lot of what-if's, but nothing truly compelling IMHO because they all hinge on "an active ... league", which you didn't think was happening before. I'm really not that convinced you could make all those kinds of moves during the season given the situation we were already in while still trying to contend. Again, part of the reason for expansion is to stimulate a healthy level of activity, not stymie it. We were apparently not having enough trade activity for certain people, including you -- though personally, I was still ok w/ it myself. I don't see how having an essentially lame duck, keep 15 rule hanging around for a whole year would've helped you all that much. I would think it should hurt your chances of dealing somebody like Kent no matter how you do it. Again, only a contender would have real use for Kent under the circumstance.
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Post by Former I'm Not Creative (INC) on Mar 12, 2007 22:32:56 GMT -5
"Again, I can't understand the logic about commitment vs the complaints about lack of trade activity and relegating the weaker teams (w/ new owners) to the task of generating all the extra activity needed for rebuilding while still expecting them to trade w/ you so that you can afford to remain less active. You can't have it both ways. If ARod goes down, well, that's a risk we all have to take no? It's not specific to you. At least w/ the rules we have, you get to keep some of your studs longer than in many other leagues that allow that many keepers. You already have the luxury of not needing to regularly look for good players to replace guys like ARod and Ortiz long term. I must say I cannot really sympathize about needing to resort to platoon players to address injuries. If the teams who already need to use platoon players regularly thought this to be a real problem, that might be different."
Adding more teams does 2 things.
1) It increases the time commitment necessary to be a manager. a)A greater number of MLB players become active in the league so there is a greater number of players you have to be familiar with. b) It also increases the time commitment associated with following certain players. Have a roster of every day starters means you can set your lineup and leave it be. Following platoon players means you have to check the lineups before the games start so you can see who is playing that night or try to make educated guesses based on manager tendencies and probable starting pitchers. c) There is a greater number of teams in the league so there is a greater number or rosters you have to analyze to understand their strengths and weaknesses, important if you want to make fair and reasonable trade proposals.
2) The more teams there are the bigger drop off there is to replacement players so it makes it nearly impossible to recover from injuries.
This is a league where we have trouble getting people to stay active the entire year as it is and now we just made it a bigger time commitment to stay active.
"RE: the "serious consideration of an expansion draft/keeper limit", I will also have to disagree. No, we did not agree to something until 2 weeks ago. But it's inaccurate to say that was not seriously considered. Also, we are actually still using the same draft system as suggested in the quotes you provided. The only thing added is the mandatory stripdown to 15 keepers. And the quotes you provided did not actually imply that we would not make such a change. Given the context of the posts (and what little indications there are in those quotes), it was quite likely that something extra would be done on top to the existing draft system."
That's a big addition to the draft system. It's not a minor tweak. You can't honestly re-read that thread from last year and say that limiting people to 15 keepers was seriously being considered at that point. You yourself ended the thread by saying...
"we will see about formulating a suitable way to help them become competitive sooner rather than later though I'm inclined to think the draft system we went w/ this year might be good enough for this. We shall see..."
"I do wish that you had offered some feedback on the matter at some point in the talks, but you did not. Maybe the N number would've been increased if someone pushed for that, but nobody did. And it's probably too late to turn back and rehash this now."
As I said I had a busy few weeks. My point is major changes to the league like this shouldn't happen in the course of the first 2 weeks in March. Major changes like this should be made with a full season of advanced warning so everyone has an opportunity to adjust their positions before the change takes place.
"RE: the trading/preparing issue, there's a catch-22 there. You presented a lot of what-if's, but nothing truly compelling IMHO because they all hinge on "an active ... league", which you didn't think was happening before. I'm really not that convinced you could make all those kinds of moves during the season given the situation we were already in while still trying to contend. Again, part of the reason for expansion is to stimulate a healthy level of activity, not stymie it."
See that's where we disagree. I think adding teams increases the time commitment necessary thus making it less likely that people will stay active. To me is the wrong way to fix the problem. A better way to fix the problem would have been to replace some of the inactive managers with better managers. When you have a league full or stable managers that are active year round then you have a healthy league where it makes sense to talk about expansion.
"I was still ok w/ it myself. I don't see how having an essentially lame duck, keep 15 rule hanging around for a whole year would've helped you all that much. I would think it should hurt your chances of dealing somebody like Kent no matter how you do it. Again, only a contender would have real use for Kent under the circumstance."
Again we disagree. If I were a team with 10 or 12 good keepers but no MIer then I would definitely be interested in Kent. I know he won't last until that late in the draft. Me as the manager with Kent and Kendrick that knows I can't keep both would be willing to make a 2 for 1 deal where I lose on total talent but since I get the best player in the deal it actually makes sense for me. It's the type of deal that should make sense for both sides. The other team increases their overall talent and depth and I increase my top 15. Since I can't keep both Kent and Kendrick anyway trading one of them for less than full value means nothing because I would have had to let one of them go for nothing anyway.
In a keeper league I was in a few years ago I traded Tejada and Soriano for Pujols for this very same reason. I couldn't keep both but the other guy had room in his keepers. After the trade some complained but the deal was upheld because there was no doubt going into the off-season that my team was much better off.
If I and other owners knew of the 15 keeper limit then deals like that would be possible but trying to make deals like that right now is going to be a scramble.
I know it's too late for anything to change but understand why I don't like this. Major changes to the league should be settled on and made known very far in advance so people can adjust.
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Post by SultansOfSquat (Man) on Mar 14, 2007 14:35:04 GMT -5
I do not wish to debate the matter further. We will just have to agree to disagree and move on. I will definitely try harder to make any future changes, if any at all, go more smoothly though I don't know w/ any certainty that things could've gone all that much more smoothly in reality. Hopefully, the league will have stabilized to the point that no new, substantial changes will be needed in the future.
Only important thing I'd like to add and point out that just happens to be relevant to the arguments about making trades specifically for the Keep 15 rule -- which I also pointed out in the new Commissioner's Note on Yahoo today -- is that we must remember that the number 15 is a max/ceiling, not a fixed keeper number. Teams do NOT have to keep that many if they don't want to. And the obvious incentive for not keeping the max is better draft picks as compensation. For some teams, this could very well mean a much better shot at the various top FAs available in the draft. For some others, it might not result in any real difference when all is said and done. And for some who do take the risk, yes, there is a risk of actually doing worse by keeping less (and drafting only so many rounds earlier). It all depends...
A couple other things that I neglected to mention earlier, but people may have noticed in the Yahoo settings -- or in the Yahoo transaction log -- are these two small changes I made:
1. Changed Trade Reject/Review time to 1 day (instead of the original 2) per popular consensus from last year. Please note that Yahoo means 1 complete calendar day there, not 1 24-hour period. So for instance, a trade that's posted on Yahoo at 12:01am PST on Monday won't actually pass until some time during the morning on Wednesday, and the players won't actually show up on their new teams' rosters until Thursday.
2. Changed from no transaction limit to max of 100 (adds). This change was brought up during preseason last year, IIRC, but was put on hold. Judging by how things have gone in the few years of this league's existence, the limit may or may not really be necessary before expansion. It really depended on the team owners themselves for the most part. However, I did always want some sort of reasonable limit on this -- and Yahoo only goes up to 100 -- so I went ahead and applied the change. If anyone feels that this change should not be made (either for this year only or for the indefinite future unless an actual problem arises), then please let us know and offer a solid reason for your position. I have no problems w/ reverting back to the old, no limit setting at least for this year.
I should also note that I only intend for the transaction limit to be in effect during the season itself. Any preseason moves will not count against the limit as I will be resetting every team's transaction counter to zero to start the season (on 4/1/07), which should probably allow a few days of free add/drops between the end of the FA Draft and the start of the season.
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