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Post by Former Gas Can Turtles (Slava) on Mar 22, 2011 13:46:32 GMT -5
I just wanted to say a few words about the trade that just got vetoed. Initially, I was shocked but then I could see the rationale behind it. I was on the fence as to whether to vote against, but admittedly I did in the end vote to veto the trade.
Naps and Senor, I hope neither of you get terribly upset, I just wanted to put forth my reasons for the veto. I can't speak for others, but this league is one that emulates the MLB, and prospects are devalued compared to MLB ready talent. Thus, usually you see 2 or 3 top prospects go for one MLB all-star and not a 1 for 1 swap like this. Seeing as this trade wouldn't have happened in the MLB, I decided to put in a vote against it.
Personally, I welcome you trying to renegotiate as I'm not opposed to trading prospects for MLB ready players. I think this trade could go through if you just took out one of Braun/Holliday and resubmitted. I would certainly not veto as I could see one all-star and one starter traded for 3 top flight prospects.
-Slava
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Post by Former Center for Ants (Brad) on Mar 23, 2011 13:26:10 GMT -5
I just wanted to make a comment here myself. I think this is an issue worth talking about; is it the league's job to make sure that each owner gets a "fair" side in any trade, or is it the job of the owners to make sure that they make fair deals? I guess my question is, from a philosophical standpoint, should we veto anything that's an "unfair" deal, or should we only veto deals that are clearly collsuion? I think ti's worth a discussion....
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Post by SultansOfSquat (Man) on Mar 23, 2011 13:38:42 GMT -5
Yes, it's indeed an important philosophical concern here, and I'm glad people want to discuss this some (in an intelligent, civil manner).
I would note though that there's more to such a matter than the immediate trade itself (under each situation), if we're to delve into this matter more thoroughly. Trades are not made in a vacuum afterall nor do 2 teams compete w/ nobody else but themselves.
In more practical terms, there's also the issue of who's getting the call and how can we determine whether a ruling can be "fair" to all involved vs just making the trade itself "fair" or "even", etc. And also, there's the issue that we're all (at least implicitly) agreeing on how this process works when nobody complains about it nor asks to revise it.
Please also note that "fair", depending on context/overall view of the matter, does not equate to "even" in terms of the trade itself.
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Post by Former Gas Can Turtles (Slava) on Mar 29, 2011 1:15:37 GMT -5
In light of this trade being reworked, without what I see as significant modifications I wanted to find out if we could indeed discuss this a little and come away with some more understanding of what the league sees as "fair".
I mean, to a certain agree with Center for Ants in saying it's not any of our business, because one shouldn't veto a trade because we disagree with it or think one team is better than another. But, on the other hand, there is a veto rule for a reason and maybe we should discuss how the owners think it should be used.
Simple majority basically allows for 3 options: 1) leave it as is, and just let a blind vote determine things 2) discuss the situation and arrive at some sort of guidelines that will help trades that would get vetoes get worked out first 3) discuss individual trades that have been submitted or vetoed to discuss their pros and cons
I don't want to push anything on anybody, but I'd like some discussion because I kinda feel bad for putting in a veto for a deal both sides want. Sure, it doesn't affect me but I'm going to use the options the league has put forward for trades I think shouldn't go through. Although, I was hoping before it comes to that that we could come to some sort of understanding. On the other hand, if we just want to see it as business, that's fine too, I'll just keep vetoing trades I think are extremely unbalanced and/or tilt the balance of the league too much.
Anyway, that's my 2 cents. Thanks for the input Brad and Man. -Slava
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Post by SultansOfSquat (Man) on Mar 29, 2011 1:51:07 GMT -5
I'd say it's probably good for the trading partners to come out and at least offer their takes on this trade along w/ the trade review process in general -- and perhaps, also touch on what they feel the league should be about to get a better handle on how we can all best approach this and move forward w/ the league.
Let's do try to keep an even keel on this while we discuss this...
Thanks.
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Post by Senor Smoke (Justin) on Mar 29, 2011 9:15:11 GMT -5
I certainly have no problem discussing this from my angle. Since the day I joined, it's been pretty clear what my mission/strategy has been. I didn't see a roster full of elite players, but I had a few elite prospects, mainly Heyward/Strasburg. I could have traded those guys and gotten some elite players, or I could trade my MLB players and build a group of elite prospects. Since this is a dynasty league and not head to head scoring, I chose the prospect route. I faced this similar decision in a dynasty football league 3 years ago and started shipping vets for guys I thought were gonna be stars and draft picks. Not to brag but this netted me guys like Jamaal Charles, Aaron Rodgers, DeSean Jackson and Greg Jennings. And you know what I won my league this past season, so trust me when I say I know what I'm doing. I am fully aware of the value I am giving away and receiving. Naps has the best collection of elite prospects and I want to trade for them. I never thought that teams would drop their entire rosters, so I dropped 10 players because I thought I would be at the beginning of the draft and could draft those players myself. He took the first 4 of 5 guys off my board, and I offered a trade that I thought he would accept. If this were a head to head scoring league I would fully understand the uproar, but it's cumulative so no one will get an advantage in a matchup with my team. That's my side, and I'm sure everyone can see Naps side.
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Post by The Birds (Davey Johnson) on Mar 29, 2011 11:04:34 GMT -5
For what it's worth, here are my 2 cents:
In isolation, this trade of prospects for established players is not necessarily a bad trade or an unfair trade. It may take a bunch of years to finally evaluate which side got the better of the deal.
The problem I have is with the extreme method by which Smoke is pursuing his strategy. This is a league where all of us play purely for our own entertainment. One of the basic guidelines in designing this league was to emulate running a real life baseball team as much as possible (notice the 25 player roster, OF/CF/RF distinctions, SP/RP separation, etc.). It is one thing to have a team full of active young players who may develop into future stars with a few minor league future prospects on the bench, but it is another to have a team consisting of so many minor leaguers that there are not enough active players to put an actual team on the field. If enough people consider this to be an issue worth addressing, I have some suggestions for future noninvasive rule changes that may reduce the incentive to carry this strategy to such an extreme. If not, then I guess it's just my own little itch and I'll back off
Anyway, for the record, I voted against the previous trade, but I will leave this one alone even though it is not any better than the first.
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Post by Senor Smoke (Justin) on Mar 29, 2011 11:23:05 GMT -5
Thank you for your reply and for what it's worth, the strategy I employ is certainly comparable to major league teams, except they have farm systems to load up and can field largely inept teams by wasting money on guys like Francouer by giving out guaranteed contracts. We do not have farm teams and we do not have fans to appease, so if I want to build an elite team and am willing to wait a couple years for it to produce results, I can't waste roster spots on mediocre MLB talent.
I don't feel that I am devaluing the competition in this league because we are not facing one another in match ups, so that is why I have chosen this path. If we were head to head scoring I would do all I could to field a competent team each week.
Maybe the league could decide in the future to have 10-12 spots for minor league prospects on each roster, along with the 25 man MLB roster.
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Post by Naps (Jason) on Mar 29, 2011 12:16:55 GMT -5
I just want to state for the record that I drafted these prospects with the intent on keeping them. I was surprised how many cut everyone and changed my draft dtrategy to go young. The Braun trade allowed me to draft big leaguers and I desided to mostly keep that philosophy feeling a trade would get done.
I understand the intent of the league to attempt to mimic real life baseball, but I know I have never attempted that with my roster. I have always tried to have a few prospects and my 8 man rotations do not resemble a mlb roster... except maybe the Rays.
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Post by SultansOfSquat (Man) on Mar 29, 2011 12:30:38 GMT -5
FWIW, I too voted against the trade last time, but I did it mainly because I was concerned that the trade review process was inadequate for the preseason lull to handle an extreme case like this -- and had chosen that path to avoid the alternative of extending the review period in the middle of the "slow" draft.
And although I still do think that the trade is a very risky move (and most likely to be a net loss) for Senor Smoke w/ relatively limited net upside considering the proven, long term keepable talent the team is giving up, I have no real desire to vote (again) against this modestly upgraded trade at this time.
Normally, for a dynasty league, I would be more concerned about league setup issues and whether a GM is suitable for the league (after seeing his/her track record here) rather than whether a particular seemingly lopsided trade is veto-worthy (outside of collusion). We have to allow for seemingly uneven trades however they come about as long as they don't involve collusion and/or GMs not intending to do what's best for their respective teams, which may be either short term or long term. Also, it's important to know whether a GM is committed long term to the league to help justify less orthodox moves. I'm generally far less concerned about unorthodox moves from long established GMs, who still seem very interested in the league, than from new ones (w/ no known track record here) who recently joined the league.
And although I think Justin's moves could've been much better, if the plan is to rebuild in this way, I'm also glad to see his own public admission (in hindsight) that his pre-draft player drops strategy probably could've better matched his rebuilding plan, eg. probably should've stripped down the roster some more to go after one or two prized youngsters like Trout and/or Teheran in the draft rather than feel compelled now to deal proven top talent for them (although Harper was probably out-of-reach). I think such public admission from his own POV is a positive sign that we should withhold negative judgement and give him plenty of opp (and the benefit of the doubt) to prove out his strategy and plan -- plus there isn't really much reason to doubt his long term commitment to the league at this point.
Even if he turns out to have made a couple big mistakes, it's not the end of the world as long as it doesn't become some sort of long term trend that justifies questioning his suitability for the league.
Having said all that, I do also agree w/ The Birds that we might want to consider tweaking the league setup for the future to better align it to what we probably envisioned for the league in order to reduce the likelihood of similar concerns in the future.
I've already spoken briefly w/ a few other team owners, including The Birds, about the possibility of tweaking the setup wrt not-yet-MLB-ready prospects.
One thing to keep in mind is that the original setup and vision did not account for Yahoo's increasing coverage of such prospects in recent years, especially this early in the year. I had actually previously suggested/proposed to maybe add some sort of small MiLB roster to handle such concerns, but the concern probably wasn't as great back then. But now, maybe we need to revisit something along those lines.
Another alternative might be to simply throttle down the prospects inclusion option to only include them as they get called up. I'm not really a fan of that approach myself and would prefer to see something done along the lines of a small MiLB roster (or sub-roster perhaps).
We can start a separate thread to discuss that possibility, if there's interest to go in that direction...
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Post by SultansOfSquat (Man) on Mar 29, 2011 12:42:32 GMT -5
One other thing about the mention of realism w/ the setup and how teams are run.
Although simulating real life is an admirable goal to have for this league (and various aspects are certainly designed toward that end), we do need to be realistic about what's actually doable *and* fun as well. Real life can actually be quite boring and/or cumbersome to simulate, if we're not careful in how we go about it. We need to consider the spirit of it all, not just the letter of the law, so to speak.
Anyhoo, just thought I should add that to the discussion as we all consider this thing...
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Post by SultansOfSquat (Man) on Mar 29, 2011 12:57:03 GMT -5
Another thing to consider is maybe we should go to a longer trade review period for the preseason lull in the future -- and only adjust it back down to 1-full-calendar-day for the regular season.
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Post by Senor Smoke (Justin) on Mar 29, 2011 13:33:15 GMT -5
Another thing I would like to add with regards to my roster. I honestly thought that i had dropped enough guys to draft earlier, never envisioned three teams would drop their entire rosters. Also, I dropped some young guys that I didn't think quite fit the elite profile I am looking for, so I'm not just trying to stockpile minor leaguers. I am trying to stockpile elite prospects. A cursory glance at my roster might look like a bunch of guys who won't see much action this season, however I think all my players have a chance to play this year and even two or three of the guys in this particular trade have a chance to be called up this year. Harper is no doubt the longest of long shots to be called up, but the others could all be on playoff contenders by July. I joined this league purposely because I thought it would allow me the best opportunity to build a team over time. Also, since contracts aren't involved I don't value players the same way a MLB organization would. When I have a legit contender my strategy will change, but I am always looking to improve the quality of players on my roster.
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Post by Former Starry Firmament (Rich) on Mar 29, 2011 14:23:04 GMT -5
Maybe the league could decide in the future to have 10-12 spots for minor league prospects on each roster, along with the 25 man MLB roster. That actually wouldn't be too bad...with this handy dandy forum, we can keep track of a sort of "farm system", and then "call up" prospects when we see need - because Yahoo obviously doesn't have that kind of functionality. Maybe something to consider down the road, as it'll allow for roster flexibility - for guys who like to have a strong foundation of prospects - while also simultaneously gaining some points for fielding a fairly competent team.
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Post by Former Center for Ants (Brad) on Mar 29, 2011 16:45:38 GMT -5
First off, I didn't vote against the first trade because I think we have to let managers do what they wish with their teams, assuming it's not "overboard".
However, I have two concerns with this type of roster. It's mostly due to (as Man indicated) not knowing if people will keep their teams long-term. If something were to happen to Senor Smoke that he would leave the league, the team is not really appealing to anyone who doesn't believe they'll be in this league for at least 2-3 years. My other issue is the issue of the "one-year superteam"; meaning that I could see people picking up a whole bunch of impending FAs (who are relatively cheap, look how late Beltran, Aramis Ramirez, Vlad Guerrero, etc. went), building their one-year superteam, winning the league title, and then leaving the league. With 16 teams and only one champ, this strategy actually looks pretty appealing to anyone who is even remotely close to winning it all.
I was thinking to eliminate this, that either some version of Roto (with an H2H component in September for "playoffs", or a Nascar-style "Chase to the Cup" in September) could work well.
My thinking is just that since this league only rewards ONE champion, who has the most points for the year (there's no point really to even coming in 4th or 5th during the season; actually it's bad because you have a low pick in the draft then), a strategy like Senor Smoke's is smart; you may as well go for the gold in some year down the road eventually, rather than having a competitive team every year....
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Post by SultansOfSquat (Man) on Mar 30, 2011 0:03:51 GMT -5
What we should probably also consider is whether to impose some sort of reasonable league minimums/standards in order for teams to be eligible for their normally expected draft order/position in the subsequent year -- and we could exempt this for new team owners taking over abandoned teams.
Honestly, I don't think we should allow a team that makes no attempt to field a reasonably active lineup to gain any drafting advantage over the rest of the league (outside of my noted exception). And the same should also apply to other similar advantages afforded to "weaker" teams, eg. higher waiver priority to start the year. That would clearly be going against the intent of those aspects of the setup.
Perhaps, what would be reasonable minimums could be:
Min Offense = 162G * 8.8 (for 8 regular positions + .8 for catcher, ie. ~130G) * 80% activity = ~1140G
Min Pitching = 1450IP * 80% activity = ~1160IP
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Post by The Birds (Davey Johnson) on Mar 30, 2011 11:39:42 GMT -5
Setting minimum levels for a team to be considered "active" is a good idea, as long as the level is set so that it is easily achievable with minimal effort. Based on the 80% level in your example, two teams would have been considered "inactive" in 2010 and one team would have been considerd "inactive" in 2009.
I would suggest an additional way to be exempt from being considered "inactive" -- by scoring a certain number of points for the year (at least 75% of the points scored by 1st place team?) regardless of games played.
The penalty for being inactive should not be so onerous that there needs to be an exception for new team owners taking over abandoned teams. Perhaps this could be an adjustment in the draft/waiver position to be after the "lottery" positions (1st to 5th?), or perhaps this could be disallowing or limiting the number of keepers, or a combination.
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Post by SultansOfSquat (Man) on Mar 30, 2011 12:32:10 GMT -5
You mean meet one of either the 80% playing time requirement or the 75% points requirement (relative to the top team) to avoid the penalty?
That sounds fine to me although I kinda doubt any team could meet the points requirement w/out meeting the playing time requirement. The top team (or two) has always finished north of 1750pts (and often north of 1800pts), so 75% of that will be north of 1300pts, which won't be easy to do, especially if not meeting the 80% playing time criteria.
Perhaps, we should go for 70% of the top team's point total instead. Even that would mean something north of 1200pts -- even if the top team wins w/ an all-time low of 1700pts, that would still mean needing 1190pts to meet that requirement.
And yeah, I guess I'm ok w/ easing up on the penalty although I still do think it best to have the exemption for new owners anyway -- they are certainly not at fault, and we probably don't want it to deter new owners from taking over typically abandoned/not-so-great teams. Maybe we can just split the diff and drop the draft/waiver priority slot right in the middle instead, eg. 9th(?) overall for a full round.
I'd also add that 9th overall wouldn't actually be all that bad in practice because it wouldn't really be 9th until the draft includes all the bottom-half teams in the mid-to-later rounds. For instance, even w/ the unprecedented number of roster reboots this year, that would still have put Senor Smoke at 4th (or 5th) thru the first dozen-plus rounds, if they had also done the reboot thing. And in most years, we only have one or two teams doing anything remotely close to a full reboot -- it probably would require quite a few top FAs (anchored by someone like Pujols) to get all that many more teams to reboot...
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Post by The Birds (Davey Johnson) on Mar 30, 2011 13:15:23 GMT -5
I came up with the points scored exception after looking at last year's standings and seeing Gas Can Turtles almost failing the 80% IP test, but scoring 1391.09 points for the year. The 75% number was just an example, not from a rigorous calculation..
I was thinking the draft positions adjustment would just be to 5th or thereabouts, not to the end and not even to the middle as you suggest. It would make sense to also limit the number of keepers for inactive teams. Typically, a team with that level of inactivity and ineptitude would be best off rebooting and drafting from scratch anyway.
Additionally, anything that is discussed here probably should not go into effect until the 2012 season for the 2013 draft, if at all.
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Post by SultansOfSquat (Man) on Mar 30, 2011 13:20:20 GMT -5
Aye, we probably shouldn't put any of this into effect until the 2012 season (to impact the 2013 Draft and waiver priorities).
RE: Gas Can Turtles, that team actually squeaked by to meet my proposed minimums for playing time. ;D However, if we're still doing the exemption thing that I also included, then that's not a real issue anyway -- and the same goes for the Whiskeyjacks (and the Hounds of Hell from 2009).
RE: the keeper limit thing, I'm not so sure since that would directly impact how a serious team owner wants to rebuild. The draft/waiver priority "penalty" is really only intended to remove an undeserved/unwarranted advantage that's being gained essentially under false pretense.
But the keeper limit idea would mean we're directly telling teams you can't rebuild in that extreme fashion.
I guess I could go for that if the limit isn't severe at all, but even in Senor Smoke's case, he did cut his roster down to 17 before the recent draft -- and probably would've cut it further, if he had realized how the draft process would go.
Also, in the case of an actual inactive team that needs a new owner, if we had known ahead of time, we would've done the cuts on behalf of the inactive team (like we did in previous years). That should've happened for Frothy Walruses, but I realized too late in that case. Big Wood could probably have used some trimming as well, if I had known ahead of time, but that case is not as bad...
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