In fairness, while my proposal does increase contract amounts and will make some keepers less palatable, the vast majority of contracts will be unchanged. No owner has enough money to affect more than one or two players, and those will almost certainly be the best keepers, so the players who precipitated this discussion in the first place are the most likely to be affected while everyone else stays the same.

The system you (Todd) and Nick are conversing about does make keepers more expensive, yes. I just don't think it's realistic to think there will be enough buy-in on the system to make it a reality. I'm not sold for the simple reason that I don't want anyone messing with my team. Let me screw it up on my own.

As for perverse incentives caused by a consolation bracket prize, I don't think what I've proposed will skew how owners behave at the margin of the playoffs. If I have a chance at the playoffs it's not very likely that I'm sitting on minor league players - getting in the playoffs is priority one if I'm within reach, not planning for next year. The consolation prize will have little meaning for teams competing for playoff positions and even if it does, those owners still have to balance current production (to win the consolation bracket) with the future.

I'm not saying it's a great system, nor am I even sure I like it, but I do believe it's better than using auction or FA dollars as the carrot.

As for prize pools as an incentive... as you point out, it would have to be significant to matter, something I'm not in favor of. It can get intense enough without throwing fuel into the fire. However, charging teams for each loss might be a way to allocate the existing dues. Suppose I charged 5 cents per loss: There are 21 weeks with 80 losses per week (a tie is half a loss) giving us a grand total of 1,680 losses... $84. Currently we collect $48. I'm ok with collecting more dues on the understanding that the additional overage goes to charity or to the Redscape fund. If the system were in place last year, the charge would go from a low of $3.18 to a high of $8.15. Interesting...

I'm still trying to get my mind around the allocation idea... I guess I need to read it further but it sounds off-puttingly complex.

As for Mike Trout, who is always lurking in the background of these discussions, I've already made up my mind that I'm releasing him into the FA pool after his current contract is up (after the 2015 season). After getting him on a $1 rookie deal for his first season and then his initial minimum salary 3-year deal, he's going to have made me something like $200 in surplus value. I think that's sufficient reward for a pickup that essentially boiled down to lucky timing and then a lot of saying "no" to trades. Plus, I really just don't like Mike Trout as a real life player very much (most boring superstar ever) and I also am insanely curious about what he goes for in an auction.

So, I really don't think we need to worry about another Mike Trout, and I don't think our contract system is broken. The guys who are good through two 3-year contracts are really few and far between. (The guys who everyone thinks are going to be good through two 3-year contracts are much more plentiful.) And a lot of it comes down to timing as development often doesn't go smoothly. See Wil Myers, George Springer, etc. It's just really hard to predict the performance of anyone 4-5 years in advance.

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I'm much more interested in the increasing problem of owners tanking the season early. I have long been advocating for a consolation bracket prize of auction money (for logistical purposes this could take the form of "free contracts" - meaning you'd get to sign players to contracts that increased their base salary like normal but didn't actually come out of your auction budget).

We could call it the Senior Playoffs and the Junior Playoffs. Senior Playoffs is the normal 6 qualifying teams, a format I really like, and the fight is for the trophy and no other prize. Division losers get excluded from the postseason completely. Junior Playoffs is the remaining 6 teams seeded by record, and they're playing for something like $12/$6/$3 (first/second/third) or $15/$5 in free contract money, with numbers adjusted however people think is best to make the values competitive with the money you "make" by emptying your roster out for lottery tickets.

This would give teams out of the race some incentive to keep their star players, meaning playoff teams can't bully people to sell their stars for borderline keepers or get nothing. The reward would balance out the benefit of stashing a ton of medium to long shot types, while being sufficiently random (through the playoff crapshoot) to prevent intentional manipulation of your spot in the standings. Excitement would be higher across the league throughout the season.

There's always the question of teams purposely missing the playoffs, but I don't see that as a problem. If you've got a playoff berth in reach and you tank that to enter a crapshoot for a few bucks next year so that you can improve your team to try to get a playoff berth... well, what are you playing this game for?

DiploMatt wrote:I'm still trying to get my mind around the allocation idea... I guess I need to read it further but it sounds off-puttingly complex.

I think Nick's proposal adds relatively little additional complication to our existing rules. I think there are certain decision points that will become much more complex, though. I think my proposed rule set is actually LESS complex than what we have know, which is one of the reasons I like it so much. And it very effectively addresses your other point about projectability, because you're not constrained by the need to trade off between the risk of multiple years and the need to find those discounts to be competitive.

DiploMatt wrote:There's always the question of teams purposely missing the playoffs, but I don't see that as a problem. If you've got a playoff berth in reach and you tank that to enter a crapshoot for a few bucks next year so that you can improve your team to try to get a playoff berth... well, what are you playing this game for?

We have seen multiple teams that were clearly in playoff contention make sell trades the past couple of years, not because they didn't think they could make the playoffs, but because they didn't think they could win the title. If you're a borderline 6-8th place team, this rule change would make that kind of behavior MORE likely, not less. Any solution to this problem ought to incentivize performance and/or decrease the value of building for next year.

Moreover, I really dislike the ugly additional complexity and record-keeping involved in any of these 'patch' proposals.

Mike, I agree that your proposal to limit rookie contracts wouldn't do much damage, but I also think it would be basically useless. I've already said I'd be fine just eliminating those altogether. You know how Freeman kept a crazy high (9) number of rookies this past year (afaik he's the only one to really do that)? He dropped 3 of them in April and 4 more in May.

Before divisional play, with 14 teams, there was an almost 43 percent chance to make the play-offs. Now there is a 37.5 percent chance to make the play-offs. But if you see that there is a strong team in your division there is only a 2/16 (12.5%) chance to get a wild- card. Then you factor in Matt's dominance in recent years and teams figure that if they get off to a slow start they should try to build a team that can contend for a title next year.
Any solution has to be simple, simple , simple! I think Mike's idea about eliminating rookies is the only idea so far that is simple but has a good chance of solving the problem.

I think I would allow each team to keep one rookie. I am really not sure that eliminating rookies is a good thing to do myself, but it is better than other alternatives. I think that owners will find that giving up early is not a heck of a lot of fun (at least that was my experience). The problem may go (substantially) away on its own.

As I already mentioned, I packed it in this year without putting any focus on rookie contracts. They're just not that valuable or important. It might help a bit but I don't think it would move the needle much. I do definitely agree with you that a simple solution is best, though.

Also, I think you meant 2/12 chance at a wild card. You're right that the odds of snagging a wild card spot if you're out of the division race aren't great, but that makes the situation sound more bleak than it is. If we didn't have divisions, you could just as easily say the same thing about not being a top-4 team. With divisions, it's possible you have a runaway leader and can't compete for top-4 spots that you otherwise could (like the E's and Ducklings last year), but it's also possible that you get to compete for the division due to the absence of a real top-4 team (like the Foes last year). Overall, it's a wash, and you get the same 25% chance to win the division that everyone else does.

Point being, divsions should NOT cause people to abandon their season early in the aggregate. If anything I'd expect the opposite, since teams like the E's and Ducklings last year can still compete for the wild card, but teams in a weak division can take their shot when they might not otherwise be able to.

Sharur wrote:We have seen multiple teams that were clearly in playoff contention make sell trades the past couple of years, not because they didn't think they could make the playoffs, but because they didn't think they could win the title. If you're a borderline 6-8th place team, this rule change would make that kind of behavior MORE likely, not less. Any solution to this problem ought to incentivize performance and/or decrease the value of building for next year.

Have we? I don't remember this. If so, that makes no sense to me. If you look through the history, 5th and 6th seeds have received 5 finals berths and won twice. In fact, they're exactly even with 3rd and 4th seeds, who combined also have 5 finals berths and 2 wins. One should expect the top two seeds to do better (combined 12 berths and 7 wins) since not only were they the best teams during the regular season, but the bye also means they only need to win one matchup to get to the finals.

Anyway, 5/22 (make finals) or 2/11 (win title) don't seem like great odds for two combined slots, but when only 6/16 teams even make the playoffs, it seems like if you're in reach you should be going for it.

Also, I'm not sure that this rule change would make that behavior more likely. Under our current rules if you do for some reason decide your team "isn't built for the playoffs", your only option to get better for next year is to make seller trades. If you sell aggressively, you're likely going to take yourself out of contention for the Junior Playoffs as well. I think it could actually serve as a safety net for teams in the 6-10 range who decide to go for it: if you do end up missing the playoffs you're not left with nothing.

Some other ideas:

- Move the trade deadline to earlier in the season when there are more teams still in it.

- Go with the split-league idea with an upper and lower division. The upper division can use the AL, the lower division can use the NL.

- Hand out some penalty for finishing in last place in your division (mimicking real life, where being really bad has financial consequences).

I'm strongly against any real life monetary reward.

DiploMatt wrote:

Sharur wrote:We have seen multiple teams that were clearly in playoff contention make sell trades the past couple of years, not because they didn't think they could make the playoffs, but because they didn't think they could win the title. If you're a borderline 6-8th place team, this rule change would make that kind of behavior MORE likely, not less. Any solution to this problem ought to incentivize performance and/or decrease the value of building for next year.

Have we? I don't remember this.

Me neither. The closest I recall was the Es this year, but even then, even though he said he was a seller, he didn't do too much selling.

It's also kind of ludicrous that teams are pulling up their stakes after only 1/3 of the season has passed. Even if you think you're legitimately out of it, and I question that premise, how could you possibly know who is worth keeping for 2015?

Based on 'sell' posts at ESPN, the following teams bailed after x weeks into the season:

6: King's Men
7: E'Claires
8: vall Bangers
9: Longgui

How do you prevent that?

As for pushing the trade deadline up, I actually think that might have the opposite effect. I stayed in the game until one week before the deadline. Instead of sticking it out to week 17, a shorter deadline might have pushed me into the seller column earlier. Furthermore, by waiting I had a better idea of who will have value in 2015. You early sellers are bonkers for thinking that a player in May or June will be the same player in August, especially the young ones coveted by re-builders.

I didn't actually end up selling in week 8. I started looking into it, then went on a bit of a tear, then slumped again, at which point I actually started in earnest. That was probably around week 12-13.

Mike, you're right about the challenges of selling early, but there's a first mover advantage that you have to consider as well. If you're going to sell, you're better off doing when you have the most options available, and when the trades you're making have the biggest impact on the buyers' bottom lines. As time passes, the prices for rentals goes down.

Have we? I don't remember this.

In addition to the E's this year (and I didn't follow his actual transactions closely), I recall several teams doing this last year. This may have been motivated in part by the perception that Matt winning was a foregone conclusion, or at least that the only team that could challenge him was the E's.

Matt, your small sample size empirical data lines up pretty well with what you'd expect*. For simplicity's sake, you can probably assume a 1/8 chance to win the title as a wild card (getting through 3 rounds at 50% chance to win); it's going to be lower than that, but how much lower exactly (due to the superiority of the higher seeds) is hard to say. Anyway, if you then assume that the potential seller in question is in a race with 3 other teams for their playoff spot, that goes to 1/24-ish (around 4%).

*You are doing the math wrong, though. 2/11 isn't the chance to win as a 5/6, because there are two such teams every year, and only one of them can win the title. If you want to look at them together, it's 2/22. It's still 5/22 to make the finals, though, because they can't face each other in the semis. If you plug 2/22 into chance to win the title instead of 1/8, you get a ~3% chance to win the title instead of ~4% in the scenario I outlined.

So if you're in that position and you're not confident that your team is any better than your current competitors, let alone the other playoff teams, and you have the opportunity to make trades that you think put you in a strong position to be a top-4 or so team the next year (or several years)... well, it's fair enough if you say that's not what you'd do, but I don't think it's fair to assume no one else would, and I'm not prepared to say it doesn't make sense. But if we devalue keepers, it will make less sense, which is part of what I'm aiming for with my proposal.

You're right that the Junior Playoffs idea would give teams that fall short a consolation prize. But the other thing it would do is give teams that are at that same decision point even MORE reason to make a big sell trade, as if they hit that sweet spot their team winds up that much more likely to be elite next year (without any offsetting increase in their chances this year).

Granted, most of what I don't like about that proposal (and most of the others) is the inelegance. I'm with Freeman in wanting to keep things simple and streamlined. Most of the ideas are more of the patch variety and tend to fail by that rubric.

One other thing about selling. When I was looking into it, I did a study of my old RBL data to see how often teams come back to grab a playoff spot after a rough start (which I may have posted about on the message board). The answer is basically 'very rarely'.

You do see teams move around a fair bit, such that teams that hover around .500 for awhile can go on a tear and get in, or teams that start hot (like the Cougars) fall off and don't make the playoffs.

But (and I forget the exact numbers, so this won't be precise), once you get somewhere between 5-10 weeks in and are some ways below .500 (10 games?), you're pretty much done. Even though there's lots of time left and your team might recover from being in the basement, the odds of enough teams ahead of you faltering enough for you to get in seem to be very small. I think the scenario you'd need is a really weak division where you can win with around a .500 record. At one point I thought that was possible for me this year, because I thought the Cougars would falter, but then the Bombers got hot and that was that.

Of course, only a handful of teams are going to be doing that badly that early. However, if those teams sell (as Freeman did very early last year, or John this year), in conjunction with the first mover advantage bit I mentioned, that can create pressure on teams that are still in it but just have poor odds (say around 10th-12th place). Before too long, almost half the league is selling, and... there you are. Plus, if the top couple teams are the big buyers, things look that much bleaker for the guys scrambling for the final playoff spot.

Anyway, the point is that the problem isn't really whether the guy in 7th packs it in. Even if the top 8 stick it out the whole year, that leaves half the league that isn't doing so. But if we do something that decreases keeper value, then the guys at the very bottom might feel they can afford to wait a little longer to see if the tide turns, which means the guys above them don't feel as much pressure to strike while the iron is hot, etc.

Sharur wrote:One other thing about selling. When I was looking into it, I did a study of my old RBL data to see how often teams come back to grab a playoff spot after a rough start (which I may have posted about on the message board). The answer is basically 'very rarely'.

...

But (and I forget the exact numbers, so this won't be precise), once you get somewhere between 5-10 weeks in and are some ways below .500 (10 games?), you're pretty much done. Even though there's lots of time left and your team might recover from being in the basement, the odds of enough teams ahead of you faltering enough for you to get in seem to be very small. I think the scenario you'd need is a really weak division where you can win with around a .500 record. At one point I thought that was possible for me this year, because I thought the Cougars would falter, but then the Bombers got hot and that was that.

Well yeah... if some of those teams packed it in for the season there is even less of a chance they'll get in the playoffs. Not exactly an 'other things being equal' analysis.

Mike, you're right about the challenges of selling early, but there's a first mover advantage that you have to consider as well. If you're going to sell, you're better off doing when you have the most options available, and when the trades you're making have the biggest impact on the buyers' bottom lines. As time passes, the prices for rentals goes down.

I understand the theory of this but I'm not so sure you can show the evidence to support the assertion. If you're good at deal-making you can be successful either early or late.

Todd, I thought that it was 2/12 odds to get the wild-card,but adding the chance to win the division (25%) with 2/12 (16.6) yielded a total higher than 6/16 so I went with 2/16. (Because the math adds up) It seems like it should be 2/12 because you're competing with all of the non-division winners for the wild-card spots but for some reason the math does not add up...Not sure where I am going wrong there...