22 Aug 2014, 7:35 am
OK. Conversation at G+ between August 6th and August 16th, inanities and all:
Ryan
What is the league waiting list like?
Is the trend of selling players and teams tanking getting a little too intense?
Someone I know mentioned that he is in a fantasy football league that uses European soccer-style relegation. They have 16 teams and do two leagues of 8, with the top and bottom two swapping places each year.
Would this be something to consider? Is there any way it could even conceivably be implemented with a keeper league (I don't think it could, but y'all are smarter than me, so I thought I'd toss it out there)?
Just a topic for discussion...
Brad S
I think you'd want to maintain just one player pool across both. so then we could manage all of that in one league. You'd have A and B division. A only plays A and B only plays B and they each have their own custom playoffs and each have their own custom championship. Then just regroup the divisions at year's end so that the two in the championship of B move to A and the bottom A's move to B. I'm not sure this would drive up interest to stay competitive longer or not.
Personally I think the best incentive is an incentive for being the best loser. Could it mean that a team purposely pulls themselves out of the playoffs to get that incentive yes... but there are no guarantees from one year to the next.
What if we had some sort of winter roster pare down where we had to pare our rosters down to just a starting line up. And then all the rest go into a winter draft pool and the winter draft pool would be orderered from the best loser down to the worst loser and then from worst playoff to champion in which there is (unlimited rounds) until a round is met where no player is drafted. When you draft a player in the winter draft you have to immediately cut another player to meet the roster size limit. You would be obtaining these players that are cut at their previous seasons salary (much like a waiver claim). You would then have the rights to that player going into the next season. Oh and you have to stick to only players that were cut from a team, not free agents at end of year.
Todd
You certainly could do it. Just have each 'league' only play itself scheduling-wise, and set up custom playoffs.
Ryan
Ah, yeah... that would work.
I'd even be in favor of going to 20 teams (4x5 divisions / 2x10 leagues) if we could pare down the starting roster spots to 9 hitters.
Ryan
Also, the spreadsheets Todd could create for what-ifs, comparing the best teams from the second tier to the worst teams from the first tier, would be spectacular. His brain would hit new levels of Toddness.
Nicholas
I don't like the tier system, but I'm always in favor of expansion! I think ultimately it's about recruiting the right owners: people who care enough to rebuild during lost seasons. While I like the idea of rewarding teams that stay engaged, wins and losses are not the best measure because rebuilding teams shouldn't sacrifice acquiring cheap talent in order to win in the short team with rentals who are worthless the next season. Of course there's a limit to how many prospects anyone can keep, but if an owner chooses to rebuild by acquiring as many prospects as possible and then making a decision about who to keep right before the keeper deadline with the most recent news possible then that shouldn't be penalized. That owner is trying to help his or her team and is not disengaged. But, if most of those prospects are in the minors, that owner will lose to an owner with major league rentals who absentmindedly sets his lineup once every ten days.
I think our system works and if owners aren't engaged, let's find more! Jared seems to be more active than Michael was. 16 teams is working well. I'm always open to ideas about how to make the later portion of the season more interesting to non-contenders, I just haven't seen anything that made perfect sense yet.
Todd
I think you're approaching this from the wrong angle, Nick. It's not about punishing people for trying to find keepers, it's about decreasing the pressure to do so, relative to other pressures. If there's more pressure to win even when your team isn't a title contender, that makes the matchups you're currently playing more interesting, and that's good for the game (imo). The extreme buy/sell dynamic we've seen in recent years is not ruinous, but is also somewhat detrimental (again, imo). If people have more incentive to win now, it will be harder for buyers to find traction, which means the sell trades that do happen can be more lucrative- which means there'd still be room to rebuild when necessary. And really, you don't need a roster full of minor leaguers to rebuild. Unlike an MLB rebuild, there's no real reason an RBL rebuild should take more than one year unless (perhaps) you're weighed down by bad contracts.
All that being said, I'm not a fan of introducing relegation to our league. I do think we have a problem in search of a solution, but I don't think we've found that solution yet, or even come particularly close.
I'm going to toss out an idea that I don't necessarily think directly addresses this problem, but is at least interesting in its own right, and also addresses some of Steve's concerns regarding Mike Trout's contract (not that I'm convinced those concerns need addressing).
In the ottoneu system used on FanGraphs, there's a sort of collective arbitration system as follows:
"Allocations
a. The allocation system gives a $25 budget to each team in the league. The team can allocate this budget towards players on other teams. Each team must allocate at least one dollar to every other team, and no team can allocate more than $3 to any other team. At the end of the allocation period, all players have their salary increased by the amount allocated towards them. Allocations take place after the initial offseason salary increase, so any allocations will be in addition to the $1 or $2 increase each player gets at the end of the season.
b. If a team does not allocate at least one dollar to every other team, none of their allocations will count and it will be as if they did not participate at all."
Note that ottoneu has 40-man rosters and $400 budgets, there are no long-term contracts, and resigning a player increases their salary by $2 (or $1 if they have no MLB service time), if you're wondering how this fits into the overall contract structure.
In general, I think the whole 40-man roster thing is bonkers overkill, but I do think the arbitration allocation thing is interesting. We could pretty much guarantee, for example, that everyone would allocate a few dollars to Trout, and suddenly he'd be priced fairly (I assume from the description that everyone allocates simultaneously, which could lead to weird results if people do a bad job anticipating each other, but you could always order it, probably starting with first place and going through last). More generally, the power of keepers, especially big-ticket ones, would be reduced, which would in turn decrease the incentive to punt early on the current season.
Brad S
Todd I like that idea if we could work it into our current keeper system. I think it would make things fair. If we have a player in a multi year contract would that allow us to opt out of the contract? Would we say you can only apply dollars to players who are in contract years (I like this idea)?
Nicholas
I like the allocation idea. It sounds perfect for Steve as well. I suppose if it were used to make borderline players unkeepable (each owner would probably have different targets, but this might be one), that would help people who thought there were too many contracts.
Todd, I see your point about the rewards. I agree that it could make later season matchups more interesting for owners who are otherwise out of it. I just want to make sure it doesn't accidentally reward teams that aren't making enough effort to rebuild, versus a team that is making an effort, however misguided, to acquire many prospects. While we can't completely solve the problem of the league historically having haves and have nots - some owners are just better at fantasy baseball than others, and everyone has a different amount of time he/she can allocate - I want to make sure not to exacerbate it.
Ryan
Are you trying to say I'm bad at this?
Nicholas
Didn't you make the playoffs the previous two years?
Todd
That didn't actually happen, Ryan just dreamt it.
Nicholas
Well, at any rate, at this point we have enough history to show that Matt's better at fantasy baseball than everyone else, and George, Mike, and you (Todd) are in the next tier. Ryan and I, among others, are pretty far below that.
Brad S
I think Todd should formally propose his suggestion.
Todd
Before we settle on it we might want to put it in front of the league as a whole, rather than just those of us savvy to pay attention to G+. For one thing, even if people like the core idea, the numbers probably don't translate from ottoneu, so we might as well give people a chance to hash things like that out rather than just presenting a finished proposal. Particularly since I think this could conceivably lead to a revamp of the whole keeper system (if it necessitates year-to-year contracts only).
Brad S
Todd... that's what I was referring to. Put it up on the ESPN site to talk it over.
I think we would need to vote on the idea overall and then hash out the invidual details.
And I may not have been clear on what I meant earlier with allocations. I meant it to come across that if a player is currently in a contract (that isn't expired) you cannot add to them. But any other players you can. So if you have a player who has just finished year 2 of 3 year contract you can't raise his price. But if the player just finished year 3 of his 3 year contract he would be able to have the acquisition dollars added therefore if you want to sign that player their new base value is changed and you still have to apply the 5,3,1 on top of the new base value. So it's a combination of our current system with theirs.
I see us being able to insert this in between "start of season" and declaring keepers at which point all new base values for players not in contracts could be established.
Nicholas
There could be a way to give the owners an opt-out chance if the player's non-expiring contract increases 33% or more (just a random number). I like the idea of being able to allocate money to player under contract. The more strategy the better! In terms of a total amount, $25 isn't so far off, but I think it's too high. That gives every owner $10 to play with after you allocate $1 to the other 15 teams. I would say perhaps having $3-5 left over is better, so more like $18-20. But yes, post it to the league.
Michael
What kind of shenanigans is this? Don't make me get all 'military rule' on you. Yeah, I'll abolish those civil liberty's... and that apostrophe is for you, Nick. Rabble rousers.
Todd
What on earth are you talking about, Mike?
Nicholas
I think he's just joking around. It seems unlikely he would actually get upset about people throwing around rules changes on a public forum.
Michael
As Nick surmised, just poking fun. I check in once a month to keep my eyes on you savvy G+ followers to make sure you're not fomenting rebellion.
Nicholas
We only foment rebellion in the private group "RBL Commissioner Grievances and Coup Planning"
Michael
Crap. Can I join?
To answer Ryan's initial question: 1.
Todd
It's the only place where Steve and George can agree on anything.
Ryan
VIVA LA REVOLUCION!
