Fantasy Baseball pet peeves.

[Fresno Bob]

Sounds like loser talk to me.

not all of us get to play against Badger and Skinny Pete

[chancellor]

It's also true in my experience that it is extremely hard to come up with a rule that will prevent early dumping. Does anyone know an effective way to combat this?

Only one that's worked in my experience is a salary cap/floor rule. It's nowhere near perfect, but it usually limits really early dumping.

[gcstomp]

Rule that will prevent early dumping? Only thing would be gentlemens agreement, no dumping till june 1st, or whatever and have everyone agree to abide by it by their honor. Especially in a new startup league, no one should be dumping early in a fresh league as we are starting from ground up all together.

I had a friend that attended a specialized tiny university, Webb Institute, where every student took an honor pledge of zero tolerance, no cheating, period. During exams, prof would start test and leave room, and students would take exam. No one would talk, no one would cheat. And it worked. Because from the start you began with deeply honorable people of high character who were honor bound to not cheat. In this day and age that sort of thing can still work? Yeah, believe it or not, that sort of thing can still work. If you have the right people.

But you cant regulate dumping away with layers of rules, you merely set yourself up for a thicker rulebook, and more interpreting.

[mgwiz22]

Years ago I tried the "honor" system. It doesn't work. Even seemingly honorable people have different ideas of what is allowable. Additionally, some people aren't honorable and yet you like having them in the league.

We have had dumping threads before. They deserve their own thread but there is no perfect solution.

I don't believe in early or late dumping. Dumping trades should never be allowed. I've tried implementing rules adding to the price of traded players "after" a certain date. If people are dumping early in the season then perhaps you have to consider dumping them or changing the very basic rules of the league relating to the number of players kept or their price. Being able to keep players shouldn't lead to situations where incoming, or existing, teams cannot compete. League keeper rules should allow people to have an advantage but not such an advantage, in normal situations, that other teams have no chance to beat them.

[hacko]

We do have a rule that all trades before the dump season have to be to improve your team for this year. We also have a four year title. And of course who every comes in last has to change his team name to Assmonkey for the next year.

[Pogues]

I'm not sure I ever agree that it's the case that a team goes into an auction with no chance of winning the league.

You didn't see the league I joined last year. I finished 5th out of 12, and I was pretty stoked about that. Their dumb ass keeper rules give the advantage to the guys who have a $2 Trout and other such players.

[DMT]

It's true that in extremely deep leagues it can be difficult to compete with amazing keeper lists.

It's also true in my experience that it is extremely hard to come up with a rule that will prevent early dumping. Does anyone know an effective way to combat this?

Any players traded before X date (e.g., June 1st) can not be kept.

[mjl]

I don't believe in early or late dumping. Dumping trades should never be allowed.

Never? Never ever? You should never be allowed to make a trade that makes your team worse this year and better next year? How does that even work? Do you not play with minor leaguers? It seems like it would be frustrating to be doing poorly and know that you can't do anything except hope to do better in free agent pickups or next year's auction.

[gcstomp]

Yeah no rebuilding ever would be a terrible playground for those teams coming in playing against stocked teams. But on bright side, you would never fill the empty teams that left and league would soon fold anyway. Rebuilding is an important part of deep leagues where you might have 10 major league keepers and 15 farm keepers per team in an 18 tm league.

You have to have a grip on your environment. I joined RJEL last year, a league with those keeper parameters and a history of rebuilders. Of course I went rebuild, so I have a reason to play for last year (rather than twiddle thumbs, and to have some ownership of players I want rather than whatever was inherited).

More than 2/3rds of the league makes many trades to rebuild and it is part of the entire point of the thing. One team even went rebuild who was sitting in 2nd or 3rd place at the time because he viewed not finishing 1st as same as finishing as last. I do not advocate hat type of extreme view, but it is crazy to say no rebuild.If you want a different playground you need to blow the entire thing up and have a fresh league where from the start people agree to no dumping until a certain date.

[mgwiz22]

Yeah no rebuilding ever would be a terrible playground for those teams coming in playing against stocked teams. But on bright side, you would never fill the empty teams that left and league would soon fold anyway. Rebuilding is an important part of deep leagues where you might have 10 major league keepers and 15 farm keepers per team in an 18 tm league.

You have to have a grip on your environment. I joined RJEL last year, a league with those keeper parameters and a history of rebuilders. Of course I went rebuild, so I have a reason to play for last year (rather than twiddle thumbs, and to have some ownership of players I want rather than whatever was inherited).

More than 2/3rds of the league makes many trades to rebuild and it is part of the entire point of the thing. One team even went rebuild who was sitting in 2nd or 3rd place at the time because he viewed not finishing 1st as same as finishing as last. I do not advocate hat type of extreme view, but it is crazy to say no rebuild.If you want a different playground you need to blow the entire thing up and have a fresh league where from the start people agree to no dumping until a certain date.

I guess your way is the right way as our league has only lasted 30 years now. 2/3rds of your league is rebuilding? You seem to consider fantasy leagues to be Sim City type of platforms. I don't see things that way. Teams should be focused on the present not the future. You should be able to rebuild thru the auction and in season free agent pick ups. You could change that focus simply by getting rid of the 15 minor league farm team. If you have those kind of rules you shouldn't be complaining about dumping trades as you've inherently agreed that dumping is part of the system.

[gcstomp]

mg, you do get there are a few voices regarding the issue of rebuilding. I commented on someone else who views it as a pet peeve, and how to handle it. This is a pet peeve thread, so everone here has an issue, or is commenting on some elses issue. I do not have issue with rebuilding efforts in a keeper league other than someone burning a team to ground, leaving league, and leaving a spot that will be hard to fill following year. You have been in a league for 30+ years, and said the following: I don't believe in early or late dumping. Dumping trades should never be allowed.

I am sure, 100%, that your 30+ year league, if it is reasonably deep, if it is a keeper, there exists rebuilding in your league. So your belief that there should never be rebuilding can co exist fine with the boards view of how to handle that rebuilding effort. (In other words, you do not approve, but it happens.) I am not sure what the 30+ year means unless it truly is for a league that holds your view, that there exists no rebuilding in your keeper league, in which case I would love to hear from someone else in that league regarding that and the league parameters .

[TyWebb004]

It's hard. I don't like overly meddlesome rules but the "race to the bottom" thing is a real source of frustration for a lot of folks. Some of that is just inevitable in a keeper league, but man the May 1st dumpers really dramatically change the course of the league for the year. I'm thinking about maybe implementing a stepped salary cap that increases as you progress into the season. I've never actually played in a league with a salary floor, so I'm not sure what the repercussions of doing that would really be.

In the league that I help run, a salary cap and floor really curbs the amount of dump trades that any one particular team can make. We also have a rule that the team receiving the benefit of the dump trade can only get a maximum of three players from the team getting the keeper. We just recently added a rule stating that you can only receive one keeper from another particular team per year, which closed a loophole that was taken advantage of by a few teams.

All FA bids during the year become that particular player's salary. In order to prevent manipulating one's roster floor, the amount of a player's initial FA bid is his permanent salary (unless released and someone bids a higher amount, in which that becomes his salary) towards the salary cap, and the salary of all FA players towards the salary floor is only $1.

[mgwiz22]

mg, you do get there are a few voices regarding the issue of rebuilding. I commented on someone else who views it as a pet peeve, and how to handle it. This is a pet peeve thread, so everone here has an issue, or is commenting on some elses issue. I do not have issue with rebuilding efforts in a keeper league other than someone burning a team to ground, leaving league, and leaving a spot that will be hard to fill following year. You have been in a league for 30+ years, and said the following: I don't believe in early or late dumping. Dumping trades should never be allowed.

I am sure, 100%, that your 30+ year league, if it is reasonably deep, if it is a keeper, there exists rebuilding in your league. So your belief that there should never be rebuilding can co exist fine with the boards view of how to handle that rebuilding effort. (In other words, you do not approve, but it happens.) I am not sure what the 30+ year means unless it truly is for a league that holds your view, that there exists no rebuilding in your keeper league, in which case I would love to hear from someone else in that league regarding that and the league parameters .

You are completely misrepresenting what I said. I said that there shouldn't be dumping trades. I did not say that teams don't rebuild. Teams can build for the future through fair trades and by picking up free agents. It is a matter of degree and focus. We only allow players to be kept for three years.We don't have a minor league draft but we do have 10 reserves who can be anyone. Eight players can be kept. The eight players kept can definitely give a team an edge,sometimes a large edge, but not so much that the other teams in the league cannot compete. Yes there are trades which teams are making in order to acquire somebody to be kept for next year but they still must be exchanging arguably equal value for value in the present season.
I do agree that this discussion should not be in this thread but I will add that if your league rules are such that dumping trades are allowed and accepted then you have to accept them rather than be irritated by them.

[bryanbutler]

I like it. That's a great idea.

but eventually you have to precisely define a "dump" trade, and that can be tricky. at one point my main league had a terribly complex valuation system for current and future value for players, to try to evaluate "fairness" of a trade, in a quantitative way. it worked for a while, but was too cumbersome so we dealt away with it. but we still wanted to curb dumping, so we had an anti-dump rule. but it never worked because GMs made trades that they said were not dumps, but other GMs disagreed, and it just turned into he-said, she-said.

what we have now is a simple cap/floor definition:

C. Salary cap and floor: In order to limit dump and lopsided trades, there will be a salary cap and floor enforced. The salary cap and floor are:
1. based on full rosters, including reserve and DL players;
2. based on auction or FA salary;
3. there will be both a salary floor, which starts at $225 at the beginning of the season and decreases linearly to $175 at the trading deadline, and a salary cap, which starts at $320 at the beginning of the season and increases linearly to $350 at the trading deadline.

our roster czar has to know how to calculate what the cap and floor are each week (which is trivially simple), and compare team salaries against that, but it's not too cumbersome. (though it used to be *much* easier, because CBS displayed it on each GM's roster, but they've done away with that now...)

ETA: we haven't had a pre-june dump in years...

[mgwiz22]

but eventually you have to precisely define a "dump" trade, and that can be tricky. at one point my main league had a terribly complex valuation system for current and future value for players, to try to evaluate "fairness" of a trade, in a quantitative way. it worked for a while, but was too cumbersome so we dealt away with it. but we still wanted to curb dumping, so we had an anti-dump rule. but it never worked because GMs made trades that they said were not dumps, but other GMs disagreed, and it just turned into he-said, she-said.

what we have now is a simple cap/floor definition:

C. Salary cap and floor: In order to limit dump and lopsided trades, there will be a salary cap and floor enforced. The salary cap and floor are:
1. based on full rosters, including reserve and DL players;
2. based on auction or FA salary;
3. there will be both a salary floor, which starts at $225 at the beginning of the season and decreases linearly to $175 at the trading deadline, and a salary cap, which starts at $320 at the beginning of the season and increases linearly to $350 at the trading deadline.

our roster czar has to know how to calculate what the cap and floor are each week (which is trivially simple), and compare team salaries against that, but it's not too cumbersome. (though it used to be *much* easier, because CBS displayed it on each GM's roster, but they've done away with that now...)

ETA: we haven't had a pre-june dump in years...

While as I said I don't agree with dumping anytime, I can certainly agree that it can certainly be hard to prove a deal is a dump and harder to get people to agree on what is and isn't allowable. Having a hard cap is at least a way to curb these trades and, while not a perfect solution, is preferable to doing nothing and is a method that can be applied fairly to all.