Shandler's new format - "Rotisserie 500"

[BuckyBuckner]

I suspect that's just lag in their system and if your moves had affected yesterday's stats it would have eventually shaken out.

When you make moves retroactively like that you need to refresh the stats. It's in the Misc section of the commish pages. I did that and it looks like laron's stats for yesterday are correct now.

[TopChuckie]

When you make moves retroactively like that you need to refresh the stats. It's in the Misc section of the commish pages. I did that and it looks like laron's stats for yesterday are correct now.

Ah, ok, thanks. Did not know that.

[mgwiz22]

error message

I have a problem. I received this message from my bids:
Your Florida Marvins:

1.rel MRamirez TB: ERROR! player no longer on team -- ignoring bids.
1.prr JSands LAD
2.prr YTorrealba Tex
3.prr MOlivo Sea

I put Ramirez in as my drop and he was on my team when i made the bids otherwise I would have simply put these in an open slot. I believe that I dropped Ramirez yesterday when i noticed that he was still on my team.

[TopChuckie]

I have a problem. I received this message from my bids:
Your Florida Marvins:

1.rel MRamirez TB: ERROR! player no longer on team -- ignoring bids.
1.prr JSands LAD
2.prr YTorrealba Tex
3.prr MOlivo Sea

I put Ramirez in as my drop and he was on my team when i made the bids otherwise I would have simply put these in an open slot. I believe that I dropped Ramirez yesterday when i noticed that he was still on my team.

So you wanted Sands for Manny? I don't see any bid amount?

ETA: It looks like you released Manny Sunday before FAAB processed, so when it did go to process FAAB it voided the bids you had entered tied to Manny.

[mgwiz22]

When are the bids processed?

Here I is the copy and paste of the bids:

Bid Meister Moves queued for Your Florida Marvins
Replace the following player: By attempting, in this order:
release MRamirez TB 1.) bid 2 on JSands LAD as reserve
2.) bid 1 on YTorrealba Tex as reserve
3.) bid 1 on MOlivo Sea as reserve

This is there for all to see under view the Bid Meister bids.

[TopChuckie]

When are the bids processed?

Sunday night at 11:00 PM Eastern.

[TopChuckie]

Shandler's writeup on his two Roto500 drafts.

http://www.baseballhq.com/free/free110408.shtml

Interesting for comparison to ours. First thing that jumped out to me was our overbids went a lot higher, neither of Shandler's leagues went over $100 for a player, we did 4 times, and I'm guessing if we did it again, even more would. Each subsequent draft seems to have higher overbids. Toronto had 3 players over $70, NYC had 6, we had 10, I had 3 by myself.

In retrospect, I also think it's not quite as strategic as he would have you believe with this, "Budgeting decisions involve balancing draft roster value with FAAB availability." Considering I left myself with just $4 in FAAB after the draft and in the subsequent two weeks I won the bidding for all but 1 of the free agents I would have liked to add to my team, I'm concluding that you are far better off to spend big in the draft to obtain the elite talent. There will be easily attainable quality FA's available after the draft to fill any holes or strengthen your bench, plus they present better keeper possibilities. "There is a benefit to filling as many of your 40 slots as possible at the draft because the prices are potentially lower than FAABing." That is distinctly opposite of what I'm observing in our league.

Me:

I guess nominating your 37th-40th-ish best players would either get you a nice player if no one overbids, while preserving your overbid, or increase your chances at a Top 36 player if someone burns an over bid on a 37+ player.

Ron Shandler:

Here's a strategy that I believe wasn't tried...

Let's assume that, worst case scenario, the 36 players that generate auction calls are also the top 36 players. If you were to pass on attempting to roster any of these top players (due to inflated costs), you would end up with a low-priced roster but lesser players.

However, what if you kept tossing players that were borderline elite (i.e. ranked in the high 30s/low 40s) in an effort to draw out auction calls? After all the other owners had exhausted their three buys, there would conceivably be at least three players left from the original top 36. You would be able to roster each of these at $1 above list price, at worst. In fact, for every player outside the top 36 that generates an auction call, that's one more elite player potentially available to you at market value.

I think he's on the right path with his rule change ideas at the end of the article and I think part of the problem is a 12-team mixed league is too shallow. I think a deeper league would make the remaining quality FA's far more valuable and therefore make it more important to budget your Draft versus FAAB.

[joncarlos]

In retrospect, I also think it's not quite as strategic as he would have you believe with this, "Budgeting decisions involve balancing draft roster value with FAAB availability." Considering I left myself with just $4 in FAAB after the draft and in the subsequent two weeks I won the bidding for all but 1 of the free agents I would have liked to add to my team, I'm concluding that you are far better off to spend big in the draft to obtain the elite talent. There will be easily attainable quality FA's available after the draft to fill any holes or strengthen your bench, plus they present better keeper possibilities. "There is a benefit to filling as many of your 40 slots as possible at the draft because the prices are potentially lower than FAABing." That is distinctly opposite of what I'm observing in our league.

I agree. Ron seems to think that FAAB bids will be fairly crazy. Admittedly I did go a little nuts on Jonny Gomes this week and Brian Fuentes last week, but I think I was the only one. And I will also say that having depth did help me trade for Hanley, as did having cap space. So the flexibility isn't worthless. I just don't think it's as valuable as Ron expected.

Why? Because the FA pool is so deep that most of the time you can get the guys you want for under $5. And here's the important thing:

Unlike our "normal" leagues, you never run out of FAAB

You can just keep taking shots at people, and if it doesn't work out, you can drop them and get your money back. This is one of the things that attracted me to Roto500 - it's a fun idea.

I only drafted guys like a $17 Jason Bartlett at the end of the auction because I had cash left over, having used my toppers on 3 relatively cheap players. But if I didn't have cash left, I would have been happy to FAAB him for 3 bucks. Ron says:

Leaving the draft with a near-$500 roster gives zero flexibility for FAAB and forces the owner to start making early decisions on players and potentially aggressive cuts

True, cutting Jason Bartlett after 2 weeks IS aggressive. But so what? There are other fish in the sea because it's a 12-team mixed league.

Ron also says:

So we could take it another step forward. It might be interesting to allow unlimited bidding but reduce the cap to $400. That would truly force owners to approach the draft more tactically. Now who would be the most likely targets for auction calls? It would have to be only undervalued players, wouldn't it?

Let's ignore the unlimited auction part for a second and think about just cutting the cap to $400 and not changing anything else. I don't think cutting the cap to $400 would make the undervalued players get nominated. I do think it would make them more valuable in the 'draft' part. For example, the top "value" picks on my board were guys like $12 Cole Hamels, $12 Tommy Hanson, $11 Jay Bruce, $1 Cameron Maybin, etc. You'd probably see those guys going in the first 3-4 rounds and NOT getting called for auction. But you'd still see Pujols going for $80+. If you give a guy a shot at Pujols in a shallow league, he's going to take it.

If you made it an unlimited auction, that would just be a whole different animal. The only players NOT getting called out would be the guys who were OVERpriced. It would be a very different type of "draft" - not necessarily bad, but not the same thing at all.

It's definitely a good idea to look for ways to tweak things. I'm just not sure anyone knows the answers yet.

[mjl]

maybe this has been covered already, but what's the proper way to cut players? I tried to add a couple players as releases (or the site called them "conditional releases") but they didn't get released. I was able to do it through the set lineup page; is that what we're supposed to do?

- Mike

[TopChuckie]

maybe this has been covered already, but what's the proper way to cut players? I tried to add a couple players as releases (or the site called them "conditional releases") but they didn't get released. I was able to do it through the set lineup page; is that what we're supposed to do?

- Mike

You can cut them as part of an acquisition of another player, or you can cut them from your set lineup page, but don't do both because I think it will screw up your FAAB claims. If you tried to bid on players last night while cutting certain players and didn't win those bids, you can now cut those players on your lineup page and they will be off your team at the deadline today.

[TopChuckie]

Right. And don't forget, this is an experiment for Ron as well. They may want to tweak some of the rules based on how things play out during the year.

Personally I think TC is right, one week of waivers at their real salary and then they have no minimum. I think that would be fair. But maybe OnRoto can set it up to honor the rules as they were written.

FAAB bids for previously owned or drafted players is still not working properly at the website. You can still bid $1 for a player who has an established salary, if no one else bids you get the player for the $1 but his salary once on your team is his established salary. Maybe this is just the way it's going to be.

BuckyBuckner: prr EMeek Pit 1
BuckyBuckner: sal EMeek Pit 4

Your Florida Marvins: prr YMolina StL 1
Your Florida Marvins: sal YMolina StL 7

I don't even know where you would go to find out if a player you want has an established salary if you want to bid the correct amount.

[joncarlos]

When you're looking at free agents, they have a 'salary' column. Most guys are listed as $0. Molina was listed as $7. If you check Jason Bartlett you'll see it say $17 right now.

I actually thought the way it worked was fine. But if you didn't have room for a $7 Molina that would be a problem.

[TopChuckie]

When you're looking at free agents, they have a 'salary' column. Most guys are listed as $0. Molina was listed as $7. If you check Jason Bartlett you'll see it say $17 right now.

I actually thought the way it worked was fine. But if you didn't have room for a $7 Molina that would be a problem.

Yeah, just like last week it allowed me to win Anibal Sanchez for my $1 bid even though I didn't have the cap space for his $6 salary. If someone else with the cap space had bid, he might have gotten screwed. It needs to either force you to bid the salary amount, and not let you bid if you don't have the cap space, or it can allow you to bid whatever, like it does now, but not allow you to win the bidding if the player's salary will cause you to exceed your cap.

[Hawks Nest]

Still can't set lineup after free agent acquisitions. TC or BB here is this weeks lineup:

Torrealba
Ramon Hernandez

Votto
C. Lee
Betemit

Andrus
F. Sanchez
Izturis

Bourn
Quentin
Damon
Bay
Boesch
Wells

Pitchers are already set!

Thanks

[TopChuckie]

Still can't set lineup after free agent acquisitions. TC or BB here is this weeks lineup:

Torrealba
Ramon Hernandez

Votto
C. Lee
Betemit

Andrus
F. Sanchez
Izturis

Bourn
Quentin
Damon
Bay
Boesch
Wells

Pitchers are already set!

Thanks

Check it. I think it's right now, but you should still be able to adjust your actives and reserves until 7:00 PM today.