Rule Change Proposal

I understand what is trying to be achieved here, but don't think its the solution. Its far too complex a problem... The idea that I wouldn't be able to trade a pick for something else, like additional picks doesn't work for me. Granted, I've not seen that sort of offer and with so few picks, its probably not going to happen. I think leagues, as in real life, you need all sorts of team philosophies, including failed building philosophies. If winning the league is not a goal of everyone in the league then that I think its a biggest problem. And its a problem for more than this league.
Our collective access to prospect information has made having the best farm system far more exciting and valuable than winning a league.

I don't have a solution for this except a GM review process, but its not like there is a long list of people getting into Sim baseball that you can hire and fire GMs at will.

oh, thats not what I mean for GM review. not Trade Review, but GM review. A process where by the Executive Board / Commissioners of the league discuss whether or not a GM is participating in the Spirit of the League, aka to win the league.
If a GM consistently does the things above that you find offensive, then they should be put before this board, and in the off season a full review of the persons contribution to the League and the League community are weighed and evaluated.

I've been in leagues where this was done with a point system... One such league had article writing / forums participation as a means to evaluate GMs. maybe they weren't very good at drafting or building a team, but they brought other things to the league.
In this league it was suggested that every month we write at least 2 articles, if we didn't write them, we lost the ability to participate in what was essentially "waivers" for the league. Prolific writers were rewarded with cap space, or waiver priority increases or other. Each month is reset, if you missed a month of activity, the next month you were out for participating until you made up the quota. These things are hard to mandate because real life and such... I've been trying to find a baseball league that had the same sort of commitments as this league I was in (it was hockey) and I've not really found it.

I do respect what you are looking to achieve here, in your rule change. what I was getting at is that its the same thing so many other leagues across fantasy sports are trying to achieve and no one has the solution. My offer of a suggestion would be as I explained a GM review panel, where as seasons end, each GM was reviewed. Do you send in line up changes? Do you participate in online discussions? If your team isn't winning, does it look like you have a plan... what is that plan? (maybe you are asked to submit a formal document with an outline.)

taking a look at my own situation. I'm what 6 months in, when I started, some encouraged me to push all in for 2017. I didn't;t see a rotation that was going to do anything in 2017, even if I got to the WC game. $1.5mil in additional cap space??? not worth trading away future assets for that... so I started trying to move pieces, conscious told me I wouldn't have someone who assaulted a woman on my team. I started losing a lot when he was removed. Find a bright spot on the Twins, that doesn't have a shit ton of risk... ok, so my team sucks, I didn't send in a bunch of line up changes, because I didn't think there was a way to fix a broken roster for 2017. So I try to participate as much as I can in the league forums. You can't kick the guy who brings donuts out of the league.. who will bring the donuts. you get what im saying, I'm sure...

So... Establish a League Code of Ethics... and a review process for GMs... but, I dare say build up a wait list first. else you'll have vacant teams when no one can live up to the expectations.

hmmm.... I'd like more draft myself... and actually, I prefer an amateur draft that has a pool of only signed amateurs out of the summer MLB draft. (have it take place starting the weekend after the signing deadline, or better still in the off season too add activity and fun in the cold winter months... yeah its freaking cold up here..!!) more rounds, maybe teams under that win threshold can't trade more than a certain number of picks from the draft or pick quality.

well, if you want to remove the possibility of trading draft picks if a team hasn't won more than 70 games. It fits my plan, so go for it. ; )
I would just like to find a way to devalue the pick, so that its closer to the value of the player drafted. it appears as soon as you select a player with a pick, the value of that player drops like a rock!

how about expand draft, but keep rosters somewhat tight. MLBSA keeps adding on and adding on, again so that no one has to lose a player ever. then... you can draft... or you can keep a player you already have. ; )

now, I love deep systems, I was in league where after the 10 round amateur draft, teams got ownership of everyone in the corresponding MLB team system that had played in the US minor leagues, no DSL type stuff. thats how international guys where split up. I was the Royals in that league, I got really familiar with that system, watching out for A guys in GCL to make sur they were property of my Royals and not someone else. OotP allows for complete farm systems, so tracking was fairly easy. I had sheet after sheet in a worksheet following my system players as they went up the system. players couldn't be used unless they were place on the MLB team 40 man, and had a projection.

you know I like that system idea too. once a MLB team places a guy on the 40 man, he should have to be placed on any fantasy league 40 man. forced activation. how the heck was Altherr sitting in the minors for 2 years... shit, now no one wants him, HAHAH

oh oh right, sorry sidetracked (im bored, and its so cold outside) more draft rounds, but same roster sizes. teams that keep shitting away picks can't trade the draft picks from the first half of the draft. 6rounds, can't trade 1-3.

This new rule sounds about as logical as the logic exhibited by other GM's that you are complaining about. If every year there is a discussion about the have's and have-not's in this league and things continue to stay the same then it sounds like they may not be very productive discussions. I've only been here a year, thanks in large part to the death penalty issued to a previous have-not that was otherwise a good guy and possibly original owner who I believe recruited at least a couple current GM's? Overall he sounds like someone you'd want in your league. He may have been the least successful, but based on the team histories he was far from the only one. I think the framework of the league creates a have/ have-not system and it is further magnified by the cost of talent. The other thing I have noticed that plays a role in all this is there are more than a couple GM's that would rather have the best prospects instead of the best team.

This is exactly what I've experienced. ie the 8th pick in the first round has a certain value, but as soon as you take the consensus 8th best player available,  that player's value drops precipitously.  Even if 30 guys agree that's who they'd take at #8. (its a vague example, I get it no 30 people are going to agree, but the point remains.)  

I really think more rounds of the draft, and keeping tighter roster restrictions would force decision making, and players on the fringe would trickle down.  I can't believe I typed that...

Id like to say here that I'm not sure if this would work, but I appreciate and respect someone throwing it out there...
I learn more about people from interactions / discussions on league message boards and talking about league rules theory is interesting to me.

keeping things the same because its easiest has never been the way I like to go about things... and I do think leagues such as this need to find 30 guys rowing in the same direction. I wish there were more leagues, or at least the number of sim leagues increasing but thats not really the case... so its difficult for all of us to find a perfect marriage. I've been in a bunch of leagues and always found the ones with dead message boards, where ideas aren't thrown out, and discussed are boring as shit.


I really think some of y'all need to use the "block" feature if its a part of this message board system.

Just to further my thoughts on using an expanded draft to free up value a little more I looked at success of all 30 franchises. I chose to focus on playoff success going back to 2003 (15 seasons) to show just how difficult this league is to win.

3 teams have never made the playoffs
3 teams have never won a Division Series (all 3 have multiple WC appearances though)
11 teams have what I would call only 1 successful playoff year (past WC round)
4 teams had only 2 successful playoff runs
Of the remaining 9 teams, 4 of them have seen "limited" success this decade, 1 owns the most championships, 2 have never won the WS and the remaining 2 have, but not in the past 5 years.
Translating overall regular season wins to WS: The top 8 teams in wins since 2003 have 6 WS titles (3 owned by one team). The bottom 6 have been to the playoffs a collective 5 times. Overall it would appear that being bad just breeds staying bad and being good usually does not last long.

After all this I'm sure you are wondering what is the point? Well my thoughts are playoff success is limited. There should be an ability to "go all in" which does not cripple you, good teams should be a little more successful (I know playoffs are a crapshoot) and most importantly re-builds should be a little quicker. I am seeing a pattern of 3-4 bad years produce 2 good years if it worked. The cost of talent and winning is prohibitive for many teams. We should look at doing something to reduce the cost of winning, promote player movement and reduce draft-pick ROI.

I hate it when you talk to me like I'm not even here.

I have thoughts on some of the ideas brought up here, but I am way behind at work right now (New Year. No Motivation!) and need to get caught up so I can't take an hour to write out a long reply just now. I can tell you that the committee does veto more trades than Jim is aware of. Lately the really lopsided ones don't even get posted to the board. Hayes will forward them to the committee to vote on and typically when that happens they get vetoed and reworked before anyone even sees them. This happens multiple times a year.

As for the "been here since the league's inception v. been here a year" argument. It's irrelevant. Everyone has the right to an opinion and to voice it. We don't play the Nativism game here. I've said over and over I treasure the opinions of the newer owners because they bring fresh ideas. If we keep doing what we've always done, we'll end up where we've always been. Nothing would change.

I don't think I like the idea of locking draft picks. As some have pointed out, picks have more value than actual players if you trade them at the right time. During the offseason, picks hold their least value, but during and right as the draft starts, they are overvalued. They are like stocks, you have to know when to trade/sell them to get the best ROI on them.

John was actually voted out a year before he was removed. I just didn't have the heart to do it. I didn't want to do it. I never want to remove an owner from this league. But it really did get to the point where his actions were creating competitive advantages and disadvantages in the league by his trades. He was constantly the short end of the stick on nearly every trade he made. I assume most of you here have seen the movie Little Big League where the kid manages the Twins. Remember the scene where his favorite player, who is past his prime, gets a single and Billy gets all excited until (I think...) the hitting coach, says something like "how bad has he gotten for you to get excited over just a single". It got that way with John's trades. Anytime he made one that was actually fair, I'd get excited. But usually, he would just trade anything of value he had the first chance he got for instant, short term, gratification. I tried to talk to him more than a handful of times about this. I tried to tell him to just suck for awhile. Accept that. His team was going to suck anyways, steer into the slide. Draft players and hold onto them. Keep them and create a supply of prospects instead of drafting a guy, then first time the NTC is removed, trading him for two replacement level veterans just to fill your 25. Then those contracts would be over at the end of the year and he'd have to do the same thing again to replace those guys. I know Sean spoke to him probably as much as I did to try to help him out, but he refused to take our advice. Instead the team just got further and further into the black hole that Mike inherited.

We've discussed adding more rounds and expanding rosters and such before. The league was pretty split on it so we made the rule we did. We went from 50 total to 55, with the provision that we would add an extra roster spot every offseason until we hit 60 total roster spots (25 active, 35 reserve). We also decided to table any discussion of further roster expansion until we reached that point. I think we're at 57 this offseason. Having tighter roster limits helps eliminate our need to have a 40-man roster and is less work for all owners and the committee. We have a lot of casual owners here. And some I would call less than casual. We don't expect a high level of activity, but it would be nice if some of the sub-casual owners were a little more active.

At the end of the day, any prospective rule change has to be looked at from the perspective of "how much work is it going to cause the committee to monitor" and how are we going to monitor it? As Jason said, we don't exactly have new owners breaking down our doors to get in, so instituting new rules that would eventually get rid of the more casual owners might not be in the best interest of the league.

Shit... I spent more time writing that I wanted. No motivation to do my job I tell ya...