The Alomar and Barfed divisions

Jesse was one of my favourites, so I'll avoid jokes. 

I knew posting before my third cup of coffee was a bad idea.

Greatest. Typo. Ever.

 

I am have been made painfully aware that at least a few of my fellow owners disagree with the following proposal: The number of keepers per team should be increased to seven. Although I am fully prepared that this proposal has little chance of passing, and may not even be seconded, but I (New Jersey Stratuses of Alomar Division) hereby propose it nonetheless!

I'd support an increase in keepers, l'll second the suggestion.

Well, it has been a while posting. I'll third the increase in keepers and also propose individual outfield positions. Breaking things up to a LF, CF, RF and one OF. I know I'm a bit of a nut, but I feel this brings it slightly closer to managing an actual team as opposed to fantasy.

Seven sounds like a good # of keepers to me too.

As the other teams in Alomar know, I had a trade vetoed in the middle of a playoff race last season, and it kind of soured the whole 2010 BBFL experience for me.  It’s my opinion that some changes should be made to the trade review process to avoid having that happen to other owners in the future.

I don't have all the answers, but I think there are two areas that could use some improvement:

1.    Providing some guidelines for when a veto is justified.

The only reference in the constitution right now as to when the veto should be used is that “owners may protest trades they feel are not in the best interest of the league by emailing the Commissioner”.

Up to last year, I had only seen the veto employed when an owner was purposefully throwing in the towel on his team (the owner attempted to drop all his remaining players the next day).  I was under the impression that the only real justifications for vetoing was in that situation, where an owner clearly intended to defeat the interests of the league, or where an owner broke one of the rules in the constitution (i.e. trading for future considerations).  I didn’t think it could be used to second-guess an owner’s strategy or “protect” an owner from what the trade committee saw as an improvident trade.  In the trade of mine that was vetoed last year, the only justification I saw given was that “three-for-one trades in which the one is not clearly better than one of the players in the three” should be vetoed.  I don’t have a problem with that principle per se, but my objection was that it should have been in the constitution, since if I had known that was a vetoable offense, I would have protested other trades that toed that line throughout last season.

I just feel something should be in place in the constitution, so new owners know when they should or shouldn’t be protesting trades, and any new members to the trade committee know how to vote.

As a first principle to get the ball rolling, I’ll crib from the constitution and suggest:

The trade veto may be employed in the following situations:
Any trade involving future considerations, draft picks, cash or merchandise.

Perhaps other owners can put forward more principles, and each can be voted on.


2.     Changing from trade committee to... something else.

I’ve never been a fan of having a five-member trade committee.  I’ve never understood why it couldn’t just be a league-wide yes or no vote.  In my time in BBFL, every owner I’ve dealt with has enough fantasy-savvy and enough respect for the league to be able to vote sensibly on a trade protest, and I’d prefer to go the democratic route than having a select group of five owners with veto power.

The other option that I can see working is that Yahoo offers a trade review service this year for $19.99.  I’d gladly be willing to pony up the extra $1 per year if that’s the way people wanted to go.

I guess my rule change proposal would be to pose two questions to the league::
1) Do you wish to keep the five-member trade committee?
2) If the trade committee is abolished, should it be replaced by:
(a) a league wide vote, with the exception of two owners involved in the trade
(b) the Yahoo trade review service
(c) whatever other ideas other owners may have

The first question would have the regular 75% threshold employed, the second question should be whatever option gets the most votes.

I second the proposal to vote on whether to amend the way trades are reviewed in the BBFL.  As a member of the trade committee in previous years, I can attest to how contentious the trade review process can be and think its worth putting this back to the league for discussion and a vote.

If the vote succeeds to replace the 5-member trade review committee, my preference would be for a league vote and not paying Yahoo to review trades.  While there is some value to having a third party review the trade, it would be very difficult for Yahoo to know all of the particulars of our league that would help them in making a decision.  I believe that the people who actually play in the league are better placed to do so, even if they have a vested interest in the trade being approved or vetoed.  Finally, having the Commish need to collect $1 from everyone is an administrative burden that I do not think is worth the trouble.

Regarding the "League Votes" method of trade review that Yahoo provides, the following comes from the Yahoo help pages: "In a Custom League set for league votes as the trade-review method, a protest from one-third of managers will result in a veto. So, a 12-team league requires four votes for a veto. We always round fractions up, so a ten-team league also requires four votes, even though one-third of ten is actually three-and-a-third. If the commissioner assumes control, only the commissioner can approve or veto trades."  So if my math is correct, that would require 7 owners to veto a trade in BBFL. 

If we maintained the "Commisioner" veto setting on Yahoo, we could establish our own guidelines on trade review voting by the league and have the Commish implement the veto if it is passed.  That being said, 7 out of 18 doesn't seem like a bad threshold and would again take much of the administrative onus of reviewing trades off the Commish.

I second this proposal.

I whole heartedly that league votes are the way to go -- and 7 no votes to veto a trade seems reasonable.

I'd add one suggestion, in a league I'm in veto'd trades get a second chance on the message boards for the teams involved to explain why the trade make sense for them and their team. The trade is then re-proposed and voted on. This helps because we all value players differently, teams have different goals at the end of the season... it also makes owners think before vetoing because they know they'll have to go through the process again.

Whatever the implementation, I think a league-wide vote is a much better option than a trade committee.

I propose adding the ability to trade draft picks. Yahoo has added this as a new feature so let's take advantage of it.

Draft picks can only be traded during the pre-season trading period and only the current seasons pick can be traded. This will prevent promotion / regulating teams from losing their picks. Either that or promoted / regulated teams automatically regains their picks. So trade at your own risk.

Coach made a proposal via the Alomar message board:

I propose a new method of dealing with the issue of unbalanced rosters for teams changing divisions. All players owned by relegated or promoted teams go into a temporary FA pool. All owners new to that division meet in a chat room and conduct a snake draft of all those players. They don't have to draft everyone, just keepers and trade candidates. After 7 or 8 rounds, an owner can pass. When all have passed, the EQ draft is over. Puts the new owners on more equal footing.

The only downside is more work for Gwyn. Adding an assistant commish is one solution, and as I'm no longer involved with the trade committee, please consider me a volunteer to "run" the three EQ drafts.

I second this proposal, and I propose we accept Coach's offer that he be the one to run the EQ drafts.

I don't think it's been seconded so I'm going to second the proposal to split the OF positions into LF, CF, RF and OF.

Cristian
Edmonton Decepticons
Barfield-->Alomar-->Barfield

I'm all in favour of splitting the OF positions, but I hereby propose an alternative way of doing it: CF, OF, OF and OF.

I have no issue with the other proposed rule changes but really like the idea of expanding the number of keepers to seven.

I second Alex's proposed outfield split of CF, OF, OF, OF.

Strange that everybody who has chimed in here is in favour of more keepers while on the Alomar board all the talk is against it. How would it make the league better? Seems to me it would just make it a lot harder to rebuild and would make the draft much less interesting.

I'd also support a move to 7 keepers per team as well as a league vote on trades rather than a trade committee.

 

I'd also like to throw out the suggestion that we change the length of time team's are allowed to keep players on their team from 3 to 4 years. 

 

Noah - Tequila Bombers - Barfield

I believe that trading draft picks and draft position could make things interesting, but that such trading should be restricted to the predraft preseason time before keepers are declared, and only related to the upcoming draft and season. Future years not permitted.

The big question is whether owners can be trusted to properly evaluate the trading of a draft pick or draft position. There are already issues about whether some teams wisely trade players to the detriment of the league, but draft picks and draft position would have a very foreign valuation that could be very misunderstood. When you start trading players for draft picks, or for draft position changes, it is an entirely new beast.

A proposal I'd like to see happen is trading draft picks for draft position. Say, is it worth an 8th round pick to move from 11th pick to 4th? It is an unknown market for most who haven't tested with it before, and I believe that as difficult as it is to understand what picks are worth trading draft position it is then much more difficult to trade for a player as a keeper and know what draft picks should be surrendered. So, if draft picks are to be traded, how about only trading them for moving draft position, for at least a couple years, so owners could get more familiar with the value of trading picks (and draft position) Also, one could add waiver position as an independent commodity. This wouldn't seem to be much harder than tracking the trading of keepers pre-season.

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As for the equalization draft, I'd say new teams to the league should be able to select from more than the recently vacated teams but also allowing the existing teams to protect only 6 or 7 players. And to acknowledge, this scenario is making considerable work for someone in the preseason, and requiring owners to confirm in say January that they will play and decide on their protected players by February 1. If the aim of this sort of project is to create more league balance, I'd also offer existing teams the opportunity to throw their whole roster in the ring and join the equalization draft, on the chance that they didn't get relegated but would like a shot at new keepers on a level field with the new owners.

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Most all of the proposed rule changes would quite dramatically alter the game, including the suggestions to add more keepers and less so to modify the OF positions. One could also suggest to modify the stat categories ( I kind of like changing SB to 'net SB') or increase the roster size. But what among these proposals are addressing an existing issue with the game rather than looking for ways to refocus the skills needed to win for no other reason than to experiment with something new? The only ones I see doing something in direct response to problems that exist are the proposals to change trade review to avoid disputes and the proposal to create more competitive balance through an equalization draft. If other proposals are in response to anything other than the imagination of a more difficult game, I don't know what it is. I have imagination myself, so I understand. I also understand that dramatically altering the game could turn off existing players and it would feel very improper to so dramatically change the game as to push long-standing players out. If you change the mode of competition too much, you could drastically alter the competitive balance and thus ruin the game. With whatever rule changes are put forward, I believe this must be kept in mind.

In the scale of how much proposals alter the game, adding keepers is very high; higher than adding stat categories; which is higher than altering a stat category; which is higher than adding a roster spot; which is higher than altering OF positions.

And things like trading draft picks and EQ drafts largely depend on how well they are understood because they are largely new dynamics unto themselves, far unlike anything the game currently employs. This concludes my 2 cents.

Just a reminder - All seconded proposals as of the end of Saturday will be voted on by email next week. 

I have a proposal to change the inactive owners rule.  This is dependent on yahoo introducing the functionality to change team ownership mid-season which they are promising.

"Owners agree to remain active until their teams are eliminated - any owner who's 'last activity' date on yahoo is over one calendar month old can be replaced by the owner at the top of the league's waiting list, unless an absence has already been agreed with the league."

Two reasons for this, having an inactive team is a real pain, and we had a lot of responses for new owners. So there's no reason for us to have any abandoned teams

I second Gwyn's proposal to replace inactive owners, on the condition that we change "who's" to "whose".

To be clear, does "'last activity' date on yahoo" just look at player adds & drops or does it account for signing in to Yahoo and/or rearranging players on the roster? I support the concept but it shouldn't be tied just to transactions as some managers don't spin the dials just for the sake of spinning the dials.

Speaking of... I wonder if an anti-streaming rule would fly this year... lousy monkeys...

I'm opposed to most solutions to pitcher streaming, mostly because the Randy Wolves have a proud tradition of relentlessly streaming position players, and the proposed solutions tend to involve transactions limits. We would be forced to change our way of life. But I would be all in favour of the following rule:

Maximum 10 games started per week by your pitching staff. (8? 12?)

I doubt Yahoo lets you create such a rule, though. I believe they let you set a total GS limit for the season, but I don't like that - how people leverage that rule would play a crucial role down the stretch, which would be awful.

On deeper inspection, not even that - though they do let you set an innings limit up to 50 innings per week.

The last activity would not be based solely on transactions; activity could be any alteration to the roster (moving guys to and from bench, etc.), posting messages, updating status message.

Yahoo does have an option to limit the number of transactions per week, which could put a cap on streaming. Having 7 - 10 per week would allow a reasonable amount of activity (while yes, allowing some streaming of pitchers ) yet there would be a known limit of transactions rather than the endless stream that gets unsightly.

I would second a rule implementing a weekly transaction limit.

In that case, let's propose a limit of 10 transactions per week.

This should not limit those who like to tinker while also providing a check on how far streaming can go. While I appreciate that part of the fun in the game is maneuverability, there is a point at which it goes too far. Those who might go for broke in a given week will have to be judicious; while those who never make more than a couple transactions in a week will yawn and wonder why some bother tinkering at all.

It may be modified in following seasons, but let's give this a go.

I want to vote for switching to 7 keepers and also to switch from 4 OF to OF,CF,LF,RF

I dont mind streaming, i think its a strategy people take all the way from the draft. If it was set at 10 or 12 moves per week i dont think it will effect anyone though so i am fine with that

I e-mailed Gwyn after this was posted to join and I have yet to hear back. :/