NBA-style Draft Lottery / Promoting winning

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NBA-style Draft Lottery / Promoting winning

Post by Cardinals »

Tullar brought this idea to my attention a few weeks back, and I hadn't an opportunity to post it here recently.
I was thinking that the league could stop awarding the top pick to the team with the worst record and instead have a lottery for the bottom 3 to 6 teams. It's easier than having to police rosters everyday and doesn't reward outwardly tanking.

What do you think? Two problems with trying to enforce the current roster rule: 1. What do you do? Take away a 1st round pick? Seems harsh and won't help the league retain GMs. and 2. Penalties are applied after the act has been committed so, well, the damage is already done. The league needs to take away the impetuous to do the deed instead of try to litigate the aftermath.
For the record, I don't think this is anything we can actually implement for this season, since rosters were constructed for 2017 with the current rules in mind.

That said, I do think we need to try to do something to curb tanking and promote winning. I'm not against the idea of something like compensatory picks for non-playoff teams with 80+ wins as well, to give some incentive to try to get a wild card or division crown.

Thoughts?
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Post by Cardinals »

To elaborate on my idea further, there were only 3 such teams last year to have 80+ wins and miss the playoffs. We can expand it to non-LDS teams, too, because as Brett told me on IM moments ago, it would suck to edge out a guy by a game only to play one game, and team X who finished a game behind you gets a pick, while you don't because you played one more game.

Clearly, the league has no use for players above the age of 29. It's sort of pathetic how twisted valuations are from team to team. Nils told me he'd be interested in Miguel Cabrera at a discount *next year* if he decides to compete. Votto went for a pile of shit. I think I had one offer for Justin Verlander all winter. And he should've won the Cy Young last year.
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Post by Rangers »

I'm not against a lottery. I think we have to be thoughtful about it. If you did a word association with the words tank and lottery, my immediate reply for both would be "NBA" - lotteries do not eliminate and don't necessarily disincentivize tanking and the NBA and NHL - where there is real detriment to losing like everyone losing their jobs and the club losing tons of money - prove that.

That said, I think it's pretty clear that the root of this discussion is that this is one of those years where a guy who some consider a singular talent is/may be available and a lottery would discourage the brand of tanking where you're trying to do whatever you can to be the absolute worst team. That's why the NBA created their lottery.

Lotteries encourage tanking for 68-or-so win teams, so I think that JP's second idea is good not only as a general incentive but also in tandem with a lottery if we introduce one as a specific counter-measure to the temptation, say, in one of those years when JB was the fifth or sixth worst team and all he would have had to do to have a shot at Yu or Strasburg or Harper ... oh wait he got all of them anyway ... but all he would have had to do to draft them was lose a few more games rather than win a few more.

The only thing that I think we should consider is if we think that the best way to discourage pretty bad teams from being terrible is to encourage mediocre teams to be pretty bad. It may very well be and I don't have a suggestion that I think would combat that more effectively.

Generally speaking, I definitely think that we have an issue in too much of our league not seeing the payoff in attempting to win 85 games, to sneak into the playoffs, or even to win 92 games and be a playoff team while knowing that they will be a big underdog. I think well designed measures to change that equation would be really good for the league.

I think that the utter disdain in our trade market for 30-somethings is in part a symptom of the root issues (things like best couple of teams are usually really intimidating, people underestimate their odds to win playoff series due to the flukiness of DMB and regressive nature of zips, etc) that cause the above problem, so rebalancing that would be another great benefit of combating the lack of motivation to be decent.
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Post by Rangers »

I also meant to mention - the flags on our team pages and of course the ones at the top of the page are absolutely a motivator to me. Shawn and JP created a legitimate, tangible incentive with those and they don't require any trade-offs as far as unintended results of rule changes. Anything that is essentially decoration that has that sort of effect also seems worth exploring.

An example - we keep track of all-time records and one of the bummers about the way I chose to start in the league and the approach I'm taking now is that my all-time record is taking a beating. I am certain that if all-time records were listed in order and plastered prominently it would have a psychological effect on me.
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Post by Astros »

I think offering a reward for teams that compete is the way to go. Maybe a sandwich pick between round 2 and 3 and make them available for trade like MLB does with competitive balance picks? I tanked for 3 seasons after throwing in the towel in 2011 and trading everything away except Wainwright and I think Seth Smith? I had absolutely terrible teams from 2012-2014 and my highest pick was 6th because other teams tanked harder. Even when I was tanking I always made sure I put the best possible lineup I had on the field so that I was trying to win, I always tried to win in h2h. Doing that cost me a chance at better players in the draft.

As for no incentive to make the playoffs if you're an 80ish win team, the playoffs are a crapshoot. If in any one of 3 innings of Game 5 of the NLCS I'm able to get a runner home from 3rd with less than 2 outs, I go to the World Series last year with 84 wins and a negative run differential. I'll take a shot at getting into the playoffs over picking 3 spots higher any day. Reward competitiveness. I'm also totally on board with a lottery to prevent someone like Bren from tanking for 5 or 6 straight years and being rewarded for it
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Post by Guardians »

I think this needs to be a larger discussion than just one or two posts each, but here's where I'm starting based on what's been discussed:

I do think we have a competitive balance issue and I do think it's based on what BP has said -- there are a handful of heavy handed teams in the league right now and if you're not one of them, you're not willing to invest in a shot at the playoffs that you think will end poorly. (Aaron's luck last year notwithstanding)

To BP's point, I think adding all-time wins/losses or some kind of tracker might be a cool thing that does motivate people to try a little harder. I know I'm never going to catch JB in wins, but maybe in winning percentage and I think we should display wins and winning percentage if we go that route so the long-timers and newcomers both have something to shoot for. Maybe just top 10 updated daily? Another discussion for another day...

As for the lottery, I can see where the idea comes from. But I also think it could easily create just as much incentive not to tank. There are some teams (right now) that simply aren't going to compete. Indians, Rangers, Dbacks, Rays, Braves, Mets, Red Sox, White Sox off the top of my head in reality cannot compete this year. So, the question is, do you really think they're going to try to out-tank each other for #1 overall? It's possible. If we had a lottery, do we think they're going to try harder to win? Maybe, but not so hard that it takes them out of lottery range. If I were in their shoes, I wouldn't openly tank, but I wouldn't want to win much, either. So, there's a pride vs. what's best for your team battle there for each GM. Some GMs are more willing than others to suck/alter their roster so they're playing guys out of position, etc.

But I think the issue here is not one issue. Either we're trying to stop bad teams from tanking or we're trying to get ok teams to invest. I'm not sure those are both solved by one thing.

If we're trying to improve competitive balance, the lottery really doesn't do that because those 8 or so teams don't have any need to invest in the currently undervalued 30+ players. Maybe 1-2 of them next year, but really most have zero interest/need in those types of guys for several years. If we're trying to improve competitive balance, that's really for that middle tier of teams (the Athletics, Mariners, Brewers, Reds, etc.) level of teams. And I don't know how you incentivize middle tier teams to try to win now. Everyone knows Zips is funky and they often make good older players bad and make 21-year-olds in A+ amazing. I don't know how we stop that.

If you want to try to stop tanking, that's another issue. This is a little gimmicky, but I implemented this in one of my fantasy leagues -- and it's only a 12-team keeper league, but basically the non-playoff teams play in a tournament during the playoffs for the #1 pick and then everyone else falls into line from worst to best at the same time the real playoffs are ongoing. This has actually caused some teams to not make a bunch of tank trades to pick up young guys for their good vets because they know there's still motivation to play for the non-playoff tournament. Something similar in IBC would obviously deviate from MLB realism, but it's something we could try. I don't support the idea of handing out sandwich picks to teams that somehow compete. I'm not sure how that would be implemented and it would punish other teams with worse picks.

Just wanted to get a few words in since tomorrow at work is going to be tough. No current solutions, but some things to kick around. I also wouldn't be opposed to tossing out a leaguewide poll and try to generate some discussion. We can't solve everything. Maybe there are other ideas out there.
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Post by Cardinals »

Let's bump this up again.

We can combine two ideas in this one. I still want to try my draft pick compensation idea to try to give a bit more value to 30-year-olds in this league, and to create a bit more balance.

But we also have a larger issue at hand here too. The problem is people go all-in for an NBA style tank. They'll look at Pat's team or my team and say, "Well, I can't win," as if it's the Warriors or Cavs. It's just not true in baseball. Especially simulated baseball. I come back to this example, but Aaron beat me in the NLDS last year and he had a negative run differential. Negative! He had no business winning, but he did it in four games, because that's how baseball is. I think the second wild card made things a bit less competitive because people don't want to risk only playing one playoff game.

But we're going to have the following teams finish with less than 70 wins:

Rays
White Sox
Red Sox
Indians
Rangers
Marlins
Mets
Cubs
Braves
DBacks

That's a third of the league. MLB likely ends up with 5 this year.

I tend to want to avoid a lottery for the reason BP outlined. JB could easily tank with Harper, or if I wanted to, I could tear down my team and keep Trout, end up with a 68 win team, and get the top pick. Seems wrong.

We're not going to get rid of the powerhouses nor should we encourage it. It's why we play the game. Who doesn't want to be a perennial 100 win team? But we need to encourage people to be less extreme. We might have only two teams that are squarely in the 500 range.
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Post by Rangers »

I've been thinking about this too and I have several things to throw out, the majority of which dovetail with some of what has been brought up above.

One thought I would like to get out there, though, is adding active-only slots. I've said this before but one of the greatest challenges in building a team in this league is the limit on roster spots. I like measures that don't necessarily discourage building through prospects but do discourage doing it at the expense of the quality of your active roster.

I can go on and on about active guys who I would like liked to have added last season and this season but I opted to use those roster spots on prospects. I think that there is something to be said for adding draft picks/slots as well but I'm suggesting creating and in essence adding to active-only roster spots.

Something like 10 (to 15, via a third rostered draft year) draft-only slots, 15 "0-"/misc slots, and 30 active-only spots on a 55 (or 60 if you expand draft slots) man roster.
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Post by Dodgers »

I think that your premise may be slightly flawed in that you took into account how it would affect your roster makeup but not the free agent pool. Adding 5 more active spots per team would mean that the players that are available for you to add (that you have to consider vs. adding prospects) are now 150 guys further down the list because everyone is going to be able to take that talent out of the pool. I'd hazard a guess that you would still be deciding to add prospects in that case.

It's also going to allow rich teams to get richer because they'll have even more room to stash prospects/talent besides some of the older players they may need to rely on for sim purposes. If you want to have a stacked 25 man roster, I think it should be more difficult for you to stash other talent and increasing roster sizes is one way to do the opposite of that.

At this time, adding 5 active roster spots would only affect 3 teams. Rangers (23), RedSox (24) and Astros (27) are the only teams that have less than 30 in-sim players. That tells me this isn't really a widespread problem, it's just that you're on the extreme end of the situation compared to the rest of the league. Yes, I know there's arguments about the league shouldn't be telling you how to build your roster but the suggestion to expand rosters would disproportionately favor your preferences over the rest of the league's.
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Post by Astros »

The 40/10 roster is perfect I think. If you're in contention like I was last year and if there was a prospect you wanted, you had to weigh the options of "Do I cut this guy that could help me if ___ gets hurt to sign this kid or stick with what I got?" If I had an extra 5 spots, okay 3 or 4 more prospects, an extra catcher, another pitcher with a sim, etc.
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Post by Rangers »

Dodgers wrote:I think that your premise may be slightly flawed in that you took into account how it would affect your roster makeup but not the free agent pool. Adding 5 more active spots per team would mean that the players that are available for you to add (that you have to consider vs. adding prospects) are now 150 guys further down the list because everyone is going to be able to take that talent out of the pool. I'd hazard a guess that you would still be deciding to add prospects in that case.

It's also going to allow rich teams to get richer because they'll have even more room to stash prospects/talent besides some of the older players they may need to rely on for sim purposes. If you want to have a stacked 25 man roster, I think it should be more difficult for you to stash other talent and increasing roster sizes is one way to do the opposite of that.

At this time, adding 5 active roster spots would only affect 3 teams. Rangers (23), RedSox (24) and Astros (27) are the only teams that have less than 30 in-sim players. That tells me this isn't really a widespread problem, it's just that you're on the extreme end of the situation compared to the rest of the league. Yes, I know there's arguments about the league shouldn't be telling you how to build your roster but the suggestion to expand rosters would disproportionately favor your preferences over the rest of the league's.
I hadn't realized that so few teams were below 30. I would point out, though, that you've conflicted your own data in noting that 150 fewer players would be on the FA list, then pointing out that it's currently 16. That mistake aside, you're right, it's clearly not limiting others in that less-than-70-wins group as I think it should be, given my bias in how to approach a full rebuild.
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Post by Rangers »

Cardinals wrote:The 40/10 roster is perfect I think. If you're in contention like I was last year and if there was a prospect you wanted, you had to weigh the options of "Do I cut this guy that could help me if ___ gets hurt to sign this kid or stick with what I got?" If I had an extra 5 spots, okay 3 or 4 more prospects, an extra catcher, another pitcher with a sim, etc.
We would have that problem if our rosters were 40 or 45 as well. I don't think that that's an indication that where we are at is the perfect number. It's a question of whether we want to keep more attractive players available at all times on the free agent list or if it's more important to give those who want to spend more time maintaining their roster more of a chance to do so.

I think that Shawn is likely right, that although it would help a group that we should want to help - willing to pay attention to the spots but rebuilding - it probably figures that it increases, not reduces, imbalance in the league, which we obviously don't want.
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Post by Dodgers »

Rangers wrote:
Dodgers wrote:I think that your premise may be slightly flawed in that you took into account how it would affect your roster makeup but not the free agent pool. Adding 5 more active spots per team would mean that the players that are available for you to add (that you have to consider vs. adding prospects) are now 150 guys further down the list because everyone is going to be able to take that talent out of the pool. I'd hazard a guess that you would still be deciding to add prospects in that case.

It's also going to allow rich teams to get richer because they'll have even more room to stash prospects/talent besides some of the older players they may need to rely on for sim purposes. If you want to have a stacked 25 man roster, I think it should be more difficult for you to stash other talent and increasing roster sizes is one way to do the opposite of that.

At this time, adding 5 active roster spots would only affect 3 teams. Rangers (23), RedSox (24) and Astros (27) are the only teams that have less than 30 in-sim players. That tells me this isn't really a widespread problem, it's just that you're on the extreme end of the situation compared to the rest of the league. Yes, I know there's arguments about the league shouldn't be telling you how to build your roster but the suggestion to expand rosters would disproportionately favor your preferences over the rest of the league's.
I hadn't realized that so few teams were below 30. I would point out, though, that you've conflicted your own data in noting that 150 fewer players would be on the FA list, then pointing out that it's currently 16. That mistake aside, you're right, it's clearly not limiting others in that less-than-70-wins group as I think it should be, given my bias in how to approach a full rebuild.
Two different discussions. 150 players would be added to rosters if we added 5 players to every team (affecting your ability to make signings from the free agent list). 3 teams would be affected in that they could theoretically try to be more competitive by adding 5 sim players while also continuing to keep all their prospects.
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Post by Dodgers »

Rangers wrote:I've been thinking about this too and I have several things to throw out, the majority of which dovetail with some of what has been brought up above.
Possibly bringing this discussion back to draft lottery, what else were you thinking besides the roster expansion?
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Post by Rangers »

Thinking this morning about the conversation - and I think that everyone has expressed meaningful perspective on what we've brought up - once JP raised this again a couple of weeks ago, I think I was lazy in just thinking about what seemed like good ideas rather than approaching it as problem solving.

To be more analytical about it and solve deep issues rather than what is annoying us this moment, I think maybe we should go back to Pat G's post back in May.

Pat T brought forward the initial problem statement - that people are tanking because he thinks that they are going for the #1 pick. I don't think that either part of this should be dismissed, but JP noted another problem that our league as a whole is incented to misvalue a category of players (30+) and brought more analysis on 9/29 that tracks back to Pat G's assertion that we also have a general competitive balance issue, and that countermeasures that only address incentive to win only address part of what we need to address.

I'm thinking that we need to spend a little more brain power on the whys for this.

One root cause which is apparent in the main proposed countermeasures is that we think that our rules don't motivate people enough to try to win.

I would put forward another reason for competitive imbalance that is similarly straight-forward - that a group of our GMs very frequently take the best players from another group of our GMs in trades. I know countermeasures for this are more difficult because you start to get into people rather than rules, but I don't think that we should ignore this in our overall problem solving process right now, even if the countermeasures are way longer term and more difficult to execute.

Are there any other whys for the competitive balance issue? Should any other primary whys for the misvaluing of age 30+ players be considered?

I think a good way to address this at this point is to pursue any other root causes for these, add objectives related to them, and address our objectives in separate threads.

1. We want to promote the desire to win from all 30 GMs each season.
2. We want to prevent furthering competitive imbalance through a pattern of lopsided trades.
3. ?
4. ?

Any concerns with proceeding that way?
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Post by Rangers »

Dodgers wrote:
Rangers wrote:I've been thinking about this too and I have several things to throw out, the majority of which dovetail with some of what has been brought up above.
Possibly bringing this discussion back to draft lottery, what else were you thinking besides the roster expansion?
Well, my thoughts were more related to the comments on competitive balance outside of incentive to win. On the promoting winning front, here is what I see proposed so far:

1. Draft lottery
2. Comp picks for 80+ win, non-playoff teams (also possibly include WC teams)
3. Visual incentives like posting franchise results prominently
4. Education - find effective ways to remind everyone that this is not the NBA or tennis. The best team has rarely won in our league and playoff upsets are prevalent.
5. Tournament for non-playoff teams where best teams not in the playoffs get the top picks

Side note, I think what we already implemented last winter with separate budgets for zips guys and previous record order for tiebreaker is a small but positive measure in this direction because these are players who help you win next season and non-playoff teams get first shot at all of them because of the tiebreaker.

Couple of ideas on the comp picks:

- Lottery for two picks after each round for non-playoff teams, bottom five are not eligible. Best non-playoff team gets 15 ping-pong balls, sixth worst record gets one. Each team can win only one (or two if you want to make it really interesting) picks. Could include the two losing WC teams but with fewer ping-pong balls.

- Every team's "comp pick allotment" is a tradeable single entity like the draft picks (maybe at the start of the season rather than ASB?). If you trade for a playoff team's allotment asset, you wind up with squat. If you trade for the allotment of a team that doesn't get a pick, you get squat. In the event that we allow a team to win two comp picks, if you trade for their allotment you get both. Lottery is held immediately after the season and the allotment assets are converted to COMP1A, COMP1B, COMP2A, etc. which become 31, 32, 63, etc. One counter-argument to doing this is that there is the possibility of the team close to the playoffs mismanaging this by trading it for not much to a top team and then that team getting like 32 and 63 or something.

- Rather than putting these picks after each round, put them just before the last eight picks (division round teams). Could start with picks in the late-2nd round in this case.

I kind of said this earlier but I can't think of a way for the lottery to promote the behavior that we're looking for and still be fair.
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Post by Guardians »

Another thought:

What about instead of incentivizing people not to tank we decentivize tanking?
As is, there is no penalty for being bad. Other than your pride, which loser teams clearly don't have because they stay in the cellar.

What about a penalty for shittiness? I know one will argue that punishing bad teams isn't where we ought to be, but look at the teams that are consistently bad...they stay bad for 3, 4, 5 years trying to get that magic prospect. If you're forced to make a 2-year plan instead of a 5-year plan, you're more likely to buy those 30 year olds for cheap instead of regurgitating 18-year-olds.

What if you finish below some winning percentage threshold two years in a row you lose a pick? Or maybe your second round pick becomes a third round pick...you lose a round. Maybe that's not the right price point, but maybe it will stop teams like Boston, Cleveland, formerly Anaheim, Chicago (AL & NL) from perpetually sucking. As is, nothing stops them...they continue "rebuilding" without making a major step forward because nothing is pushing them.
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Post by Astros »

I think maybe look at it 3 years in as a punishment. Sucking for 2 years is gonna happen if you rebuild
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Post by Cardinals »

Rangers wrote:Thinking this morning about the conversation - and I think that everyone has expressed meaningful perspective on what we've brought up - once JP raised this again a couple of weeks ago, I think I was lazy in just thinking about what seemed like good ideas rather than approaching it as problem solving.

To be more analytical about it and solve deep issues rather than what is annoying us this moment, I think maybe we should go back to Pat G's post back in May.

Pat T brought forward the initial problem statement - that people are tanking because he thinks that they are going for the #1 pick. I don't think that either part of this should be dismissed, but JP noted another problem that our league as a whole is incented to misvalue a category of players (30+) and brought more analysis on 9/29 that tracks back to Pat G's assertion that we also have a general competitive balance issue, and that countermeasures that only address incentive to win only address part of what we need to address.

I'm thinking that we need to spend a little more brain power on the whys for this.

One root cause which is apparent in the main proposed countermeasures is that we think that our rules don't motivate people enough to try to win.

I would put forward another reason for competitive imbalance that is similarly straight-forward - that a group of our GMs very frequently take the best players from another group of our GMs in trades. I know countermeasures for this are more difficult because you start to get into people rather than rules, but I don't think that we should ignore this in our overall problem solving process right now, even if the countermeasures are way longer term and more difficult to execute.

Are there any other whys for the competitive balance issue? Should any other primary whys for the misvaluing of age 30+ players be considered?

I think a good way to address this at this point is to pursue any other root causes for these, add objectives related to them, and address our objectives in separate threads.

1. We want to promote the desire to win from all 30 GMs each season.
2. We want to prevent furthering competitive imbalance through a pattern of lopsided trades.
3. ?
4. ?

Any concerns with proceeding that way?
Yeah, I think this is the best way to solve the overall issue.
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Post by Dodgers »

Pirates wrote:
Rangers wrote:Thinking this morning about the conversation - and I think that everyone has expressed meaningful perspective on what we've brought up - once JP raised this again a couple of weeks ago, I think I was lazy in just thinking about what seemed like good ideas rather than approaching it as problem solving.

To be more analytical about it and solve deep issues rather than what is annoying us this moment, I think maybe we should go back to Pat G's post back in May.

Pat T brought forward the initial problem statement - that people are tanking because he thinks that they are going for the #1 pick. I don't think that either part of this should be dismissed, but JP noted another problem that our league as a whole is incented to misvalue a category of players (30+) and brought more analysis on 9/29 that tracks back to Pat G's assertion that we also have a general competitive balance issue, and that countermeasures that only address incentive to win only address part of what we need to address.

I'm thinking that we need to spend a little more brain power on the whys for this.

One root cause which is apparent in the main proposed countermeasures is that we think that our rules don't motivate people enough to try to win.

I would put forward another reason for competitive imbalance that is similarly straight-forward - that a group of our GMs very frequently take the best players from another group of our GMs in trades. I know countermeasures for this are more difficult because you start to get into people rather than rules, but I don't think that we should ignore this in our overall problem solving process right now, even if the countermeasures are way longer term and more difficult to execute.

Are there any other whys for the competitive balance issue? Should any other primary whys for the misvaluing of age 30+ players be considered?

I think a good way to address this at this point is to pursue any other root causes for these, add objectives related to them, and address our objectives in separate threads.

1. We want to promote the desire to win from all 30 GMs each season.
2. We want to prevent furthering competitive imbalance through a pattern of lopsided trades.
3. ?
4. ?

Any concerns with proceeding that way?
Yeah, I think this is the best way to solve the overall issue.
Agreed.

I also agree that it’s a problem if the same teams are bad year after year, but it might create a vicious cycle where they trade their valuable older players in order to get a better draft pick, then get put in a situation where they have to improve rapidly to avoid penalties and end up trading their valuable young players for less valuable old players to avoid that.

I think another issue affecting balance is activity levels of some teams. I’m guilty of this at times as much as anyone, but some teams in the league make single digit roster moves in a year. That’s just not an acceptable level of participation to become competitive and shouldn’t be rewarded. Providing an incentive for being active (or penalty for not) might reward GMs who are trying. Perhaps the other solution is to get rid of ones who aren’t active (but again, I bet I’m in the bottom 25% in terms of activity).
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Post by Cardinals »

If we're going to do something here, we need to announce it before Opening Day.
12, 14, 15, 17, 22
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Post by Rangers »

Agreed and that’s a week.
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Post by Dodgers »

I think by IBC Opening Day would still be fine, but we've had no movement on this in 2 weeks. Not sure if that means it's dead in the water, or we're bad at our "jobs".
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Post by Astros »

Okay so where are we at right now on all these issues just as a recap so we can figure out what decisions need to be made? The conversation has taken so long I've kind of forgot a lot of it
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