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.