Promoting Winning among all 30 GMs

[Cardinals]

How should we go about this?

Obviously, not everybody is going to try to win the World Series every year. There will be a handful of teams that want to rebuild and that's obviously ok.

But there gets to be a problem when teams are perpetually rebuilding and only winning 40-68 games per year.

I think the draft pick comp is a good idea for non LDS participants. And I think my idea is a rough guideline. I saw there were a few suggestions about lotteries in this general range, and that warrants discussion.

In the next version of OOPSS (coming soon!), I agree with Brett, we should do something to make GM achievements more prominent. If possible. That's a Shawn thing though.

What else?

[Rangers]

On the front of breaking guys of the myth that they need to be a 110-win juggernaut to have a shot at a championship or even a nice playoff run, perhaps we could take a statistical look at our league's playoff history with a focus on 80- and 90-something win teams having success and maybe 100+ win teams being upset/disappointed?

[Guardians]

On the front of breaking guys of the myth that they need to be a 110-win juggernaut to have a shot at a championship or even a nice playoff run, perhaps we could take a statistical look at our league's playoff history with a focus on 80- and 90-something win teams having success and maybe 100+ win teams being upset/disappointed?

Ie: Brett wants to highlight my last six years or so of playoff failure

I didn't hear any feedback about my thoughts on penalyzing continued failure. Maybe the lack of feedback was the feedback...

But it reminds me of a concept in a salary league I'm in. Playoff teams get a bump in salary, while poorly performing teams get a reduction. Aside from pointing out the statistics BP is talking about to promote winning, there's no disincentive for losing. You can continue in the cellar for a decade if you want. If you know two years or three years without success is going to hurt you somehow, maybe you start moving toward winning? Maybe instead of a certain win percentage, maybe you have to show some type of winning percentage growth from year to year. I think it's worth discussing, at least.

[Rangers]

My only concern around penalizing poor teams is that you have to balance incentivizing with actively furthering the imbalance in the league.

There are teams that are worse because they think it helps them long term to allocate assets that way more than focusing on being mediocre and they (we) are where all of this is targeted, but there are also teams who are trying but aren't catching a break and the last thing they need is to receive an annual punch in the gut tacked on. This is supposed to be fun after all.

We are obviously pretty fundamentally different from the league that I am familiar with that bases salaries on performance and whether you got yourself into a big media market.

[Guardians]

My only concern around penalizing poor teams is that you have to balance incentivizing with actively furthering the imbalance in the league.

There are teams that are worse because they think it helps them long term to allocate assets that way more than focusing on being mediocre and they (we) are where all of this is targeted, but there are also teams who are trying but aren't catching a break and the last thing they need is to receive an annual punch in the gut tacked on. This is supposed to be fun after all.

We are obviously pretty fundamentally different from the league that I am familiar with that bases salaries on performance and whether you got yourself into a big media market.

I understand we don't want to go out of our way to make it more difficult for bad teams, but some clearly need a kick in the pants. Dangling a pick so they trade for Jose Bautista in his age 40 season isn't going to really do it. And, yes, the CBA has market forces included, but the basic principal there is win and get rewarded with resources, lose and get punished. In these discussions, we're saying win and get rewarded, lose and keep on tanking until you decide it's finally time to cash in your prospects (or miss the boat on them and keep retooling).

[Cardinals]

My only concern around penalizing poor teams is that you have to balance incentivizing with actively furthering the imbalance in the league.

There are teams that are worse because they think it helps them long term to allocate assets that way more than focusing on being mediocre and they (we) are where all of this is targeted, but there are also teams who are trying but aren't catching a break and the last thing they need is to receive an annual punch in the gut tacked on. This is supposed to be fun after all.

We are obviously pretty fundamentally different from the league that I am familiar with that bases salaries on performance and whether you got yourself into a big media market.

I understand we don't want to go out of our way to make it more difficult for bad teams, but some clearly need a kick in the pants. Dangling a pick so they trade for Jose Bautista in his age 40 season isn't going to really do it. And, yes, the CBA has market forces included, but the basic principal there is win and get rewarded with resources, lose and get punished. In these discussions, we're saying win and get rewarded, lose and keep on tanking until you decide it's finally time to cash in your prospects (or miss the boat on them and keep retooling).

I'm not sure you understand the point of draft pick comp here. It's not dangling a pick so they surrender assets for Jose Bautista. It's so Jose Bautista, good set up men, good simming hitters in their 30s retain more trade value. What value does a 4th round pick provide, honestly? For a rebuilding team, it opens up a roster spot, but teams will get players that contribute to playoff success for next to nothing.

If you're going to get a 2nd or 3rd round pick with your 75 win team, you're going to be less inclined to sell off all your vets to get mid-to-late round picks, thus leading to fairer Wild Card races and divisions.

On the point of penalizing failure, no way. The CBA is unique in that it takes media market etc. into account. We do not. We don't have a salary cap. It is logical in a league with a salary cap to deduct payroll from a team that perpetually loses. What are we going to do here? Dock draft picks so that a team with bad luck/poor drafting/injury snakebit gets even worse?

Making teams worse is really counter to what I want to do.

[Cardinals]

It should be noted that this discussion isn't to go after teams that perpetually aren't contenders, or just miss. Guys like Jake, John, Jared have never made the playoffs. Zalaski twice in like 14 years. Nate hasn't made the playoffs since he rejoined. Jim has made the playoffs once. These are all good GMs and positive influences on the league. Sometimes prospects get hurt, sometimes trades backfire, sometimes draft picks don't pan out. I don't see any point in penalizing these guys.

As Brett said, this league is supposed to be fun for everybody. And it is fun. When I looked at the standings this year and so so few .500 teams and so many teams with fewer than 70 wins, that's when I thought we have a pretty wide gap here.

I think we need to not lose the plot here. I don't think everybody needs to be trying to make the playoffs in a given year, but I think we need to do something to really get people to try to be a bit more engaged.

What Brett said is a good idea. This isn't the NBA or tennis. The underdogs do win in baseball. Aaron beat me with a negative run differential in the playoffs last year. And not just that, he beat me in 4 games.

I think highlighting our records/achievements is a good, easy step. Shawn, if I can help with designing that, let me know.

[Guardians]

My only concern around penalizing poor teams is that you have to balance incentivizing with actively furthering the imbalance in the league.

There are teams that are worse because they think it helps them long term to allocate assets that way more than focusing on being mediocre and they (we) are where all of this is targeted, but there are also teams who are trying but aren't catching a break and the last thing they need is to receive an annual punch in the gut tacked on. This is supposed to be fun after all.

We are obviously pretty fundamentally different from the league that I am familiar with that bases salaries on performance and whether you got yourself into a big media market.

I understand we don't want to go out of our way to make it more difficult for bad teams, but some clearly need a kick in the pants. Dangling a pick so they trade for Jose Bautista in his age 40 season isn't going to really do it. And, yes, the CBA has market forces included, but the basic principal there is win and get rewarded with resources, lose and get punished. In these discussions, we're saying win and get rewarded, lose and keep on tanking until you decide it's finally time to cash in your prospects (or miss the boat on them and keep retooling).

I'm not sure you understand the point of draft pick comp here. It's not dangling a pick so they surrender assets for Jose Bautista. It's so Jose Bautista, good set up men, good simming hitters in their 30s retain more trade value. What value does a 4th round pick provide, honestly? For a rebuilding team, it opens up a roster spot, but teams will get players that contribute to playoff success for next to nothing.

If you're going to get a 2nd or 3rd round pick with your 75 win team, you're going to be less inclined to sell off all your vets to get mid-to-late round picks, thus leading to fairer Wild Card races and divisions.

On the point of penalizing failure, no way. The CBA is unique in that it takes media market etc. into account. We do not. We don't have a salary cap. It is logical in a league with a salary cap to deduct payroll from a team that perpetually loses. What are we going to do here? Dock draft picks so that a team with bad luck/poor drafting/injury snakebit gets even worse?

Making teams worse is really counter to what I want to do.[/quotes]

I understand clearly what you want to do. But my point is that as long as the lowest tier if teams have no incentive to compete, they might as well rebuild forever (like Stephen did for 7 years until this year).

I think we have a dual issue of lowest tier teams having little motivation to improve AND middle tier teams not wanting to try to make the leap. Not saying my idea is perfect, but motivation is needed at all levels

[Dodgers]

I think it might be helpful to come up with a list of team examples we’re trying to solve for, so that we can be sure we account for impact to each of them. Examples: perennial powerhouse with deep roster of middle-aged players, rebuilding team with barely any sim players, team stuck winning 75 games per season and consistently failing to make playoffs.

I kind of left some of my thoughts in the main thread before realizing this existed, but creating a system that encourages/allows bad teams to get better faster probably has to go hand in hand with a system that causes good teams to get worse faster as well, which I’m not sure I’m comfortable with but we need to consider.

It seems pretty clear that draft adjustments will have some benefit (measuring against the examples I mentioned above) it’s just about finding the right combination. However, a couple extra draft picks won’t have any impact on team records for a pretty long period of time unless they’re trading those assets for ones that are ready to help win games. In which case, having fair trades is an important requirement.

One incentive we could consider (can’t believe I’m about to say this) is having different roster sizes amongst the league. Rebuilding teams would say get an extra 3 spots to carry additional draftees, then they would lose them as they improve, etc.

I mentioned promoting activity in the league in my post in the other thread, I’m not sure if this is the right topic to discuss it in though.

[Padres]

Since we are looking to promote improvement how about rewarding the team in each league that (for example) improves it's record the most in the second half ... the reward could be an extra draft pick after the first round or perhaps an extra slot or two for the following year to carry a extra player or two for development purposes.

[Dodgers]

Since we are looking to promote improvement how about rewarding the team in each league that (for example) improves it's record the most in the second half ... the reward could be an extra draft pick after the first round or perhaps an extra slot or two for the following year to carry a extra player or two for development purposes.

Not a bad idea, but one thought I just had is that on the one hand we’re saying “winning is so arbitrary in the sim, anyone can luck into it if they try” (which also implies anyone can unluck into losing too) and on the other we’re saying “here’s all these benefits if you win”

[Astros]

Maybe we should have tiers of rewards/incentives? I like the most improved record in the second half thing (obviously this don't apply for playoff teams), maybe that team gets a sandwich pick between the first and second and our other comp picks come between round 2 and 3?

If anyone thinks you can't win with guys in their 30s, look at Jake's team last year. That team was loaded with vets, because they were undervalued and he got them for cheap. Bad teams can win in the playoffs (me over JP last year) and teams with 90 something wins can go far (me in 2008 when I beat Nate's best team in 6 and took Pat B to 7 games in the series).

I'll read the other 2 threads and chime in on them this afternoon

[Rangers]

One incentive we could consider (can’t believe I’m about to say this) is having different roster sizes amongst the league. Rebuilding teams would say get an extra 3 spots to carry additional draftees, then they would lose them as they improve, etc.

Probably not surprising but I like the logic behind this.

[Rangers]

Since we are looking to promote improvement how about rewarding the team in each league that (for example) improves it's record the most in the second half ... the reward could be an extra draft pick after the first round or perhaps an extra slot or two for the following year to carry a extra player or two for development purposes.

I like this idea, too. It does exactly the kinds of things we're talking about promoting.

I would suggest 46 or 76 (or 53 or 83) rather than 31 or 61 - again, putting the extra pick right in front of the worst team is simple but I don't think appropriate. And I think that it would be a pretty big mistake to add more than one or two comp picks total for any ideas we implement in a given round.

[Guardians]

Since we are looking to promote improvement how about rewarding the team in each league that (for example) improves it's record the most in the second half ... the reward could be an extra draft pick after the first round or perhaps an extra slot or two for the following year to carry a extra player or two for development purposes.

I like this idea, too. It does exactly the kinds of things we're talking about promoting.

I would suggest 46 or 76 (or 53 or 83) rather than 31 or 61 - again, putting the extra pick right in front of the worst team is simple but I don't think appropriate. And I think that it would be a pretty big mistake to add more than one or two comp picks total for any ideas we implement in a given round.

I like a tiered approach if we're ultimately going to decide to give away picks. Also agree it shouldn't be between 1/2. That's too much value, in my opinion, to try to get someone to make smart moves and try to win.

[Dodgers]

Since we are looking to promote improvement how about rewarding the team in each league that (for example) improves it's record the most in the second half ... the reward could be an extra draft pick after the first round or perhaps an extra slot or two for the following year to carry a extra player or two for development purposes.

I like this idea, too. It does exactly the kinds of things we're talking about promoting.

I would suggest 46 or 76 (or 53 or 83) rather than 31 or 61 - again, putting the extra pick right in front of the worst team is simple but I don't think appropriate. And I think that it would be a pretty big mistake to add more than one or two comp picks total for any ideas we implement in a given round.

I like a tiered approach if we're ultimately going to decide to give away picks. Also agree it shouldn't be between 1/2. That's too much value, in my opinion, to try to get someone to make smart moves and try to win.

I don’t think I’ll be able to tonight, but I will calculate what the most improved teams would have been for past years. My concern is that the stats may not bear out what we hoped it would.

This would need to affect multiple teams, not just only the #1 improver, but that makes it more likely to sweep up teams who actually were overall good (and that we likely wouldn’t want to help) and maybe just had a down first half due to injuries, etc.

I guess I’ll point out this would not have helped my situation the past couple years, where I tried to field a competitive team and injuries just destroyed my roster to the point where it was difficult to compete.

[Cardinals]

We need to make some decisions either way on our ideas here while the offseason gets underway.

[Rangers]

We need to make some decisions either way on our ideas here while the offseason gets underway.

Agreed. I have a crazy next couple of weeks but I will be sure to check in. Any pieces of this that we can check off as slam dunks so that we can focus on fewer pieces?

[Cardinals]

Since we are looking to promote improvement how about rewarding the team in each league that (for example) improves it's record the most in the second half ... the reward could be an extra draft pick after the first round or perhaps an extra slot or two for the following year to carry a extra player or two for development purposes.

I like this idea, too. It does exactly the kinds of things we're talking about promoting.

I would suggest 46 or 76 (or 53 or 83) rather than 31 or 61 - again, putting the extra pick right in front of the worst team is simple but I don't think appropriate. And I think that it would be a pretty big mistake to add more than one or two comp picks total for any ideas we implement in a given round.

So, I like Jim's idea and I like the "ok but not quite great" comp pick ideas (~78 win to-non-LDS teams).

There's a winning idea in there somewhere.

I also agree with Brett - we shouldn't add the pick right in front of the worst team.

[Astros]

So with any comp picks, are they not allowed to be traded? Have we discussed that?

[Guardians]

I wouldn't do 78 wins. I would say you have to be .500 to get a reward. That's kind of the bare minimum, I'd say, of having success. We want more .500 or better teams, right? So, under that idea, any team that gets to even or better, but stopped before the playoffs gets a comp pick? I agree not to make it too good a pick, but an asset. Middle of the round works. I'd say they can be tradeable. It's a bonus/treat. If they wish to deal that for a 30+ year old so JP gets all excited, all the better.

[Rangers]

I wouldn't do 78 wins. I would say you have to be .500 to get a reward. That's kind of the bare minimum, I'd say, of having success. We want more .500 or better teams, right? So, under that idea, any team that gets to even or better, but stopped before the playoffs gets a comp pick? I agree not to make it too good a pick, but an asset. Middle of the round works. I'd say they can be tradeable. It's a bonus/treat. If they wish to deal that for a 30+ year old so JP gets all excited, all the better.

So, you're jumping away from Jim's idea and back to just rewarding the best non-playoff teams, correct?

I like the spirit of Jim's idea but I can get behind doing it in a variety of the ways that you guys have suggested. I do think that it's pretty important that we wrap this stuff up if we can, like JP said, so that we aren't dropping it on people midway through their offseason plan.

I'm definitely in favor of the visual cues that we've discussed to whatever extent that Shawn has time at some point, but these things that affect competition we should really finalize.

[Rangers]

So with any comp picks, are they not allowed to be traded? Have we discussed that?

I think they should be allowed to be traded. Let people maximize their bonus asset.

[Rangers]

I guess I’ll point out this would not have helped my situation the past couple years, where I tried to field a competitive team and injuries just destroyed my roster to the point where it was difficult to compete.

This is one other thing that I wish we could do - to help and encourage teams in this sort of position without playing robin hood.

Going back to the roster spot thing that Shawn and I have both tossed around, any support for:

- teams 30-21 get two extra draft roster spots
- teams 20-11 get two extra miscellaneous roster spots (can be draft/inactive/carded)

You get them something like Jan 1 through Dec 31 based on previous season's standing.

If we went down this sort of road, maybe it would be more doable for the time being for Shawn to just change the roster limit to 52 and we'd have to police the details?

[Guardians]

I wouldn't do 78 wins. I would say you have to be .500 to get a reward. That's kind of the bare minimum, I'd say, of having success. We want more .500 or better teams, right? So, under that idea, any team that gets to even or better, but stopped before the playoffs gets a comp pick? I agree not to make it too good a pick, but an asset. Middle of the round works. I'd say they can be tradeable. It's a bonus/treat. If they wish to deal that for a 30+ year old so JP gets all excited, all the better.

So, you're jumping away from Jim's idea and back to just rewarding the best non-playoff teams, correct?

I like the spirit of Jim's idea but I can get behind doing it in a variety of the ways that you guys have suggested. I do think that it's pretty important that we wrap this stuff up if we can, like JP said, so that we aren't dropping it on people midway through their offseason plan.

I'm definitely in favor of the visual cues that we've discussed to whatever extent that Shawn has time at some point, but these things that affect competition we should really finalize.

I would be fine with either approach. I think if you reward the .500 and better but not playoff teams, you may be giving a bonus to a larger pool of teams rather than make it more categorized (ie: NL/AL best winning percentage increase of the year). You also may be rewarding playoff teams only in that scenario. But, I'm not beholden to a certain approach. I also like the visual displays that could prod some people along.