IBC

Here are the possibilities that have been broached so far:

1. Eventually replace Nate with a very reliable new GM.

- This seems like a very high degree of difficulty.

2. Allow Ben and a new GM to minidraft Milwaukee and Cincinnati

3. Allow any new GMs since the last minidraft to opt to go into a minidraft with the Cinncinati GM.

- Which GMs would that be? The last group included Kelly, Lape (or us drafting Lape's roster) and one other, correct?

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I wish that there were some way to involve LAA if there were a minidraft. He certainly hasn't lacked opportunity, but the competitive balance situation in the ALW is ridiculous and I'm not sure how it will ever turn around.

I think #1 is basically out. It'll just be near impossible and I don't want to say unfair to other GMs who have joined with lesser rosters, but kind of bleh to give somebody that type of talent out of the gate. We'd definitely have a lot of league backlash, and, if the newbie weren't truly qualified enough, he could really wind up doing a lot of damage to that roster. We can interview somebody till the cows come home, but we just don't know how somebody will react to this particular league and the dynamic of the GM's until they're actually here.

As for what to do with the roster, I don't think a minidraft between Ben and Cinci's roster is the fairest course of action. We haven't had a team with that much talent go into the minidraft since Josh did, and prior to that would have been my roster from 2004 (Pujols, Pedro, Oswalt) and if my memory serves me correctly, anybody that wanted to join those minidrafts was allowed to. I don't really see any point in making a date cutoff on this one for a couple of reasons. The first being what I just stated, there just hasn't been that much talent headed into a minidraft in four years. Secondly, we say this every year, but we do have some awkward competitive balance in this league. It would at least tilt that in the right direction. The past two seasons the same four teams have made the playoffs in the AL: Tor, Nyy, Min, Oak. There's a decent chance that three of those teams make it again. Is that a problem? No, not at all. Those teams have done a great job and are active GMs. Except for the red headed step child division in the AL West which is just a joke. As Brett said, it would be great to somehow allow Dave to get into this if he chooses. And it's not just the AL West either. Cleveland is stuck in the gutter for a long time and that's very evident. That team has nothing going on for it whatsoever.

Nobody would be forced to minidraft. I'm guessing the teams that would actually consider it would be Cleveland, Anaheim, Milwaukee and the Cubs. I actually bet Houston would consider it as well since he seems to have a love/hate with his team- and that would add more talent to the pool. Ultimately I doubt he would, but you never know. I just don't think that this needs to be an exclusive thing to the most recent members of the league. We reap the field we sow, but, there hasn't been talent this readily available in a minidraft in four years. I think we should act in the interest of fairness to all the GMs, and that would be the best course of action.

Pirates wrote:I think #1 is basically out. It'll just be near impossible and I don't want to say unfair to other GMs who have joined with lesser rosters, but kind of bleh to give somebody that type of talent out of the gate. We'd definitely have a lot of league backlash, and, if the newbie weren't truly qualified enough, he could really wind up doing a lot of damage to that roster. We can interview somebody till the cows come home, but we just don't know how somebody will react to this particular league and the dynamic of the GM's until they're actually here.

As for what to do with the roster, I don't think a minidraft between Ben and Cinci's roster is the fairest course of action. We haven't had a team with that much talent go into the minidraft since Josh did, and prior to that would have been my roster from 2004 (Pujols, Pedro, Oswalt) and if my memory serves me correctly, anybody that wanted to join those minidrafts was allowed to. I don't really see any point in making a date cutoff on this one for a couple of reasons. The first being what I just stated, there just hasn't been that much talent headed into a minidraft in four years. Secondly, we say this every year, but we do have some awkward competitive balance in this league. It would at least tilt that in the right direction. The past two seasons the same four teams have made the playoffs in the AL: Tor, Nyy, Min, Oak. There's a decent chance that three of those teams make it again. Is that a problem? No, not at all. Those teams have done a great job and are active GMs. Except for the red headed step child division in the AL West which is just a joke. As Brett said, it would be great to somehow allow Dave to get into this if he chooses. And it's not just the AL West either. Cleveland is stuck in the gutter for a long time and that's very evident. That team has nothing going on for it whatsoever.

Nobody would be forced to minidraft. I'm guessing the teams that would actually consider it would be Cleveland, Anaheim, Milwaukee and the Cubs. I actually bet Houston would consider it as well since he seems to have a love/hate with his team- and that would add more talent to the pool. Ultimately I doubt he would, but you never know. I just don't think that this needs to be an exclusive thing to the most recent members of the league. We reap the field we sow, but, there hasn't been talent this readily available in a minidraft in four years. I think we should act in the interest of fairness to all the GMs, and that would be the best course of action.

I like this way better than anything else discussed so far. It's galling to work on your roster and feel like guys who have been around and haven't done well get a reprieve, but I think it's by far the best option for competitive balance.

This may be a bit controversial, but if we do a minidraft that might involve the team with the first pick, I think I'd wait until late December when the amateur draft is over to hold it. I don't really think it would be terribly fair to allow Atlanta or Milwaukee or TB or whoever to overhaul their team, then add Strasburg. It's either expose Strasburg or don't do it. Though if TB gets the first pick, I kind of doubt that he'd go into the minidraft either way. He has a nice roster.

Why not include picks in the minidraft?

As for what JP wrote, I like the way it's going.

Twins wrote:Why not include picks in the minidraft?

As for what JP wrote, I like the way it's going.

Yeah that would be even better.

Twins wrote:Why not include picks in the minidraft?

As for what JP wrote, I like the way it's going.

Excellent idea.

There's no way I see Pat T. entering the minidraft. I think opening it up would be the best thing, cause the only people that'll enter it will be the shitty teams. I wouldn't be so quick to assume Dave would do it though, he's got a lot of nice young pieces on his team and may be content to rebuild for another year or two. We've got plenty of time on this so there's no need to rush

Cardinals wrote:I wouldn't be so quick to assume Dave would do it though, he's got a lot of nice young pieces on his team and may be content to rebuild for another year or two.

My opinion of his roster is more dire. He has Hughes, Morrison, McCutchen and Lind, all nice players, and some B-/B level prospects, but he has one of the couple worst rosters in the league, imo. And he still has Adenhart on there for some reason.

Dave would be foolish to decline an invite to this draft, assuming this is the course we go with. Milwaukee has a more talented roster so he'd be getting to join a better pool and come out with at least one super star type player. Anyway that's neither here nor there until we decide what exactly to do, but it looks like we've got four on board for this idea.

Well I posted about Nate being gone, am I the chosen one to contact him as well? Was there someone who talked to him by phone at one point...I'm thinking email is unreliable at best at this point.

As for dividing the roster, controversial it surely will be, but I like a minidraft open to the league as well. Including the picks would likely make sense. Timing will be important to have everyone be "innocent" in their dealings until the point when we announce it.

Dodgers wrote:Timing will be important to have everyone be "innocent" in their dealings until the point when we announce it.

Absolutely, and I was going to say this as well. Even if it looks like we are in agreement on this approach right away, and even though it's a little back-doorsy, I think that it's important to not disclose what teams are going to be allowed into a minidraft until after August 31.

Do we want to set any restrictions on the minidraft? Jake's suggestion was anyone under 3 years? Anyone with less than 70 wins? Because this is a cop out for someone like Gabe who's just mismanaged his team into a bad team, that's how he's gotten out of every other mess he's gotten into, he's always had a minidraft to bail him out.

Cardinals wrote:Do we want to set any restrictions on the minidraft? Jake's suggestion was anyone under 3 years? Anyone with less than 70 wins? Because this is a cop out for someone like Gabe who's just mismanaged his team into a bad team, that's how he's gotten out of every other mess he's gotten into, he's always had a minidraft to bail him out.

It's a cop-out, and Gabe was the first person that came to mind when we started talking about this. It boils down to individual justice versus what is best for the league. Bailing guys like Dave and Gabe out is best for competition, but certainly not what they deserve. At this point, I'm more concerned with diffusing Nate's roster properly. I have to think that, considering neither of them have ever have a particularly good roster (despite Gabe's fluky WS run), they'll probably only draft themselves back to mediocrity anyway.

The more teams involved, perhaps the better as the talent will be spread out evenly over the bottom few teams, instead of say two.

Haha this is probably just ridiculous, but since Ken said auction I thought of it. I don't even know that it helps accomplish what we want, except for maybe bringing Nate's team down a few pegs.

Take every Reds player. Make a blind auction system where everyone can offer a single player in return for a single Reds player (50 rounds). The best offer is decided and the roster is turned over. Risk/reward, players could go for too little, but to one of your divisional rivals.

Just thinking crazy I guess.

How would we determine best offer? It's outside of the box, but way way too arbitrary and way too ridiculous. There will be somebody that wants to minidraft. I guess we overestimated peoples pride... and/or brains.

If we're going to do that, let's just auction them off for real $$ to be split up six ways. Shawn you can have a double share.

Hmmm Shawn, that's one helluva thought. Completely outside of the box. If we don't get another team interested in a minidraft, we should really consider this. Best offer decided by an impartial vote by us?

Gabe will be in the minidraft, rest assured

Twins wrote:Hmmm Shawn, that's one helluva thought. Completely outside of the box. If we don't get another team interested in a minidraft, we should really consider this. Best offer decided by an impartial vote by us?

I'll bite for a little bit on this. What type of offer would we look for? Help for now or later? I guess if it's decided upon by a vote, we could use our judgment on this. Still, we'd probably need to come up with a steady criteria. If Shawn offered say, Heyward, LaPorta and Parker for I don't know, Wright (not that he would, but just for the sake of argument) and Houston offers Billingsley, which would we be looking for? The future? The now? That's probably something we'd want to get on the same page with since we're obviously six different GMs with six different styles of running a team, so a good deal to me may be a bad deal to you and vise versa. I guess if anything that would help the voting since we'd have six separate minds voting.

Another question is, how would it benefit the league? By allowing us to get a crack at players before we either 1- hand the team over to somebody else (assuming nobody else minidrafts) or 2- throw it into the minidraft fire, it seems a bit selfish, though it makes more sense with the former so we get the inevitable rape-fest out of the way for the new GM's...and instead of getting flooded with offers for Hanley, he'll have other offers to fend off. I don't think it's a bad idea, it's grown on me a bit to be honest, but it seems to be somewhat selfish. Which hey, I'm okay with, I need Cain to be my #4

No no, my idea was 1 player offered for 1 player, no packages.

Well, duh. Guess I should have re-read that before posting. It's interesting and I'm guessing most of the league would be all for it.

Also, the chances are it'll just be the rich getting richer. JB can afford to trade his 4th and 5th best players who are better than most of our 2nd or 3rd best players. etc. And then we're just stocking the minidraft with different superstars so the newbie, even if he inherits a roster with no minidraft, will still be besieged with ridiculous offers.

So, what route do we want to go down here? I still think opening up a minidraft (picks included into the draft) to anybody who wishes to participate is the fairest route.