New Simmer needed

[Royals]

The ExCo decided that it's inappropriate that I should sim in the buildup to the playoffs. So, I'm not simming anymore. Period. Good luck to the rest of the ExCo with finding a replacement. I consider the vote by the other ExCo members to be a personal slap in the face and an insulting questioning of my integrity, so good luck guys, cuz I ain't helping with simming any more.

[Giants]

If Bren would please grow the fuck up the rest of the league would appreciate it.

[Astros]

He'll be fine once he gets the sand outta his vagina

[Padres]

The ExCo decided that it's inappropriate that I should sim in the buildup to the playoffs. So, I'm not simming anymore. Period. Good luck to the rest of the ExCo with finding a replacement. I consider the vote by the other ExCo members to be a personal slap in the face and an insulting questioning of my integrity, so good luck guys, cuz I ain't helping with simming any more.

The ExCo did NOT decide that it is inappropriate for Bren to "sim in the buildup to the playoffs". The ExCo did decide to have some GM who is not in the race sim the remainder of the season ...

That's it. It was not a personal indictment of Bren. It was done solely to avoid even the slightest appearance or perception of any problems or issues related to siming. The ExCo can not control how Bren feels about this but as a member of the ExCo I can assure the rest of the IBC GMs that no one on the ExCO has any issue with Bren personally in regards to how he has simmed in the past.

[Yankees]

Bren - I really can't believe you find this that shocking.

First and foremost, I have nothing but respect and gratitude for the time and effort you have put into this league - and it's pretty much the reason I have kept my allegiance here, regardless of being wooed by other leagues, and having some problems with some people in this league from time to time.

That being said, this is something that, as a league, we have talked about your YEARS. You were the commish, you put your foot down, so we all went along with it - but the debate about it came up every year. You should almost take it as a compliment of your GM skills - you are in competition every year, so the debate came up every year.

Now that we have a committee, you shouldn't be surprised that this was the conclusion that they arrived at. Do I agree with it? Honestly, I couldn't care less - I have no problem with you simming. But the fact that you seem so blindsided by it is a little odd.

[Royals]

*Mostly Shared from a posting to an ExCo thread*
(In response to Jake making a comment about avoiding a 'shitstorm' of controversy) Touchy? Dude, I've been dealing with shit-storms for 6 seasons in this league, you think anyone is going to say anything that I haven't heard before? Hell man, when we first started out, I was inputting every transaction, inputting every single roster adjustment every team made to their lineup, rotation, bullpen, bench, etc as well as doing all the boxes and I STILL listened to shit every time something was wrong. You think some behind my back comments or whiny posts are going to mean anything???

If I was overreacting, I'd have resigned from the ExCo or quit the league. This is simply a logical response. They seem to think I can't be trusted, whether by themselves or others in the league it doesn't matter, to sim fairly for the last two weeks. I say if the last two weeks are an issue, then I don't see how I, or any GM, can be trusted to sim any games period.

Oh, and the BEST part, is that they started up this vote (and voted) based on one comment by one GM that nobody else in the league felt had enough merit to comment on for 5 days and did so with zero debate/discussion and without ever bothering to ask the individual most directly effected by the decision what he thought of it.
Blindsided? Yeah, I'm blindsided by members of the ExCo voting without debate and without asking me what I thought of the idea. I think that pretty much defines 'blindsided'.

[Royals]

On the briggt side, I have nothing to do now, which means all the time I used to spend doing stuff for the league can now be spent in the selfish pursuit of building my own juggernaut. You bitches could barely keep up before, now you're fucked.

[Mets]

Whole lotta "ME's" in this thread.

No commish should SIM a playoff race that they are involved in when it's possible to avoid, and no Simmer should EVER SIM their own playoff games.

It's usually standard practice to have an alternative Simmer for the postseason.

I can't believe this is even an issue.

[Dodgers]

Ah this is just ridiculous Bren. First off, I would have no problem simming and co-ordinating when I'm not simming starting next year, so this problem is not hard to solve. Second, you would think you might grow up a little bit and realize the ExCo wasn't against you personally when we basically decided not to bring Josh back pretty much solely based on your taking offense to it.

[Royals]

Shawn, how much debate was there on this issue by the league as a whole or by the ExCo prior to you starting the vote?

Answer me that question then tell me how you could possibly think it was appropriate or a good idea to call for a vote with that amount of debate. Then I want to hear from each of the other voters how they thought it was appropriate.

A playoff race can be swayed just as much in the first two weeks of September, the last two weeks of August or the first two months of April as it can be in the last two weeks of September.

Shawn, last I saw you're in a playoff race yourself. You have no place simming either. Now or next year, since I imagine you'll be competitive then as well.

[Dodgers]

1. I am in a playoff race, which is why I said starting next year, I have no desire to sim this year because I am in the playoff race.
2. It's a straightforward topic, there's really no discussion that needed to take place in my opinion. You're making it a bigger deal than it should be, otherwise it really would have been straightforward and there would be no question of whether it needed to be discussed.
3. You started the "Getting shit done" thread to the ExCo, and now you're going to complain that I got shit done? Isn't that the pot calling the kettle black!
4. So much for "Doesn't matter how passionate you are about the particular topic. Just remember... Be polite, be neutral in your commentary and remember that the ExCo is united on all decisions" (direct quote of you). Unbelievable.

[Dodgers]

Oh, and the difference between me simming next year and you would be that I wouldn't have a problem giving up simming whenever the ExCo thought was appropriate to avoid the slightest perception of wrongdoing.

[Astros]

Bren, lick my balls and go fuck yourself. If I don't have enough merit to bring up an idea, that, I only brought up to clear any charges of conspiracy against you if you made the playoffs, then I guess I just ain't worth shit. Now, why don't you get over your Napoleon complex, pull your head out of your ass and realize that this has nothing to do with you, is not a personal attack by the ExCo on you or anything else

[Orioles]

Are you kidding? Sheesh. Seems like a pretty standard request that would probably be made of any interested party simming the games.

[BlueJays]

Blindsided? Yeah, I'm blindsided by members of the ExCo voting without debate and without asking me what I thought of the idea. I think that pretty much defines 'blindsided'.

How fucking ironic.

Shawn, how much debate was there on this issue by the league as a whole or by the ExCo prior to you starting the vote?

Kind of like the draft pick trading issue?

hahaha... And I was just complaining the complain when I first brought issue about the ExCo coming to decisions without consideration for and/or input from the league.

Too fucking hilarious..

In any case, I brought this up several years ago and was told the STFU about it, and deal... btw. All this does is remove you from all potential "collusion" and potential "speculation" that could conceivably arise in anyone's head, for whatever reason, no matter how far fetched, ill conceived, or paranoid/delusional one's potential claims might be. Its "ethical". Its like when a Dr. removes him/herself from the O.R. because their relative is on the table. Grow some hair on your pair, roll up a boulder bud you smuggled out the state in your ass, light it.. toke it.. and fucking relax.

We've all gone and acted the fool before on issues we didn't like, took personally, or whatever. But we all end up grittin our teeth and dealin with whatever. Considering this does not affect your team in a negative way and also provides you the additional benefit of a small sim vacation - I think you're acting like a twat and should lighten the fuck up, Mary.

[Royals]

Blindsided? Yeah, I'm blindsided by members of the ExCo voting without debate and without asking me what I thought of the idea. I think that pretty much defines 'blindsided'.

How fucking ironic.

Shawn, how much debate was there on this issue by the league as a whole or by the ExCo prior to you starting the vote?

Kind of like the draft pick trading issue?

hahaha... And I was just complaining the complain when I first brought issue about the ExCo coming to decisions without consideration for and/or input from the league.

Too fucking hilarious..

I agree completely. The greater Irony is that I had just mentioned to the rest of the TRC that I felt like since you had brought that issue up, we had done a much better job of having discussions with the full league before making a decision. That isn't what happened here though.
My problem isn't with the decision, I disagree with it but that's not something to get pissed off about. It's with the way the ExCo came to that decision.
What happened is that Aaron posted a comment a week ago, and Shawn posted a single reply. That was all the debate there was on the issue.
5 days later, a vote was posted by Shawn. By the time I saw the vote, only one other ExCo member hadn't yet voted. I voted and that was when I chimed in on the topic and there started to be an actual discussion on the public thread. 5 days after it had first been posted.

Putting an issue up for vote, which the ExCo has always treated as a binding process, without any public discussion or ExCo discussion is simply not acceptable.

Aaron, you can start a topic on whatever you want, you starting the discussion wasn't the problem.

As for the issue itself... Two major problems with the suggestion.
One, you're confining it to the last two weeks of the season. As I said before, cheating can happen any time. One game a month makes for a 6 game swing over the season, which in the ALBeast (or anywhere), would be huge for any of the teams right now.
Two, teams in undecided races aren't the only ones with reasons to cheat. A team could want to cheat to get better seeding in the playoffs. A team could just want to beat out a rival for bragging rights. A GM could force himself to lose in order to get a better draft position. This doesn't just apply to the bottom few slots, every spot up or down can be huge. I know I have more than once drafted a guy that the GM after me or a slot after him was planning on taking next. I've also seen GM's take the guys I wanted right before me on numerous occasions and I know the same exact things have probably happened for every single GM who gives a damn about the draft.
A 1 game per month swing is 6 games, properly apply that to the right opponents, such as making a win against a team below you in the rankings into a loss and it becomes an even bigger swing. Switching to a non-contender has just as many pitfalls as leaving simming to a contender.
The temptation will exist for any team anywhere in the standings.

These are issues that would have become evident had there been a debate on the topic.

[Padres]

Since Bren has decided to make this such a public issue (and I believe is now attacking the integrity of the ExCo) I will repost here my most recent post on this subject within the ExCo thread:

Bren, I respectfully disagree with you on virtually every point you raise except how you feel. I can't disagree with that as how you feel is something only you alone know and control. I am sorry your feelings are hurt. That was not the motivation behind my vote - nor was it the motivation behind the vote of any other member of the ExCo.

The only thing I do agree with you on is that "cheating can happen any time" ... but the point you continually miss is that no one has accused you of cheating - past, present or future. This vote was not about you!

I simply voted as I did based on common sense and what I believed to be in the best interest of the IBC. I did not vote for or against Bren - rather I voted for a GM not in the playoff mix to sim the last crucial two weeks of the season as well as the playoffs so there would not even be an appearance of a conflict of interest. This is common sense ... just because the siming was done by someone in the playoffs in past doesn't mean it should be done that way in the future.

You are taking this way too personally - but hey - that is your choice. Just as it is my choice to strongly disagree with you about this issue. Not because I think you have or were about to cheat --- because on this issue you are just plain wrong

[BlueJays]

Blindsided? Yeah, I'm blindsided by members of the ExCo voting without debate and without asking me what I thought of the idea. I think that pretty much defines 'blindsided'.

How fucking ironic.

Shawn, how much debate was there on this issue by the league as a whole or by the ExCo prior to you starting the vote?

Kind of like the draft pick trading issue?

hahaha... And I was just complaining the complain when I first brought issue about the ExCo coming to decisions without consideration for and/or input from the league.

Too fucking hilarious..

I agree completely. The greater Irony is that I had just mentioned to the rest of the TRC that I felt like since you had brought that issue up, we had done a much better job of having discussions with the full league before making a decision. That isn't what happened here though.
My problem isn't with the decision, I disagree with it but that's not something to get pissed off about. It's with the way the ExCo came to that decision.
What happened is that Aaron posted a comment a week ago, and Shawn posted a single reply. That was all the debate there was on the issue.
5 days later, a vote was posted by Shawn. By the time I saw the vote, only one other ExCo member hadn't yet voted. I voted and that was when I chimed in on the topic and there started to be an actual discussion on the public thread. 5 days after it had first been posted.

Putting an issue up for vote, which the ExCo has always treated as a binding process, without any public discussion or ExCo discussion is simply not acceptable.

Aaron, you can start a topic on whatever you want, you starting the discussion wasn't the problem.

As for the issue itself... Two major problems with the suggestion.
One, you're confining it to the last two weeks of the season. As I said before, cheating can happen any time. One game a month makes for a 6 game swing over the season, which in the ALBeast (or anywhere), would be huge for any of the teams right now.
Two, teams in undecided races aren't the only ones with reasons to cheat. A team could want to cheat to get better seeding in the playoffs. A team could just want to beat out a rival for bragging rights. A GM could force himself to lose in order to get a better draft position. This doesn't just apply to the bottom few slots, every spot up or down can be huge. I know I have more than once drafted a guy that the GM after me or a slot after him was planning on taking next. I've also seen GM's take the guys I wanted right before me on numerous occasions and I know the same exact things have probably happened for every single GM who gives a damn about the draft.
A 1 game per month swing is 6 games, properly apply that to the right opponents, such as making a win against a team below you in the rankings into a loss and it becomes an even bigger swing. Switching to a non-contender has just as many pitfalls as leaving simming to a contender.
The temptation will exist for any team anywhere in the standings.

These are issues that would have become evident had there been a debate on the topic.

Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum..

I gave thought about starting a new thread on ExCo stuff, but I got lazy I guess... All the folks on the ExCo are good peoples - and they all know I got nothing bad to say about them. But this whole ExCo thing is completely not what I thought it was. And it doesn't sound like I'm the only one.

To sum it up quickly..

I thought the only real thing that was going to change with ExCo Vs. Bren, was just the amount of people to come to a decision, and the duties split up amongst them.

I did not see any changes in the way league policy/business would be handled. In fact, I thought it would remain just the same.. only the commish had turned into a hydra... I didn't envision them acting on behalf of everyone else as a "representative" or "congress" of the IBC.

I'm not talkin shit here ExCo... It just caught me completely off gaurd. But.. meh.

[Royals]

I'm not attacking the ExCo's integrity, I'm saying the ExCo made a serious mistake in the way this issue was handled. One post from a league member is NOT ample debate before starting or casting a vote on league policy.

You honestly think it's ok to vote on and decide an issue with zero debate at all? None?
You also think that GM's trying to get better draft picks aren't going to consider tanking during a sim? Period?

On the first issue I think you are dangerously wrong. We got called out on that just a few weeks ago, and rightly so. This issue had no public debate and no ExCo debate, it's a big step backward after what had been some good steps forward.
On the second, I think you're naive. We just had a thread a little while ago about a draft lottery because of the potential temptation of tanking.

[Rangers]

Nate - just in case there is any confusion on this, Bren set ALL of the guidelines for procedure and participation in the ExCo. The reason that I point that out is that just as with any of the other appointed duties, like those like you who have served on the TRC for example, I think that all five of the rest of us have tried to work in the spirit of the appointed role. In other words, we've been trying to do what Bren told us to do.

I think that a series of things have contributed to the lack of discussion before some things have happened. We had to wade into the whole committee concept a little at first and since the idea was that we were all 'created equally' and there was no one CEO or commish, and since Bren initially, I think, sincerely wanted to allow the others to step up and have him fade back, there was some uncertainty on process within the committee.

That resulted in Bren bitching us out about "getting shit done," which resulted in some quick action from a couple of the guys trying to "get shit done," including the things that you and a couple of others were uncomfortable with and this simming thing that Bren got all bent out of shape about.

Communication is everything, and I agree with you that the league at large, in general, shouldn't be less empowered. The very nature of having six people dealing with issues and having votes does cause a congress type of effect, but that was what Bren created, and I think that despite what has happened on a couple of occasions everyone agrees that important things should be discussed, and speaking for myself I certainly have no interest in these guys voting through things that the league as a whole doesn't want. I'm pretty confident that the rest of them would agree. And I do think that there is a means for the league to vote on certain things still, for what it's worth.

[Giants]

The ExCo is definitely still a work in progress. Each thing we do we take lessons from and try to refine the process so that it balances it out everything it needs to do. This is another reason why we need to be careful about not running out and changing too many rules too quickly.

[Royals]

Whoa, hold on now Brett, you've got your timeline more than just a little bit off and it's affecting your facts.
1. The "Getting Shit Done" post was well after Nate's objections about the draft pick trading and the league not being included on discussions. In the "GSD" post I said I felt like we had done a much better job of that sicne then, which was to everyone's credit. The league saw a problem, called us out on it, and we addressed it. Well done. That was the first point.
2. The second major point was that we need to find a way for the league members to say 'enough discussion, can we please get a decision'. We still need to do that.
3. The final one was that there has been significant lag between the results of votes by the ExCo and informing the league of those results.
I honestly cannot see how holding a vote on the simming issue with no debate is justified, defended or prompted by those topics. If anything it was the antithesis of what that post was meant to convey. Encourage participatory debate, give the league a way to tell us when to 'get on with it!' so to speak, and when we do, be timely about it.
The other issues that made Nate and others uncomfortable were all pre-"Getting Shit Done", the only one after that thread (which started on Friday) was the simming issue.

If there's one thing I sincerely regret about the setup of the ExCo, it's that when i first set it up, i should have done so with the understanding that no existing rules would be changed for the first year because learning to work together as a group just dealing with stuff that pops up was going to take a lot of getting used to. it's obviously far too late for that now, but it's a valuable lesson to me about group dynamics.

[Rangers]

Well actually Bren, there were two waves of you bitching at us about that. First there was your complaint that you were the only one getting shit done, then the actual post titled 'getting shit done'. You are correct that the post with that title came after Nate's issue, but not that that was the first time that you scolded us for not being proactive enough.

[Royals]

Ah yes, that WAS different, though quite a while ago as I recall. But I still stand by it. Some of the ExCo members needed a kick in the pants, a reminder that all of us are responsible for leading, not just following the leads of 2 or 3 of us in leading.
Still doesn't justify a vote with no debate though.

[Rangers]

Ah yes, that WAS different, though quite a while ago as I recall. But I still stand by it. Some of the ExCo members needed a kick in the pants, a reminder that all of us are responsible for leading, not just following the leads of 2 or 3 of us in leading.
Still doesn't justify a vote with no debate though.

I'm not saying that you were wrong to issue that reminder or that there shouldn't have been a debate before any vote. Just that from my seat, those events led to each other in the manner that I mentioned.