Archives For League Manager

Vetoing a Trade

Michael Dixon —  June 12, 2013 — 3 Comments
Photo courtesy of Fortune Live Media.

Photo courtesy of Fortune Live Media.

As a fantasy owner, I’ve always been in a bit of a pickle when I see a bad trade. What do I do? Do I vote against it? Make a post on the league message board? Talk privately to some friends in the league about it? Talk to either of the two parties involved in the bad trade? Just let it slide?

More often than not, I’ll just let it go, although that frequently does come with talking privately to some league mates about it. Every now and again, I’ll simply vote against it. Trades usually take four no votes to be vetoed and honestly, that’s extremely rare. Voting no is more symbolic to the league, especially the player who benefited so much from the bad deal. It’s just good to let people know that while a bad trade was made, it didn’t go unnoticed. Sometimes that serves as a deterrent for a future bad trade, which is the ultimate goal.

Now, this isn’t the first time I’ve written about vetoes. Honestly, I doubt it will be the last, as this is something that comes up just about every year. This time, it was brought up by our friends and partners at the Dear Mr. Fantasy Podcast via their Facebook Page. The question was simple and direct. “Trade vetoes… Should they stay or should they go?”

Let’s delve a little deeper into this.

There are two kinds of vetoes that can take place. One is the scenario brought up earlier, where enough league members vote the trade down. The other is when an LM looks at the trade, deems it unfair, and says no to it. My opinion on these two things differs, so allow me to elaborate.

 

  • The League Veto

These are very rare occurrences. While I have no problem with owners who generally stay away from voting these trades down, I also have no problem when these occur. The reason is simple.

Let’s say that you’re in a 12-team league and the scenario above is also true, where you need four votes to overturn a trade. For a trade to be vetoed, a third of the league has to look at the trade and probably not only rule that it’s a bit one-sided, but so bad that it shouldn’t be allowed. Actually, it’s less than one-third of relevant voters. Assuming the two parties involved in the trade aren’t vetoing it, you’re looking at four of 10 people saying that. Now, factor in that there are people who NEVER vote trades down, and others who even in competitive leagues don’t really pay much attention.

People do have a right to try to keep the league competitive and prevent one team from loading up in unfair trades. Again, trades usually take four or more people to vote down. Honestly, if anyone more than one or two people vote a trade down, it’s probably a sign that the trade just shouldn’t be happening.

 

  • The LM Veto

These should never happen, with these three exceptions.

  1. One owner meant to reject the trade and accidentally accepted it. Usually, there’s a warning screen after that, but not always. In this case, it’s up to the LM. If he wants to be a good guy and reject the trade, it’s his call. If he wants to take a “No means no, yes means yes” stance, it’s also his call. As an LM myself, it would probably depend on the trade. If it’s just a little biased towards one team, I’d probably say no to the idea of rejecting it. I just can’t trust that the person actually made a mistake. What’s more likely is that he accepted it and later regretted it and is now looking for a way out. If it’s a horribly one-sided deal where saying yes was clearly a mistake, I’ll likely veto it. I couldn’t imagine anyone ever trading Miguel Cabrera for Brandon Crawford and Ricky Nolasco. If I see that trade accepted, I’d guess that it was an actual mistake and overturn it. 
  2. In the time after the trade was made but before it was processed, one of the key players sustained a major injury. The timing of this has to be perfect. On May 25, 2011, Buster Posey got hurt. It was abundantly clear to anyone who saw that that he would not be returning any time soon. It wasn’t announced until the next day that he’d be out for the year, but anyone could tell immediately that he wouldn’t be back any sooner than a few months. If someone made a trade for Posey that morning, I’d say that that trade should be overturned. I do appreciate and understand the buyer beware theory, and I know that injuries are a part of sports. But if you’re talking about a trade that hasn’t even been processed, I’d say it’s okay to veto it. If the trade happened on May 20 and had already been punished, then the owner who acquired Posey has no real room to complain. Injuries are a part of the game. Also, if someone acquired Matt Kemp just before he got put on the DL, I’d say that that trade should stand. The injury isn’t though to be a long-term thing, so there’s no real reason to veto it. 
  3. The trade clearly benefits one team over the other. This one can be a little more complicated than people think.

The natural word that comes to mind here is collusion. There’s a few ways collusion could happen. Maybe a few owners are friends/family and compete in multiple leagues together. Something like, “You help me win this league, I’ll help you win the other.” Maybe it’s a return league and they alternate years. It can be tricky to prove this but if it happens, both players need to be kicked out of the league immediately, no exceptions.

There are a few other scenarios that aren’t quite as cut and dry. Nash and I run a cash league together. In the first year of that league, there were a lot of beginners. One of them quickly realized that fantasy baseball was not for him and quit a month in. But before he quit, he offered me a trade that was about the equivalent of paying $10 for a Ferrari. It was late at night and I accepted. The next day, I told Nash what was up and said that he should actually veto the trade (I was not yet an LM). Nash vetoed it and that was more or less the end of it. I shouldn’t have accepted that trade, but it wasn’t something I should have been kicked out for, either. Again, I accepted the trade, it was offered to me. The trade should have been vetoed, and that should have been the end of it, which it was.

That’s not the only time a trade should be vetoed but with no more action taken. Some people just don’t know as much as others and feel the need to make trades. So, maybe they’ll offer an abysmal trade to someone. Of course, the other person will accept and it should be vetoed, but that’s the end of it. By the way, that scenario seems crazy, but it happens more than some may think. A relatively inexperienced player gets into a league with guys who know what they’re doing and make trades. I actually understand the idea that someone like that feels they need to make a trade to keep up. Again, I’d veto a terrible move, but nobody needs to see the door.

With the exception of those scenarios, I just don’t think LM’s should ever veto trades. Now, if you have an LM who’s not a league member, I might take a different stance. But if someone’s willing to be an LM in a league they don’t even participate in, I’d say that person has WAY too much time on his hands.

But remember, with that exception, LM’s are members of the league, and probably on competitive teams. That’s where them stepping in and vetoing a trade gets dicey.

Right now, I’m an LM of a league that I’m in first place in. Other than the trades I’ve made, I literally have not seen one trade this year that didn’t make me roll my eyes. For lack of a better phrase, paranoia sets in. You not only think that the second through fifth place teams are gunning for you (which they should be), but also that the teams at the bottom are specifically out to get you, so they’re trading their best players for nothing to the next best teams.

If you take fantasy baseball seriously and have spent a good amount of time in first place, I guarantee that you’ve had similar emotions. They’re not rational. I have no reason to believe that any of the other owners at the bottom dislike me. Actually, it’s a dynasty league that I’ve never won, so the notion that they may be tired of one guy winning and want to see someone else win doesn’t even hold up. Again, there’s rarely anything rational about these thoughts, but they exist.

So this is why I don’t like one guy deciding to veto the trade, with very few exceptions. Even with those exceptions, one guy is doing the actual veto, but I guarantee he’s hearing from other league members. It’s officially his decision, but he’s not making it one his own — and never should.

In League Manager, Trades , , ,
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Ask Nash: Owners in a Fire Sale

Nash —  May 31, 2013 — 2 Comments
Jeff Loria is no stranger to purging talent. Photo courtesy of Ohad.

Jeff Loria is no stranger to purging talent.
Photo courtesy of Ohad.

This week for the feature Ask Nash question, I thought I would mix it up with a very general type question that we have faced – and will face – at some point in our fantasy careers. League Managers deal with this more than most, as they’re impacted when anyone does it.

What do you do with an owner who is purging talent?

This can look a variety of different ways and I am going to try to touch on as many of them as I can. That means I’m looking at it from a pretty general perspective. But feel free to ask these types of question in a private email, as well as specific player and transaction type questions.

Let’s start with the last place purge:

Often times you can get an owner who finds themselves stuck in dead last and they cannot seem to catch any traction in getting out of the cellar. There are a few options they have at the rest of their season, and 2 of those can be considered talent purges that can throw off the balance of the league.

  1. The cowardly, “white flag approach”. This owner accepts last place 2-3 months into the season and just drops everyone except the minimum required players. They even drop serious talent in favor of fanboy picks, or even worse. I call this cowardly because the owner is trying to save face by “giving up” instead of trying to play it out and just plain failing to get out of last place. Believe me, you’ll get a lot more respect from your league mates by playing it out honestly and legitimately finishing in last place. Anyway, often times this approach is accompanied by a name change.
  2. The classic, “hail mary”.  The owner thinks to themselves, “I gotta take a huge chance and hope it pays off.”  So they go after as many slow starters and struggling players as possible in hopes to catch a whole lot of lightening in a bottle. It can work to get them out of last place and sometimes even gets them back to the middle of the pack or better. However, much like the white flag approach this brings an imbalance to the league by way of their stud players going to teams who are luckily at the top of the waiver order or on the nice end of a crazy trade.

Both of these approaches lack consideration to the rest of the league who are trying to play it out honestly and strategically.

Another form of purging can be through a few or more forms of questionable moves over a period of time. Sometimes this can just be the work of a very irrational owner and some sometimes it can even be a form of collusion. Actually, let’s talk about that for a moment.

I believe that the word collusion can be thrown around a bit liberally in fantasy baseball. There are plenty of leagues where a few members are relatives, or maybe close friends. But generally speaking, everyone in those league knows each other, or there are a few different groups. But way more often than not, it’s hard to call collusion unless a few things are in play.

  1. The people involved are relatives, or close friends. 
  2. One of them is a contender, the other isn’t. One may also care a lot more than the other, even if both or neither are contenders.
  3. They make a series of one-sided trades with each other.
  4. Also, if they’re in a few leagues together (baseball or other sports), the possibility exists that Owner A will help Owner B in this league, while Owner B will help Owner A in another league. If this is a league that carries over from year-to-year, then you may want to think back to previous years. If Owner A is benefiting from a terrible trade from Owner B this year and Owner B benefited from a bad trade from Owner A the year before, this same scenario is possibly in play.
  5. If the league’s favorite is not well liked by a few guys, or has dominated the league for a while.

Not all of these things have to be in play, but if three or more are, keep your eyes open. Again, be careful in throwing around the word “collusion,”  but it does in fact happen and should always be addressed if the evidence is substantial enough.

If you have an owner that has made a few or more questionable moves, a bad trade or some bad add/drops, I see nothing wrong with asking the owner what the deal is. Perhaps they are giving up, hoping for some surprises, or maybe they’re just clueless. Simply asking can help you ascertain that information. The key is to ask in a non-threatening way, of course.

So, for some Do’s and Dont’s:

  • Don’t Accuse: If you come out of the gate accusing the owner in question, the owner will most likely get defensive, and it could get ugly. Also, if your accusation is collusion, you might have two or more owners getting defensive.
  • Don’t Insult: Like I said, it could be a series of honest moves that just didn’t make as much sense outside of the owner’s own head. If you insult the moves it will only make the poor owner feel even worse.
  • Do be Honest: Everyone should be adults about a situation. If you ask about some questionable moves, I would hope the owner would fess up to the reason(s) behind the moves.

Also, if people slam the message boards with questions or angry posts, be open and honest about discussions being had. If people start crying collusion it is best to squelch those thoughts ASAP.

Lastly I want to address something I mentioned earlier and that is the talent balance of the league. Of course no league has perfect talent balance between teams because there is no perfect league wide draft, ever. So I am not saying that our fantasy leagues should be some sort of weird socialistic fantasy league where talent MUST stay evenly distributed the whole season.

Trades happen, add/drops happen, that is the beauty of playing it out. However, when an owner begins to interfere with the organic nature of a fantasy league by blatantly dropping good players with no real rhyme or reason, it should be addressed!

In Ask Nash, League Manager, Strategy , , ,
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What I like About Fantasy Baseball

Michael Dixon —  February 22, 2013 — Leave a comment
Fantasy baseball is beginning again. Let's celebrate! Photo courtesy of M. Seamans.

Fantasy baseball is beginning again. Let’s celebrate! Photo courtesy of M. Seamans.

Okay, I admit it, fantasy baseball has me completely hooked.

That’s probably not much of an admission, since you’re either familiar with me and the site, or you’ve stumbled onto a fantasy baseball site and probably deduced that someone writing about fantasy baseball is probably a fan. Still, it did need to be said.

As the new year is here and spring training is now in full flight, I figured I’d take some time to tell you just what I like about fantasy baseball. To start that, a little autobiographical information.

 

About me

I was born in San Francisco, California on July 30, 1985….Okay, this is going to be long enough, so we don’t need to go that far back. Here we go.

Unlike Nash and Clave, the fellow founders of this site, I am a writer. That’s not to take anything away from them and their skills at all, but they have other jobs, I don’t. If I’m not writing about fantasy baseball here, I’m writing for my local newspaper.

In the summer of 2011, I took a job with an online sports writing company. It’s not a big secret or anything, but I don’t want to name them here because I don’t want people to mistake this as sour grapes. It’s far from it.

As a matter of fact, I really enjoyed that job, I just ended up writing about similar stuff every day, often times more than once per day. Now, make no mistake, I am not claiming that this was a grueling job, it wasn’t, but it got a little monotonous at times. Towards the end, I really didn’t enjoy writing for anything or anyone that much. Why was that? I’ll tell you that I’m as big a sports fan as anyone you will ever meet, but it can get a little stale, especially when writing about sports that play several times per week (ie: every sport but football), or sports that play once a week with a lot of time in between games (ie: football).

It was towards the end of my tenure there that Clave came up with the idea for this site. We all contribute evenly but make no mistake, this site is his brainchild and he needs to be commended for that. While I agreed to it, I have to admit that I wasn’t very enthused about writing some more, especially about sports. But this site’s been up and running for more than a year and I can wholeheartedly say that I not only have no regrets about agreeing to write for this site, but I am significantly more enthused towards the process of this than I was a year ago at this time.

So, what changed? Well, I enjoy working with Clave, Nash, and our new (and great) additions, Mims and Will, very much. But honestly, there’s a little more.

 

What do I love about fantasy baseball?

Well, it combines the best elements of covering every sport. You have the urgency of a sport like football, there is always advice to give. Real baseball doesn’t really have that until after the trade deadline, if even that early. Perfect example: The 2012 World Series matched the Tigers and Giants, two teams who were each 10-10 after 20 games. I know that there wasn’t any talk in San Francisco about dumping Buster Posey, Matt Cain, and Madison Bumgarner. While I wasn’t there so I can’t say for certain, I doubt that there was ever talk of dumping Miguel Cabrera, Prince Fielder, and Justin Verlander in Detroit, either. Just a hunch.

But in fantasy baseball, there is significantly more urgency. If someone’s stars get off to a bad start, there’s almost always some thought about dumping them. So, even if the advice is to “Chill out and remember that it’s a 162-game season,” there is always something to be reacting to, even in a sport where things don’t seem to matter much day-to-day, like baseball.

There are other elements, too. Clave is right, he and I have never met in person yet we still consider each other good friends. I don’t see Nash more than once or twice a year, but I still consider him a good friend, as well. These were friendships started in many ways through fantasy baseball.

But I’ve played other fantasy sports with both, what makes fantasy baseball stand out?

 

How fantasy baseball is different than other fantasy sports

I need to get something off of my chest first. Recall the 2012 AL MVP Debate. Mike Trout dominating the new stats vs. Miguel Cabrera dominating the traditional stats, notably the Triple Crown ones. Not only did everyone have an opinion, but those who favored Trout were not only less than impressed by the arguments in Cabrera’s favor, but they actually made it seem as though those achievements were negatives. The reverse was true with Cabrera backers to Trout’s stats.

I say that because I actually see similarities with fantasy sports people. Yes, fantasy baseball is my favorite fantasy sport. No, it does not mean fantasy football is awful. As a matter of fact, I enjoy fantasy football, I just prefer baseball. I’d also prefer to drive a Mercedes Benz, but it doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with my Honda Civic.

Okay, now that that’s out of the way, I love the day-to-day grind of fantasy baseball. I think it does a good job of separating the really devoted players to those who just play for the sake of playing.

I admit that this is a double-edged-sword, as I get frustrated with people who check out after a few months if their team isn’t any good. I’m not talking about people who make a mistake and forget to set their lineup for a day (I am the person who forgot to activate Matt Cain, my favorite player on my favorite team, when he threw a perfect game). But I like that at least at the top of most leagues, you’re competing with very serious players. If someone wins a fantasy baseball league, he’s a good owner, period. That’s not necessarily true in other sports.

You can’t be a bad owner but be successful in fantasy baseball. Granted, it doesn’t need to be a massive time commitment, but you do need to check your lineup every day, to be sure that nobody’s done something stupid like over-stream and cut a good pitcher, or that someone’s nagging injury doesn’t become a DL trip. It happens fast in baseball because they play every day.

 

The Best Players are the Best Fantasy Players

Again, this is not an attack on fantasy football, but I’d like to show you some of the NFL’s best passers (by yards) in 2012. Matthew Stafford (second), Tony Romo (third), Josh Freeman (ninth), Carson Palmer (tenth). I’ll grant that if you look at touchdowns, the stats are truer to how these guys actually rank as quarterbacks, but there are still several guys who are way out of position. Does anyone remember 2009 and 2010 when Kyle Orton was a valuable fantasy quarterback?

In the NFL, you have more garbage time points that contribute to fantasy points. I lost a fantasy matchup this year (and in turn, missed the playoffs), because Jason Witten scored a touchdown in the last minute in a blowout loss to the Bears.

I’m not saying that never happens in baseball, but garbage time points aren’t anywhere near as prevalent. Remember that great hitters fail seven out of ten times. Great power hitters sock about 40 homers in 600 or so at bats. Conversely, quarterbacks complete well over half of their passes. So, it’s a lot easier to pick up points in a sport like that. By extension, it’s easier to pick up cheap but valuable (oxymoron, I know) fantasy points a sport like that, making some average players look like stars.

Let’s take a look at the top players from 2012 in all five standard fantasy baseball categories.

Runs HR RBI SB AVG
Mike Trout Miguel Cabrera Miguel Cabrera Mike Trout Buster Posey
Miguel Cabrera Josh Hamilton Josh Hamilton Rajai Davis Miguel Cabrera
Ryan Braun Curtis Granderson Chase Headley Everth Cabrera Andrew McCutchen
Andrew McCutchen Edwin Encarnacion Ryan Braun Michael Bourn Mike Trout
Justin Upton Adam Dunn Edwin Encarnacion Jose Reyes/Ben Revere Adrian Beltre

Before we break that down a little bit, let’s do the same thing with pitchers.

Wins Strikeouts Saves ERA WHIP
Gio Gonzalez Justin Verlander Jim Johnson Clayton Kershaw Jered Weaver
R.A. Dickey Max Scherzer Fernando Rodney David Price Clayton Kershaw
Jered Weaver R.A. Dickey Rafael Soriano Justin Verlander Matt Cain
David Price Clayton Kershaw Jason Motte R.A. Dickey R.A. Dickey
Johnny Cueto Felix Hernandez/James Shields Craig Kimbrel Johnny Cueto Justin Verlander

Okay, steals and saves are kind of black sheep categories, and I wouldn’t let Adam Dunn within 10 miles of my fantasy team. Actually, unless he was that close because he was an opponent, I wouldn’t let him that close to my real team, if I was running one. But most of these guys are people you’d want on your real team if you were a general manager.

Any one pitcher can have a great start, just like any hitter can have a great day. But because those games don’t mean as much over a fantasy baseball season, the cream is a little more likely to rise to the crop. One great baseball game is one out of 162. One great football game is one out of 16. You don’t need to be a genius to see which sport is more impacted by one game. Ultimately, I enjoy playing a fantasy sport where I know that the list of most valuable players will look similar to a list of the sport’s best players. It doesn’t stop there.

 

It’s Less Dependent on Draft Luck

I don’t mean to say that other sports don’t have sleepers every year, they do. But the nature of baseball, and fantasy baseball, is that you rely far less on one or two players than you do in other sports.

In a fantasy football league, you can often tell who the top teams will be just in the draft. If someone has an early pick and grabs on of the few true elite running backs, and then gets one of many big stat quarterbacks in the second round, that person has to screw up in a big way to not be competitive in the league.

In baseball, I’ll give a bad owner both Miguel Cabrera and Ryan Braun as a head start still guarantee that I’d have the better season. Actually, I’d be pretty confident that I’d have the better team coming out of the draft, and I don’t consider drafting my strength.

You need to be able to put a complete roster together if you’re going to compete for a title. Lord knows, I’ve tried to just go hitter heavy and it didn’t work. You need a complete roster and you need to maintain it throughout the year. So, the season isn’t really going to be dictated by where you pick in the draft.

 

Ultimately, all of this is what makes fantasy baseball appealing to me. I love competing in all fantasy sports but if I had to choose one, America’s Pastime would be it.

In League Manager, Miscellany , ,
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Can soccer influence the future of fantasy baseball?

Clave Jones —  January 22, 2013 — Leave a comment

Baseball Games 1992 World Series Toronto vs Atlanta Game 6

I thought I came up with a fantastic new idea for a fantasy baseball league and pitched it to my brother-in-law. He listened, nodded, and said, “Yeah, that’s how the soccer leagues do it over in Europe.” So much for my originality.

But here’s the pitch anyway: what if we could if we could structure a fantasy baseball league where there were greater consequences for winning and losing, and every year felt fresh, yet familiar?

The idea is that we create tiered leagues. In soccer these are called “Premiere” leagues I think (would it kill me to look it up?!?!). It makes more sense in fantasy baseball for it to be tiered as:

  • Major League
  • Triple A
  • Double A

You could take it as low as you wish, but the idea is that each tier would contain 12 teams each. If you think you can only rally 20 owners, then you have two tiers with 10 teams each. Specific numbers don’t matter, the point is that it can scale to fit your needs.

At the end of the season the teams who finish at the bottom drop down and tier while the teams that finish at the top advance up a tier. Talk about having owners engaged until the very end of the season!

Let’s return to our original example and say there are 3 tiers, each with 12 teams. The most movement is in Triple A. The 4 teams that finish at the top move up to the Majors and replace the 4 teams in that league that finish at the bottom. The four teams who finish at the bottom of the pack in Triple A drop down and are replaced by the top four finishers in Double A, who move up. The bottom finishers in Double A just sit there and wallow in their misery, but they’ll get a shot the next season to climb up the ladder.

Again, scale this how you’d like, but the point is that there are real consequences for finishing well. Owners would play to the end. Plus, every year would have a little different flavor while still keeping the basic owners. Every year, guys would be playing together in an individual league, but connected to a larger whole that ups the ante on their finish.

Can I use you for free therapy and share some of my pain with you? NO?  OK, here I go anyway.

My least favorite thing about fantasy baseball is being a league manager. There is a lot of complaining to deal with and it’s impossible for all 12 guys in any league to be happy at the same time.

Why did I share this? Well, I’ve shared this idea – that I’ve come to realize was an idea I’ve apparently stolen from soccer – with several of the guys I play with and each and every one of them said they liked it. Eight guys out of eight – including my borther-in-law – said, “Hmmm. I like that. Sounds like it would be fun.”

Sure, there have been some questions asked like ‘So how would you do keepers?’,  and ‘Is there a way that all guys could communicate across leagues?

Some quick thoughts:

  • Consider creating a group for all the guys to communicate in. Fantasy baseball is social so if a buddy is climbs or drops into a tier where he doesn’t know as many guys, it gives him an opportunity to make new friends, but having a larger group promotes overall camaraderie.
  • League settings would need to be similar across tiers, or else it should be communicated very clearly that to change a tier means that you need to do the research to play by the new rules. That would be fun for some owners, but frustrating for others who don’t handle change well.
  • You could say no keepers and start afresh each year, or you could say that when you drop or climb that you simply adopt that team as your own. Fantasy baseball is a competitive, after all, so this could create a fresh challenge.
  • Some guys aren’t competitive. They’ll be happy as a clam checking their team just once a month, simply floating along in Double A. Most will work like a dog to climb into the Majors and will fight to stay there.
  • First year is tricky: in which league do guys begin? If you’ve played a while, reward previous winners with a seed in the Majors and work down from there. If it’s brand new you can simply draw out of a hat.

Others come to mind, but I’d love to hear your thoughts. This is an opportunity for us to use the comments as a place to ask question, suggest ideas, and tweak through this to see if it could really work. Comment below!

In League Manager, Rules , ,
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Fantasy Baseball Dynasty League Ideas

Clave Jones —  July 19, 2012 — Leave a comment

A fantasy baseball dynasty league is one where…shoot, let’s just cut to Wikipedia, the source of all truth:

Any fantasy baseball pool that “rolls over” into other years is called a “Keeper” or “Dynasty” league. The leagues can be run each year in any of the above formats with a winner declared at the end of each season. At the end of the year team managers decide which players they wish to protect (the number varies – from protecting and keeping all players, to keeping just one player).

I would like to add that a Dynasty league differentiates itself from a standard fantasy baseball keeper league in that you’d typically keep many more players for a dynasty league and they also often include some sort of mechanism for keeping minor league prospects.

So what if you want to start a fantasy baseball dynasty league or convert your current league into a dynasty league? I can take a little break from killing zombies with plants on my iPhone so I’d love to spitball a bit. Listed below are 6 off-the-cuffs thoughts, ideas, or suggestions for you to consider if you are thinking about a dynasty league, in no particular order:

  1. It’s important to make sure you have a stable group of owners to play with. Dynasty leagues don’t function well if you have a carousel of frequently changing owners. (Click to Tweet this.) Who wants to take over another guy’s dynasty?
  2. Don’t use ESPN as your fantasy baseball host. ESPN lags behind Yahoo and CBS Sports in terms of the flexibility of comprehensiveness of features. Maybe even consider being a hipster and going indy on a site like Dynasty League Baseball Online.
  3. Have fun with salaries. Consider having your fantasy baseball players be “contract based.” A players kept have contracts based upon how many years you signed them for. Half of the challenge is making the numbers work to stay under your league’s salary cap. It also creates scenarios where trades are pure salary dumps.
  4. Speaking of salaries, another system could be escalating salary increases. You can keep a play but their salary goes up X dollars the first year and X dollars the second year, and so on.  The structure is easy to figure out because you just and the increase to the salary you paid the guy the year before. It also eliminates the need for keeper year limits, because it self corrects in that eventually a player become so expensive after several salary increases that it benefits your team to throw him back.
  5. Think about having a large roster with only a certain number of those roster spots being available for active players. The rest of the roster spots are reserved for prospects or reserve players that aren’t eligible to be played unless “called up.”
  6. Consider having a second draft during the season. Call it your Minor League Farm Draft. It could be a snake , determined by the previous year’s standings, or in reverse order of the current standings. Players eligible for you Farm Draft are players who have not lost their rookie eligibility (equal to or less than 130 ABs, 50 IP). A farm system player can be kept until the season he is activated by his MLB team.

Again, just spitballing here. There are a myriad of ways to manage a fantasy baseball dynasty league. I do hope these few ideas ignite your thinking as to how you can implement your own dynasty league rules though. Dynasty leagues can be a lot of fun and allow you to get your GM on.

Now back to killing zombies with plants.

In League Manager, Miscellany , , , ,
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All Star Repost: Fantasy Baseball Trading: How to use the Veto

Michael Dixon —  July 12, 2012 — Leave a comment
During the Baseball All-Star break we’ll be reposting some of our “All-Star” articles. This is a repost of an original written by Dixon. This is seasoned wisdom that will help trading and your overall fantasy baseball league to run smoother.

If you want to be a successful fantasy baseball player, you have to know the rules of the league you are in. Know what statistics are used, innings minimums/maximums, at-bats minimums/maximums, that kind of stuff. That should go without saying, but too often people are left clueless over things they should know (“I would never have drafted Jay Bruce if I knew that Ks against was used”). Members of a league also need to know how a trade goes from two parties agreeing on it, to actually becoming official.

In the case of some leagues, the LM has all of the power. He’ll see a trade, look over it, and approve it or decline it. This is not something that I recommend, as there’s too much potential for someone to complain about a Conflict of Interest. No, I like the veto system.

First of all, I rarely ever vote a trade down. Normally, I am of the mindset that two people who know the game entered into an agreement, let that be the end of it. I know that both Clave and Nash share that attitude far more often than not.

That attitude is fine 99 percent of the time. Even if a trade ends up being one-sided, it doesn’t mean that it was a bad move when it was made. After all, you can’t predict that someone’s going to get hurt, or go through an awful slump. Every now and again, I will see a trade between two people who are related, or I know to be close friends. If said trade is blatantly one-sided, then I will vote it down, especially if the team getting the better end of the deal is contending while the other isn’t.

But maybe you’re a little more proactive, or up in the air on the issue. I am here to tell you that it’s fine to be that way. There is nothing wrong with looking at a trade and voting it down, even if you don’t think collusion was at play.

It’s also okay to try to get the league’s attention on the matter. Go to the message board and say something like this.

“Hey, I noticed Person A traded Matt Kemp to Person B for J.P. Arencibia. I would really like to know what Person A was thinking, because this looks like a horrible trade to me. Unless I hear something good, I am going to vote it down and think the other owners should do the same.”

That is a perfectly fine post to make. Where league mates get annoyed is if a person makes a post that somehow makes it seem as though this trade was done to screw him over. I guarantee that there isn’t a league with 10 or more people in it that doesn’t include at least one of these guys. If there’s a way to quarantine these kinds of players, I would love to hear it. But if we’re looking at potentially vetoing a trade, don’t be that guy. That’s where people get annoyed and tune you out.

It is also not okay to just decide to vote down any trades that involve someone you don’t really care for, or to accept any moves that involve friends of yours while taking a hard line on others. If I am running a league, the quickest way for someone to get the boot out is to show inconsistent effort, and those kind of actions certainly qualify.

So, if you’re an LM (or a prospective one), this is a blueprint for what to do in the veto period.

  • Give a period of time between 24 and 48 hours between an accepted trade and a processed one for league members to approve it or vote it down.
  • Make it so just under half of the league has to vote it down for the veto to take place. If you’re in a 10-12 league team, four people works well.
  • Don’t ever automatically process a trade. There are two problems with doing this. One is that you don’t give the rest of your league a chance to be heard. Two is that you leave yourself vulnerable to be accused of something, even if you’re not doing anything wrong. Think about it. If the trade involves you, you know about it immediately and will process it then. If the trade involves two other members, it may take you a few hours to process the move, meaning that the players won’t show up on their new teams until the next day. This can make a huge difference, especially in a weekly head to head league. Make the period of time between the trade being accepted and processed consistent and known to the whole league. They have no room to complain when this happens.
  • Don’t veto a trade as an LM unless it’s obvious collusion. Obviously, if we’re talking about someone who is about to quit the league unloading his best players to a friend of his, step in and explain why. Otherwise, your vote shouldn’t count any more than any of the league’s other members.
  • If you’re trying to decide if it’s obvious collusion, talk to a league member that you trust. Better yet, talk to someone not involved in the league in any way, but who knows the game. There’s a difference between obvious collusion (which needs to be struck down by the LM) and a bad trade (which needs to be left open to the rest of the league). If you’re having a hard time placing which group a certain trade belongs in, seek a second or third opinion.
  • Make the period of time known to the league members. Usually, 24 hours is plenty, as it gives everyone a chance to check the league at a reasonable time of day, regardless of time zone. Depending on how active your league us, you may want to move it to 36 or 48 hours. Don’t go beyond 48, the people who are involved in the trade need to know what their team is going to look like. If a person goes two days without voting or making his opinion known, he has no right to complain.
If you are a member of a league.
  • Be consistent. Again, don’t express outrage when a guy you really don’t like ends up on the right end of a bad deal, but endorse another bad deal that benefits a friend, or hurts a person you don’t care for. If you are inconsistent in any way, I suggest you look for other leagues to play in, because you shouldn’t be in that one for a long time.
  • Don’t be afraid to be active, or campaign. If you think a trade is bad, make it known to other people in your league. Maybe it will work, maybe it won’t, but there’s nothing wrong with sticking to your guns.
  • If you decide to let all trades through, keep your mouth shut if a team gets hot as a result of it. At the risk of getting political, this is similar advice I would give someone who doesn’t vote in an election. If you don’t take the time to vote or care, that’s your business and I won’t question you on it. But I also won’t be too patient to listen to you complain that things aren’t going the way you wanted them to. Be active or get out of the way. Either as fine, as long as you stick to the same guns throughout the course of a season.
In League Manager, Trades ,
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Ask Nash: Combating Deadbeat Owners

Nash —  July 6, 2012 — 3 Comments

Crackerjack Note: Since the All Star Game is next week, we’ve decided to give everyone a second Ask Nash this Friday. This is certainly an issue that persists over multiple seasons, so it’s worth an extra read.

 

Nash,

I am the LM or 2 leagues, a roto league and a head to head money league.  Inevitably each year in both leagues I end up with a couple deadbeat owners and really this makes the integrity of fair play a little unbalanced.  Have you ever come across deadbeat owners as an LM what have you done or might you suggest doing?

Landon, LA #THENEW”NASH”VILLE!!

Landon,

First and foremost, congrats to the Lakers for landing Steve Nash. I am SOOO happy he didn’t go to Miami, as I would have had to disown that nickname!

Now down to business.

Gosh, it’s like you readers are in my head lately. Of course I have dealt with and am dealing with deadbeat owners, even guys who outright quit mid season. These are quite frustrating in money leagues, ESPECIALLY if guys have not paid up.

I have actually been thinking about deadbeat owners a lot lately. For me, a guy that can turn out upwards of 300 transactions in a season, I think almost everyone is a borderline deadbeat. So this season I have had to try to view things from other strategical (is that a word?) perspectives, some guys just like to let it ride. This isn’t a great strategy in fantasy baseball because the season is so long, BUT if you have the horses, your patience can pay off.

Now, getting to the real deadbeats.  We recently tossed around an idea of giving extra auction dollars to the worst teams in our roto league. The thought is to help them out for the next year, much like snake drafts and drafting in reverse order in real sports. You need to help those teams feel like they aren’t just going to be left out to dry every year. Now this idea was met with the idea that we will be rewarding deadbeat owners for their futility.

Of course we would never want to do that, and really how are we to know that guys are being deadbeats, or even tanking?  It’s not right to judge others intentions by their actions especially when we justify our own actions by our intentions.

Now, there are ways to have checks and balances. We have talked a lot recently of how to combat streaming with your league setting and you can do some of the same against potential deadbeatness (yes I am on fire making up words today).

Most sites have an innings minimum setting. Say you have a 1,000 innings minimum, if a manager or managers do not make that minimum then they are automatically dropped out of competition in pitching categories.

Now, there are no such minimum setting for hitters, so you may have to get creative.

One strong sign that you have a deadbeat owner is if they have a DL eligible guy in an active spot for longer than a few days. So I have thought recently, what if you just dropped the DL player from their team? It’s a bit extreme and only really hurts if the player is a quality guy, BUT it may be enough to get guys to pay closer attention.

I have also had a pretty extreme thought as to what to do with money leagues recently. Say you have a $25 league entry fee, well maybe you increase to $30 but keep the overall payouts the same, using the extra $5 as a “deposit”. For example, in a 12-team league, the bottom three don’t get that money back, and you can use the extra cash for incentives, like $5 for over home run leader, steals leader etc.

Like I said, some of these are extreme BUT may be worth considering, at least.

Hope this helps, Landon

Nash

In Ask Nash, League Manager
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Tips for Maintaining an Active Fantasy Baseball League

Michael Dixon —  June 6, 2012 — 3 Comments

The reason for the season

I certainly have a few pet peeves when it comes to how people play fantasy baseball. More or less, I maintain that it’s your team to do what you want with it, but there are a few exceptions. The main one is that you have to try all the way through. Now that we’re into the season and the contenders and pretenders are starting to show themselves, the deadbeats are about to be exposed.

It doesn’t matter what format you play, effort matters all the way throughout the season. You may be well out of contention in a roto league, but battling for position in one or two categories with contending teams. If you give your best effort and lose those categories, nobody has the right to criticize you. If you don’t, then other contending teams have every right to rip you a new one and if I am an LM in that league, you had better come up with a good reason for doing that if you want back in next year.

For the record, I am not talking about a few days where you’re not as attentive. People go on vacation, have families, jobs, and all that good stuff. Life getting in the way for a little while is fine. But if life is going to be getting in the way over the course of a full six-month season, then you should have never joined the league.

If you’re new to the world of being an Fantasy Baseball League Manager, you may have a question like this. How can I be sure that non-contending teams will continue to show effort?

That’s an interesting question. The end of the baseball season coincides with the beginning of football (and fantasy football) season. If you’re out of contention, it’s easy to put fantasy baseball on the back burner. So, for you LMs and prospective LMs, please consider any or all of these steps.

1. Come up with a prize for avoiding last place

I’ll give you a perfect example of this. Continue Reading…

In League Manager , ,
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Fantasy Baseball Trading: Buyer Beware

Nash —  May 21, 2012 — Leave a comment

Ryan Howard & Chase Utley

So, twice this season I have been on the very lucky end of trades. In each case, one of the players I was sending to another team ended up on the DL shortly after.

Trade 1: I traded Chase Utley and Ryan Raburn for Clayton Kershaw.

Trade 2: I traded Jayson Werth and Mike Moustakas for Matt Cain and Zack Cozart

For as long as I have played fantasy baseball, this is just something we’ve chalked up to buyer beware.  However, should there be some statute of limitation in which a player must at least provide some service to the team or else the trade can be voided?!

In the pros players have to pass a physical before a trade is finalized. In the fantasy baseball world we don’t have such a luxury.  In the above case of Trade 2, the other owner accepted the trade. Just two hours later, Werth, a key piece to him, was walked off the field and will now miss 12 weeks.  With Werth hitting the DL this trade really hurts his team as he gave up value to get value.  As we learned from William Ladson (among others), this is a serious injury.

I know that for most of us “all is fair in love and fantasy baseball”, and I can be as cutthroat as the next guy, but something about this struck a chord with me Sunday evening, and really made me question my ethics, if I don’t at least offer some sort of restitution.

It made me also think back to the preseason trade – Utley for Kershaw.  When it was made, some league rivals thought was unbalanced. You can only imagine what people thought Utley ended up on the DL. As it happens, he still hasn’t made his season debut.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that I was responsible for these players hitting the DL, nor is any owner who is the beneficiary of such transactions.  But should there be an unwritten rule, or better yet a written one, to help facilitate fairness in these circumstances?!

Our suggestions:

  1. First, Clave had a VERY good article  about LMs having a constitution, even had a copy of our Tunacorn Constitution.  This is a must for all leagues!
  2. Second, in said document there can be amendments when things such as this arise.  Our document does not have such a clause but at our mid-season rules summit, I will certainly bring it up!
  3. Third don’t lose friends over fantasy baseball, it really isn’t worth it.  If you want to be that guy that just says C’est la vie, there are public leagues that you can join.

PS – You might enjoy following me and all the Crackerjacks on Twitter.

In League Manager, Rules, Trades , , ,
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Fantasy Baseball Trading: How to use the Veto

Michael Dixon —  May 16, 2012 — Leave a comment

If you want to be a successful fantasy baseball player, you have to know the rules of the league you are in. Know what statistics are used, innings minimums/maximums, at-bats minimums/maximums, that kind of stuff. That should go without saying, but too often people are left clueless over things they should know (“I would never have drafted Jay Bruce if I knew that Ks against was used”). Members of a league also need to know how a trade goes from two parties agreeing on it, to actually becoming official.

In the case of some leagues, the LM has all of the power. He’ll see a trade, look over it, and approve it or decline it. This is not something that I recommend, as there’s too much potential for someone to complain about a Conflict of Interest. No, I like the veto system.

First of all, I rarely ever vote a trade down. Normally, I am of the mindset that two people who know the game entered into an agreement, let that be the end of it. I know that both Clave and Nash share that attitude far more often than not.

That attitude is fine 99 percent of the time. Even if a trade ends up being one-sided, it doesn’t mean that it was a bad move when it was made. After all, you can’t predict that someone’s going to get hurt, or go through an awful slump. Every now and again, I will see a trade between two people who are related, or I know to be close friends. If said trade is blatantly one-sided, then I will vote it down, especially if the team getting the better end of the deal is contending while the other isn’t.

But maybe you’re a little more proactive, or up in the air on the issue. I am here to tell you that it’s fine to be that way. There is nothing wrong with looking at a trade and voting it down, even if you don’t think collusion was at play.

It’s also okay to try to get the league’s attention on the matter. Go to the message board and say something like this.

“Hey, I noticed Person A traded Matt Kemp to Person B for J.P. Arencibia. I would really like to know what Person A was thinking, because this looks like a horrible trade to me. Unless I hear something good, I am going to vote it down and think the other owners should do the same.”

That is a perfectly fine post to make. Where league mates get annoyed is if a person makes a post that somehow makes it seem as though this trade was done to screw him over. I guarantee that there isn’t a league with 10 or more people in it that doesn’t include at least one of these guys. If there’s a way to quarantine these kinds of players, I would love to hear it. But if we’re looking at potentially vetoing a trade, don’t be that guy. That’s where people get annoyed and tune you out.

It is also not okay to just decide to vote down any trades that involve someone you don’t really care for, or to accept any moves that involve friends of yours while taking a hard line on others. If I am running a league, the quickest way for someone to get the boot out is to show inconsistent effort, and those kind of actions certainly qualify.

So, if you’re an LM (or a prospective one), this is a blueprint for what to do in the veto period.

  • Give a period of time between 24 and 48 hours between an accepted trade and a processed one for league members to approve it or vote it down.
  • Make it so just under half of the league has to vote it down for the veto to take place. If you’re in a 10-12 league team, four people works well.
  • Don’t ever automatically process a trade. There are two problems with doing this. One is that you don’t give the rest of your league a chance to be heard. Two is that you leave yourself vulnerable to be accused of something, even if you’re not doing anything wrong. Think about it. If the trade involves you, you know about it immediately and will process it then. If the trade involves two other members, it may take you a few hours to process the move, meaning that the players won’t show up on their new teams until the next day. This can make a huge difference, especially in a weekly head to head league. Make the period of time between the trade being accepted and processed consistent and known to the whole league. They have no room to complain when this happens.
  • Don’t veto a trade as an LM unless it’s obvious collusion. Obviously, if we’re talking about someone who is about to quit the league unloading his best players to a friend of his, step in and explain why. Otherwise, your vote shouldn’t count any more than any of the league’s other members.
  • If you’re trying to decide if it’s obvious collusion, talk to a league member that you trust. Better yet, talk to someone not involved in the league in any way, but who knows the game. There’s a difference between obvious collusion (which needs to be struck down by the LM) and a bad trade (which needs to be left open to the rest of the league). If you’re having a hard time placing which group a certain trade belongs in, seek a second or third opinion.
  • Make the period of time known to the league members. Usually, 24 hours is plenty, as it gives everyone a chance to check the league at a reasonable time of day, regardless of time zone. Depending on how active your league us, you may want to move it to 36 or 48 hours. Don’t go beyond 48, the people who are involved in the trade need to know what their team is going to look like. If a person goes two days without voting or making his opinion known, he has no right to complain.
If you are a member of a league.
  • Be consistent. Again, don’t express outrage when a guy you really don’t like ends up on the right end of a bad deal, but endorse another bad deal that benefits a friend, or hurts a person you don’t care for. If you are inconsistent in any way, I suggest you look for other leagues to play in, because you shouldn’t be in that one for a long time.
  • Don’t be afraid to be active, or campaign. If you think a trade is bad, make it known to other people in your league. Maybe it will work, maybe it won’t, but there’s nothing wrong with sticking to your guns.
  • If you decide to let all trades through, keep your mouth shut if a team gets hot as a result of it. At the risk of getting political, this is similar advice I would give someone who doesn’t vote in an election. If you don’t take the time to vote or care, that’s your business and I won’t question you on it. But I also won’t be too patient to listen to you complain that things aren’t going the way you wanted them to. Be active or get out of the way. Either as fine, as long as you stick to the same guns throughout the course of a season.
In How To, League Manager, Rules, Trades , , , ,
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